Intimate Backyard Wedding in Malibu
You just can’t top a backyard wedding in Malibu, can you? Zoom Theory and The Little Branch were part of the talented team on hand for Kayla and Jakob’s wedding day, which was full of bohemian details and sweet personal touches, made all the more special by the whole thing taking place at the groom’s childhood home.
From the bride, Kayla: We wanted something really intimate and down to earth with a bohemian feel to it. We focused on having amazing food, good music and great people. We wanted to get married somewhere that would have meaning for us and were so lucky to be able to have the wedding at my husband’s childhood home. It was really important to us to keep things intimate and only have our closest family and friends there to celebrate with us.
Flower recipe: I wanted the flowers to feel very relaxed and romantic – nothing too fussy. So we went with loose, organic feeling bouquets. All of the bridesmaids’ bouquets were in the same style and colour palette but each was unique. The bouquets had peonies, ranunculus, poppies, and garden roses, with lots of greenery. We also had small potted succulents and single blooms of peonies, and pink mink protea on the tables.
As far as a theme, I really wanted to emphasize a boho vibe with gold metallics. We ended up with a few odd gold touches, like the rose gold cutlery, gold sandals for the bridesmaids, gold handwritten place cards, and the variety of brass and gold vases, urns and mercury votives on the tables and here and there around the yard. Lighting was really important to us as well, and the hundreds of twinkle lights and market place stringers, together with the mason jars with candles we had around the yard really made for a warm and romantic feel. We wanted to do as much as we could on our own. The family recently had to cut down a large tree in the yard because it was leaning on the house, and so they had these great stumps from that Jake’s brother made into stools, and his brother also made a very large wood table that made the most beautiful dessert table. We had a work day where our extended family came over and helped with gardening, painting some of the outdoor furniture a bright and cheery yellow, and Jake’s uncle built the swing that you’ll see in many of the photos and got each member of the family to put in one nail, so it was a group effort. Jake’s grandma did our chalkboard seating chart, and his mom contributed the pieces of amethyst that were at each place setting and served as our wedding favours. We ordered the arch for our ceremony off of Etsy, but it was my mom and Jake’s brother that made sure it was anchored and would look stunning on the day by cementing the feet of it into planters and then planting flowers to give it a natural look. I got overly ambitious and decided to attempt to calligrapher all of the envelopes to our wedding invitations and write the place cards myself.
Any advice for couples planning their weddings now? Our advice would be to try to enjoy the planning process and make it your own. We liked to choose a few details that were very important to us and focus on those and let the other details fall into that same theme. We would also say, that sometimes less is more.
View all images from this wedding in the gallery
Wedding Music:
My husband was largely in charge of the playlist and we really wanted to have more classic music. We had the odd newer song in the mix, but we had a lot of Rod Stewart, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Sam Cooke, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, etc. A year or so ago, we, along with Jake’s siblings, became huge fans of Smooth Hound Smith, a folk and blues duo now based out of Nashville and were so fortunate to have them play at the wedding as well.
Processional: “At Last,” Etta James
First Dance: “Love Me Tender,” Elvis
Father/Daughter and Mother/Son Dance: “The Way You Look Tonight,” Frank Sinatra
Last Song: “Dancing in the Moonlight,” Toploader