Intimate Backyard Wedding

Get ready for one amazing wedding with one of our most dapper grooms yet this year! Because of course, it goes without saying how gorg this bride is. Sporting a checked shirt, green tie, and vest, we love that his bride bedecked herself in matching TOMS to support her honey and a great cause. Every stunning image from Vis Photography makes us wish we could have been a part of this sweet backyard affair!

From the bride, Tory: My wedding inspiration started with my dress. I found a beautiful 1930s vintage dress at a place called The Way We Wore in Hollywood. Emory and I already wanted an intimate, casual, outdoor fall wedding, and the dress lent perfectly to the occasion. After stumbling upon a location (a beautiful backyard nestled in the middle of the mountain range behind Malibu), we designed our wedding as a perfect mixture between our tastes – it was filled with vintage and handmade elements for me, and some woodsy, natural elements for Emory.

The setting was already so beautiful that we barely needed any added decoration. I collected green bottles, vintage cake stands, and vintage stamps for the invitations. Emory and I collected twigs on hikes for the table decorations, and I made a cake topper with thrift store fabric and some of our collected twigs. I made origami foxes to send out with the invitations, and made origami lotuses to scatter on the welcome table. For my ‘something borrowed’, I wrapped my grandmother’s vintage lavalier around the handle of my bouquet. Our guests wrote messages and wishes on slips of colored paper and slipped them into a wish wall I made out of a shot glass holder and balsa wood.

I picked out a hodgepodge collection of flowers from the LA flower market the day before the wedding – not bothering to pay attention to specific colors. The only shoes Emory ever wears are TOMS, so of course he would wear them at our wedding… so I bought a pair of TOMS wedges to wear, and made flowers out of the hemmed material from my dress to pin on the front of the shoes. Since it was out of our budget range to hire a coordinator or planner, we planned the entire thing ourselves, and our friends and family stepped in on the day-of to help make everything run smoothly. We couldn’t have done it without them! It was a perfect day, and most importantly, it was the perfect start to the rest of our lives together!

See Also

A Bold Berry-Colored Vallejo Wedding

Any advice for brides planning their weddings now? Don’t start off by looking at a zillion wedding books and magazines! Make a list of what you KNOW you want for your wedding first! We had a low budget for our wedding, so when I went crazy looking at a bunch of wedding books when we first got engaged, I got overwhelmed by all the additional things we would have to add to the wedding. But really, you only need what YOU want, not what the wedding books say you should have. It IS possible to have a fun wedding without dancing and alcohol. I got stressed looking at sites that said weddings are no fun at all without either… but we didn’t have the budget for alcohol or the space for dancing. But we ended up having more time to chat with our guests, and then the whole party was over by sundown and we were on our way to our hotel!

Oh, and if you have to choose between spending money on the honeymoon and wedding, choose the honeymoon! Weddings can always be done beautiful and cheap, honeymoons need some money spent. 🙂

Wedding Music:
My maid of honor and I walked down the aisle to ‘Babys’ by Bon Iver, and the recessional song was ‘Hoppipolla’ by Sigur Ros. Our mothers were walked down the aisle before the wedding started to ‘Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming’ covered by Sufjan Stevens. We didn’t have dancing at our wedding, but we did make an entrance after the ceremony (after signing our license and taking more photos) to ‘Black and White’ by Michael Jackson. For obvious reasons.

Wedding Vendors (Conejo Valley, CA):

Wedding Venue: Private Residence / Wedding Photographer: Leah and Rob of Vis Photography / Wedding Dress: Vintage 1930s dress from The Way We Wore (Hollywood) / Bride’s Veil: Handmade by bride’s mother / Dress Alterations: In Stitches / Bride’s Getaway Dress: Forever 21 / Bride and Groom’s Shoes: TOMS / Bridesmaid’s Dress: Banana Republic / Groom’s Shirt: Original Penguin / Bride’s Hair: Tiffanie at The Canyon Salon / Wedding Bouquets, Corsages, and Boutonnieres: Conejo Valley Florist / Flowers: Purchased at LA Flower Mart / Rentals: Conejo Rental Center / Sound System: SSR Sound / Wedding Caterer: / Desserts: Xtreme Desserts / Wedding Invitations: Bride’s friend, Kaycie ([email protected])