San Diego Spring Wedding
What a delight this wedding was from Victoria Carlson Photography! Rebecca and John’s San Diego wedding is chock-full of goodies and details, and we love all of the full-of-life colors that they used: perfect for their springtime wedding! Their chic bohemian wedding day fused together oranges, pinks, and yellows into the funnest ways imaginable. To aid in the color palette, The Slate Barn and Gardens dished out beautiful floral arrangements, namely the bride’s glorious flower crown and bouquet. We can’t say enough how much this boho glam wedding caught our eye!
From the bride, Rebecca: John and I met while I was living in Washington state (I had moved there after college). We started dating in March 2014, and in April I found out that I had been accepted into San Diego State University’s graduate program in liberal arts and sciences. This was a bittersweet moment for John and I because we had just started dating and I had just found out that I was moving back home in a few short months. So without hesitation and much to my surprise and delight, he told me that he decided he would be moving down to California with me because he loved me and wanted to marry me. And so he did, and we were engaged just six months after we moved!
During our 11 months of wedding planning, I was in grad school full time, working a full time job (usually over 40 hours a week), all while planning our wedding by myself without a coordinator! I ended up graduating with straight A’s, doing outstanding at my job, and planned a beautiful wedding that I believe to be unique and one-of-a-kind. We went into the planning process with a very low budget initially, since it was just me, my mom, and John paying for the wedding. We saved for months with hopes to produce a beautiful, one-of-a-kind, DIY, colorful, bohemian wedding — and we totally made it happen! Our colors were burnt orange, fuchsia, light pink, and mustard yellow. These colors were reflected in our mismatched wedding party attire of ombre bridesmaid dresses, and mismatched eclectic bow ties for the groomsmen. I chose them based off of my favorite color combinations, and the fact that we were having a colorful wedding; I wanted our colors to stand out in a tasteful and fun manner.
Coming from a highly artistic and creative design background, I knew I wanted to hand-make a lot of our wedding elements, as well as use local vendors and etsy businesses. So I DIY’d all of the decor, favors, programs, bar menu, etc. We had our wedding party pick out their own colorfully mismatched bow ties and dresses, which reflected the atmosphere of a laid-back spring garden party that we were going for. I designed the two wedding cakes and dessert table myself, and recruited the help from crafty friends to make a lot of the desserts that we had. Our wedding did not have alcohol due to the costs, so we opted for fun mocktails that I thought of myself using sparkling sodas, juices, and old-fashioned bottled drinks such as root beers, cream sodas, and orange sodas. We used rentals from Witty Rentals for our sweetheart table; I purchased handmade accessories off etsy, and chose our venue based off the look we were going for: outdoor, garden party, sunny, and colorful. And that’s exactly what the day gave us: gorgeous weather, sunshine, and a finished product that I’m very proud of considering I was not using a wedding planner or stylist!
Music choices: The wedding party walked down the aisle to “Silo Song” by Laura Veirs. I walked down the aisle to Iron and Wine’s version of “Such Great Heights” because it’s a song that John would play and sing for me all the time on his guitar. We exited to Edward Sharpe’s song “Home”, and had our first dance to Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie En Rose” because we love the scene in “Wall-E” that plays that song, where Wall-E is showing Eve how much he adores her, and I personally love Jazz music so much (we listen to Louis, Sinatra, and etc. whenever we make dinner together). The dance we both danced to with our parents was Jasmine Thompson’s version of “Sweet Child of Mine”. It was very special to both of us, since John’s mom had him at 16 and decided to keep him, they have a very close bond. And for me and my dad, we both love the original Guns n’ Roses version of the song; my dad would play it on his motorcycle whenever he took me for rides when I was young.
Both of our favorite memories are when I walked down the aisle to John and our eyes were locked the entire time; we were smiling so much! And the other favorite part was reading our vows. We wrote our own vows, which all of my married friends told me was super brave and none of them wanted to do their own for fear of bawling while reading them. I did cry while reading mine to John, but it was so beautiful to hear each other’s heart pour out under the arch, promising our lives to each other. We ended our vows with the same line too, just to make it more heartfelt.
What’s your advice for brides planning their wedding? DON’T be afraid of DIY! I DIY’d 90% of our wedding, and though it took a lot of time, commitment, and hours of glueing, cutting, pasting, and crafting, it was so worth it in the end because our wedding looked like us. Also, it’s so important to take a pre marital class together– John and I took an eight-week course through our church, and we LOVED it. We gained so much insight to understanding each other on a much deeper level than we had during our relationship, and it discussed so many things that causes marriages to eventually fail if you DON’T discuss these things prior: finances, understanding your family of origin to analyze why you act/think the way you do, how to argue, how to deepen your relationship with each other through God, etc. It was such a good tool for us to apply to our marriage. Take care of your relationship before you get married so that you can succeed in marriage and make it last.
DIY projects include: ribbons for the aisle chairs, along with handmade flower petal cones with a message to guests about when to toss petals that I designed in Photoshop; programs and menus; I also styled our dessert table’s decor, signage, desserts, and designed the cakes as well! Hanging above the dessert table were these lovely embroidery hoops with faux flowers that I was inspired to make off of Pinterest.
