Yosemite Wedding: Morgan & Dave's Nature Inspired Boho Wedding //
Venue: Majestic Hotel // Wedding styling: Spreading Lovely // Wedding coordination: ETC Events // Hair & makeup: Kelly Jones Makeup & Hair // Floral design: Michelle Lywood // Wedding dress: Rue De Seine from Lovely Bride // Video: Arroyo Films // DJ: Sound In Style // Chair rentals: The Chiavari Guys // Linens: La Tavola // Tabletop rentals: Frances Lane // Paper goods: Peanut Press Creative //
Check out their engagement session at the Marin Headlands & it was featured on Green Wedding Shoes!
Check out their wedding feature on Green Wedding Shoes!
Since Morgan is a wedding planner herself (Spreading Lovely), I asked her to give some advice and overall ideas about her wedding to help all of you:
Planning and designing our wedding was insanely fun and so incredibly rewarding to create a day that felt so perfectly "us". An exercise that I have all my clients do when I'm providing design services, is to figure out the essence of their relationship - how they describe it, how others would describe their partnership, and what are the most important aspects for their day. I use that information to translate into tangible design elements. For our own wedding, we chose the words "Emotion", "Uniqueness" and "Adventure".
Our venue filled our need for adventure - we wanted an entire weekend with all our guests, not just one day (it goes by too fast!), and hoped to get our guests into a new mindset, away from their work and just be able to focus on the moment in a beautiful location. We wanted our guests to get a mini vacation out of it by taking time to go on adventures up to waterfalls and walks through the valley surrounded by massive granite cliffs. Uniqueness - we fulfilled this through utilizing a design that felt all our own; from my Rue De Seine dress, our teal velvet linens, custom table numbers and laser cut seating chart, a handmade ceremony backdrop by my husband's best friend, to thoughtful consideration of our venue and location by incorporating wood elements, lots of greenery, textures and Native American inspired patterns, we felt we created a day that felt completely unique to ourselves, like our own little world. Finally, emotion - we focused a lot of time and energy on our ceremony and utilized one of Vow Muse's ceremony templates to get a great base structure to further customize into our own, adding unique things about our relationship throughout, paired with a meaningful reading by a friend and one that incorporated a verse for all of our siblings and our officiant who was there from the beginning of our relationship. Our vows were the most important part of our day, and I think the time and love we poured into them was evident and set the stage for the rest of the party -- our guests could feel the deep emotion we had for each other, and I think having a strong ceremony to lead into the rest of the day really set a beautiful tone for the evening, we had countless guests tell us how there wasn't a dry eye. We cried happy tears and smiled through the ceremony and laughed and partied our way through the night with our 101 guests, it was absolutely perfect for what we wanted.
Advice for other brides:
GO WITH YOUR GUT! This is definitely the best advice I can give. As a planner (and a Type A person in general), I tend to exhaust all my options, and then make what I think is the best, most thoughtfully considered decision. But when it came to being a bride, going with my gut served me so much better than going through too many options. So often, my original instinct was what I truly wanted and what I ended up with! (My dress, our linen choices and my wedding band, to name a few). If you find something you like that fits with your overall aesthetic (or doesn't, and you just feel you have to have it!) then go for it! It is your day, and there is no right way to do it, but there is a wrong way - trying to make everyone else happy and straying from what feels most "you"! Go with your gut and stick to your guns!
Another piece of advice I can offer is this: Don't be afraid to ask for help! My mom was my primary sounding board. Maybe its a bridesmaid, or your childhood best friend, pick someone (not 10 people) who understands you and has great style (my mom is an interior design, and totally get's my visions, and understands how to help me hone them in). I had her help me with things like flower girl outfits, bridesmaid dresses and accessories, looking for groomsmen ties, and deciding between two colors for our table names (how small right?? I just couldn't decide!), etc. If you are going to ask for help, you also can't micromanage them, but offer suggestions and review what they find so you can make the final call. There are A TON of decisions when it comes your wedding, and in the final weeks you can definitely hit a point of decision paralysis when you don't want to think about making another choice, so having someone you trust to help you with those last minute things (like color of the laser cut writing on your table names) is always great to have!
