You know what they say: “Rain on your wedding day is good luck!” But do you believe them? After scrolling through the next 33 photos – you will! Whether the wedding has a light drizzle or a torrential downpour, beautiful moments and photographs can come from any rainy day. If there’s rain in the forecast at your wedding – don’t sweat it, embrace it!
Mariam and Mazin elegantly brought their many cultural traditions together for their wedding at The Bellevue Conference & Event Center. With Fara Farzam’s assistance from The Bellevue, she made Mariam and Mazin’s design, floral, and coordination dreams come true. This extra help allowed the happy couple to eliminate stress when planning a culturally typical three-day event down to one day. Mariam’s custom one of a kind gown was used as inspiration with pops of pinks, ivory, and peach found throughout the wedding. Lindsey Paradiso beautifully captured the details and traditions of their wedding.
It was important for us to choose a wedding theme that suited us. Luckily we didn’t get any pressure from our family members to have a specific type of wedding affair. Typically, South Asian weddings can last multiple days, consisting of different activities and themes for each function. However, we knew from the beginning that we didn’t want to go that route, due to the stress and financial burden. Instead we wanted to focus to having one day, that would be a blend of the usual multi-day affair. We also wanted a fusion wedding that incorporated a few traditional themes from our cultures and few modern western themes. At the end we selected the venue and vendor that respected our vision and went above and beyond to bring our theme to fruition very uniformly.
The biggest piece of advice I could give is to not stress. A month before the wedding, a lot of major the details were still not finalized, but we didn’t stress too much because we knew ultimately it would work out.
Looking back at it, our most memorable part was the alone time we spent during the day. For example, whenever we took couple portraits, we had time to connect without any pressure. I think that alone time also helped calm my nerves before we had to be the center of attention at our ceremony and the reception.
We knew we wanted to have our ceremony on the rooftop. But leading up to the wedding, I felt nervous to have to ask my guest’s to possibly sit through the ceremony in the July heat in their traditional heavy attire. I decided to accept the fact that we may have to use our alternative ceremony location inside, and that’s when I stopped feeling stressed about it. Few hours before the ceremony, we decided to move forward to having the ceremony outside. It was hot and sunny, but doable. Magically, as soon as our ceremony started, it got a bit cloudy and very pleasant. It lasted the whole 20 minutes of our ceremony, and as soon as we it was over, it was back to being sunny and hot. If I had kept stressing about that decision, I would’ve just ruined my own experience. I look back on that day and smile at how perfect it all was.
I highly recommend our photographer Lindsey Paradiso. She made us feel super comfortable and never made us pose in a way where we felt uneasy. She let us be natural and not choreographed. Even though this was the first South Asian wedding shoot, she did plenty of research before hand and knew all the important transitions and when to capture what.
I also need to recognize Fara Farzam from The Bellevue for the amazing decor that she helped us envision and then bring to reality. Her team went above our expectations for the decor and the whole setup for our ceremony and reception. She was also my coordinator and handled everything with grace. I didn’t feel an stress about any details because she didn’t let any stress approach me, she made all the right executive decisions.
We ultimately choose our venue based on convenience. It was the first venue we checked out and every other venue we viewed, simple just didn’t compare. The Bellevue provided us with the event planning, all the decor planning, flowers, audio services and visual services. It made sense to us to go with the nicest venue we saw which also offered a complete package.
Our wedding day colors were peach, blush, maroon, and ivory. Essentially the colors were picked to reflect the flower details in my wedding dress.
We knew we wanted to have a semi fusion wedding between our Pakistani, Indian, and American cultures. We choose to include rituals and traditions that incorporated it all such as having a small intimate ceremony, evening prayer during the reception, group photos on the stage, cake cutting, first dance, family and friend’s choreographed dances, traditional food, open dance floor, and sparkler exit.
Janice and Sean’s Napa Valley wedding will have your heart exploding of excitement from Janice’s emotional first look with her father and then her groom, the streamer-filled first kiss, and many DIY touches. Their weekend celebration coined the name The Calistoga Spectacular, and it more than lived up to its name. The poetic, relaxed vibe had subtle art deco influence in the decor and graphics made by Janice Nicol. This stunning day was photographed by Jonnie + Garrett, and it would not have been complete without Gold and Gumption’s video magic.
Welcome boxes greeted arriving guests earlier in the weekend with treats to help them enjoy the events and spark conversation: a program guide, Calistoga Springs mineral water, a Woodhouse Chocolate bar, a branded wine opener, a geode to open, and enamel lapel pins we made of our faces so friends and family could be identified as ‘bride’s side’ or ‘groom’s side.’ These were nestled into boxes that we made from a vintage map of Calistoga.
In the spirit of loving to create, Janice designed her wedding dress in partnership with Anomalie. The outfit transitioned throughout the night: the ceremony was a long skirt and top kept simple to highlight a graphic thistle veil, which was inspired by a motif found at the venue; for the reception, the train came off to reveal a silk column dress with fun shoulders, and for dancing, a jacket with shimmery, metallic beadwork was thrown on top.
A bit of practical advice: the millions of little things that go into the event can start to feel like they’re taking over your life, so we set up calendar invites for a few minutes every night with a longer block on Sunday afternoons to get things done. This kept us sane and ensured our planning efforts were a fair 50/50.
We folded our wedding into an event-filled Napa Valley weekend that we branded The Calistoga Spectacular. Knowing all of our guests would be traveling up to the small, historic town of Calistoga, we wanted our wedding to become the perfect excuse for everyone to enjoy a long weekend of world-class food, even better wine, and leisurely afternoons spent poolside. Festivities started on the patio of a favorite barbecue spot on Thursday May 4th, culminated in our wedding on Saturday, May 6th, and wrapped with a farewell brunch at a natural geyser that Sunday.
A few things in particular made our ceremony feel extra special: our officiant was a dear friend and someone who has a marriage and family we look up to; we wrote and read ‘commitments’ to each other from three eras of our life – today, our mid life crisis, and our golden years; our guests sat on benches on both sides of us (we built a platform in the center) so it felt like a big family hug; our family members stood up to share a wish for our futures; and we gave out metallic streamer cannons for the end of the ceremony.
At the moment of our first kiss, our guests shot off giant metallic confetti cannons and it felt like time stood still in those initial few minutes as newlyweds, hearing our friends and family laugh and cheer while standing amidst the whirl of streamers.
We love making things and just couldn’t restrain ourselves. Our wedding invitation was a little book that laid out all of the details for the weekend, and we had many branded, fun elements for the events throughout the weekend, including wine openers, signs (with help from talented friends), pencils, ceremony programs, bell wands and treats for the flower girls, coloring books for little ones, wine tasting guides, and favors for most of the events. We also pushed native iOS and Android apps so our guests would always know what was on tap next, and could share photos on a mobile wall that was accessible only to wedding guests.
The Calistoga Spectacular branding was a nod towards the celebratory vibes of art deco. For the wedding itself, we emphasized the earthy and geologic, given the incredible geological history of the area through its natural hot springs, heavenly mineral pools, and soil, responsible for some of the best wine in the world. We found ourselves using the word “poetic” a lot to describe our vision.
There wasn’t a particular color scheme, though we leaned toward metallic tones (plenty of gold and silver) against a spectrum of grays. The tones evolved through the night, so our outdoor ceremony could feel bright and optimistic, the reception dinner cozy and candle-lit, and the dance floor extra festive.
Jonnie + Garrett joined us throughout the entire Calistoga Spectacular weekend and became like family by the end. We shared their photos with all of our guests on the other side of the festivities and we heard from so many who were absolutely floored. They capture all the emotion and reflect the poetic tone we were going for.
Ashley of Buzzworthy Events has fantastic taste and made sure the decor was on point and the party in full swing all night. With all of her event planning experience, we also appreciated having her as a sounding board for top-notch referrals, protocol questions, and event logistics while planning.
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