Tamara and Dave’s wedding at Pangas Beach Club was everything we love most about beach weddings! The couple’s planning and floral design team from Mil Besos used a floral-forward approach to create a vibrant, tropical-inspired look worthy of the world-class beach setting. And their focus on the details, including gold pineapples and monstera leaf placemats, made this wedding truly special. Tamara was the picture of beachy bridal style with a lace Watters gown, elegant diamond accessories, and a simple braid accented with a vibrant pink flower. White Diamond photography totally nailed it in capturing every moment of this Costa Rican beach wedding!
Emily and Adam’s wildly romantic New Hampshire elopement is the absolute best cure for a case of the winter blues! The couple spent their wedding weekend doing exactly what they love: hiking through the snow and cuddling up together in a cozy apartment. Surrounded by 14 of their closest family and friends, they exchanged vows in a Christmas tree farm and then toasted to forever with a quaint, vintage-meets-rustic reception. The day after, they strapped on their hiking boots and hiked to the mountaintops for some swoon-worthy portraits captured by Hana Alsoudi Photography. We’re not exactly sure how they did it, but Emily and Adam managed to have an elopement that was as epic as it was charming, all while being totally unique and personal!
It was important for us that the day feel really intimate and authentic. We tend to spend most of our weekends and leisure time either hiking in the mountains, or cozied-up in our apartment and so a big, elaborate event absolutely wouldn’t have felt like “us”. For this reason, we chose to have only our closest relatives (almost exclusively immediate family) in attendance. This allowed us to spend real, quality time with our loved ones, and relax and feel like ourselves. Reading our vows to each other felt much lower-pressure than if we’d been doing so in front of our whole extended family (which would have numbered over 120 in total) and so we were able to make our remarks really personal, goofy, and candid—true to our relationship and how we interact with each other in our daily life.
One of our favorite moments happened right at the end of the ceremony, during our first kiss as husband and wife. We had a family member cue “Somebody to Love” by Queen on a Bluetooth speaker right as we shared our first married kiss, and as the iconic vocal intro of the song filled the air, our loved ones blew bubbles all around us. It was such a giddy-happy, magical moment!
We kept decorations pretty minimal, relying mainly on the rustic beauty of the tree farm and the reception house to set the visual mood. Most of our added decor pieces were vintage or handmade, which is in keeping with our personal style. The Persian rug we stood on for the ceremony and the brass candlesticks on the dining table for our reception dinner were both vintage finds. The globe lights and paper cranes in the reception house were both hung by helpful relatives that morning, before the ceremony. The paper cranes that we hung above the fireplace mantle were actually passed down to us by Adam’s sister, Jill, and her husband Ted, from their wedding earlier in the year. Jill, Ted, and Adam’s mother handmade the paper cranes for their wedding as a token of good luck, which they then passed on to us.
We found the most beautiful travel candles to give as wedding favors. They came with beautiful labels depicting a snowy landscape of evergreens and smelled of pine. We wanted to send our loved ones home with a special reminder of our day that they would actually use, and that would bring back memories of the weekend. Scents are strongly tied to memory, after all! I also love that guests can keep the candle tins as decorative containers after the candle burns down.
The day after our wedding was also really wonderful and sentimental. We started out taking some additional bridal portraits at the cozy mid-century A-Frame that served as our couples hideaway home for the weekend. After some cozy shots in our bridal attire, we pulled on our hiking boots and layered-up to hike to one of our favorite summit overlooks in the White Mountains. We hiked a little of 3 miles total—suit, dress, bouquet and all—with our photographer, Hana to shoot bridal portraits on the snowy mountaintop. Standing on the edge of the snowy overlook, with frosted peaks rising up all around us—loving on each other in our bridal attire—felt really special. Since winter-hiking is our absolute favorite shared activity, that day really encapsulated who we are as a couple, and was the perfect finish to our elopement weekend.
Jillian and Wayne’s Arizona wedding at The Paseo was the epitome of desert romance! We’re honestly not sure what was dreamier: the view of the Superstition Mountain behind their ceremony or the post-rainstorm glow throughout the desert landscape. The couple used muted, desert-inspired pinks, browns, and whites for everything from the floral designs by The Petal Theory to the bridesmaids’ BHLDN gown to the tablescapes. Then they kicked up the elegance factor with Jillian opting for a romantic Madison James lace gown and Wayne sporting a sharp black tux from Jos.A. Bank. The combination of desert hues and timeless style — along with the unbelievable epic scenery — were picture perfect, as evidence by these images captured by Alexandra Loraine Photography!
When Wayne and I started going through the wedding planning process, we both quickly agreed that we wanted our guests to feel the love we have for each other regardless of how well we knew each guest. We really wanted every aspect of the day to be personal and be reflective of our relationship. That’s why we agreed to write our own vows and put a lot of work into some of the little details that were important to us.
I think we always had The Paseo in the back of our minds. Even before we started touring venues, it had already checked so many of our boxes. We had guests coming into town from all over, and we really wanted to find a venue that showed off all of Arizona’s beauty. So with that in mind, other venues really didn’t even compare.
Having a photographer who you trust to capture your big day is huge. Alex really took the time to listen to what we wanted, and truly captured the best moments of our day — as well as brought so many ideas to the table that I would have never thought of. She knew how and when to pose us for our portraits, but also captured so many of our serendipitous moments. She made us feel so comfortable in front of the camera, which is a big deal for two people who hardly take any photos.
The rain in the morning was a bit of surprise but made for a killer sunset. I think the bigger surprises were the tarantulas down the aisle before the ceremony started, and then the rattlesnake in the bathroom during cocktail hour! You get what you ask for when you choose to have a wedding in the Arizona desert! Luckily, the amazing staff at The Paseo handled it so quickly that Wayne and I didn’t see any of it. Our out of town guests loved the creepy crawling guests though and took plenty of pictures to show us later.
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