Real Wedding: Rinda + James, A Backyard Wedding

This wedding was sent to me by one of my favorite photographers – Jill Thomas – who also just relocated to San Diego. Congrats on the move! Rinda (the bride, who you might remember from her engagement session I featured a few months ago) was kind enough to answer some questions about the big day and the planning. Thanks so much Rinda!!

Rinda and James were married in Mesa, Arizona. They had their ceremony at the LDS Temple in Mesa, then a simple backyard reception – inspired by my backyard wedding series of posts :) They used their friends backyard, that had a gorgeous courtyard, as well as a barn – score!

bride and groom oranges

From Rinda, My flowers were done by a woman named Lizzy McMillan. She is a wedding designer at Seville Golf and Country Club in Chandler, Arizona. My dress was actually made by a woman named Jennifer Mitchell. I searched online and saw a few dresses that I really liked and kind of designed the dress by combining features that I had seen on several designer sites. I contacted my seamstress and gave her an idea of what I wanted and she made the entire dress from scratch. I found the lace and other material I wanted her to use and she did the rest. She was a phenomenal seamstress.

orange bouquet

Rinda is a triplet (her sisters pictured on the left and the girl on the right is their younger sister). I had the most difficult time picking a color I wanted. Finally I just chose one color, went to Home Depot to the paint section and found as many swatches of my color as I could. I weeded out the ones I didn’t like and threw them all together. I showed them to my bridesmaids and told them to find anything they could that was a similar color. They did all the work. I have no credit in this department. I gave them the most difficult color to get a dress in (coral) and it took most of them a long time to find them. I went with quite a few of them to search for what I liked. Patterned, solid, anything. I was impressed with them all. They found great dresses.

I totally agree. Love their dresses they found – and the fun mustache photo! How adorable are they??!

pink mismatched bridesmaids

Rinda hung a patterned fabric for some fun photos of the happy couple.

bride and groom fabric backdrop

bride and groom fabric backdrop

Rinda kept the evening simple but very classy. She hung paper lanterns from the trees and had tea lights in mason jars as you walked up to the main yard. Rinda also made all the centerpieces (pictured below) from glass vases, candles, and yes … grapefruit (which match her colors perfectly). She and James handpicked classic oldies music that echoed throughout the backyard … setting the perfect mood.

From Rinda, I really wanted to have a relaxed backyard wedding were family and friends could enjoy each others company in a beautiful and natural environment. I’m definitely not a showy or elaborate person (the only jewelry I own is the ring on my finger) so I wanted my wedding to reflect me. I wanted to be able to have a beautiful wedding without having the five tier cake or the matching bridesmaids dresses. I let the ambiance of the music, the lighting, and the backyard do all the work.

peach wedding shoes

My favorite memory from the day was of course getting married to my husband but to be more particular I mostly enjoyed being able to introduce my husband to my friends and family as “my husband”. It was the first time I was able to do it and it felt pretty good. It was great to have all of my closest friends at the most important day of my life.

paper lanterns

Any advice to those planning their wedding right now? Don’t overdo it. And don’t set yourself up for failure. I had so many setbacks in the wedding planning that I thought would be detrimental to my wedding day. Whether it be lack of finances, lack of time, or anything that might fall through, it won’t matter on your wedding day. I just had to let go of some of the ideas I had and moved on to the next best thing i could think of. And I don’t regret a single thing about my wedding. It was perfect.

I guess the only thing left to say is to thank Jill Thomas for doing my photography. She captured the ambiance of my wedding so well because she knew exactly what I wanted and added her own flare of creativity and talent into the mix. Also, I love your website. It helped me out so much in the planning process and gave me some great ideas to make my wedding unique.

Rinda, thanks so much for taking the time to talk about your wedding. It turned out perfect. Congrats to you and James! Thanks also to Jill for sharing her photos – be sure to check out her blog for some of her stunning recent engagement sessions.

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