Plum, dusty blue, olive, mustard. On paper it’s a palette that shouldn’t hold together, and at Captain Whidbey it never once slips. The colors start on the invitation suite, hang as chiffon between the madrona trees, run down a long farm table where the fruit sits right on the wood, and end under a three-tier cake tucked into the curve of a giant painted moon.
This is a styled editorial on Whidbey Island, photographed by Lauren New Photography, planned and designed by Aspen & Pine Event Co. at Captain Whidbey, with florals by Butterflys Rest. Bianca and Megan are a real couple, and the day was built around a question Lauren kept coming back to: what if a wedding wasn’t designed to be watched? Her answer shows up in the ceremony, where the chairs curve into a half-moon around the brides, and in four words painted on a welcome sign by the deck: You’re in the right place.
The Paper Goods
The invitation suite is where the whimsy announces itself: a sun with a face anchoring a border of gold vines and purple pansies, cloud-shaped escort cards with wooden-stick sunrays, and an RSVP on a crescent moon with two tiny figures sitting on its curve. What keeps it from tipping into a celestial theme is that nothing repeats. Each piece gets its own sky, so the suite reads as a set of illustrations rather than one motif stamped across everything. The moons and stars, Lauren says, “weren’t meant to create a celestial theme. Instead, they became reminders of evenings spent outdoors, stories shared beneath the stars, and the magic of gathering with people you love.”
A Ceremony In the Round
Aspen & Pine set the bamboo chairs in a half-moon, which does two things at once: every guest can see the brides, and every guest can see each other. “There was no front row or back row, no audience and no stage,” says Lauren of the seating. “Every guest became part of the moment itself, witnessing not only the couple, but one another.” The drapes do the rest. A venue with madronas like these does not need an arch built in front of them, so the team hung two colors of chiffon between the trunks and let the trees be the structure. The whole forest ends up in the ceremony photos instead of behind an installation.
Butterflys Rest skipped the vessels at the ceremony and set the arrangements straight onto the grass: crimson scabiosa, purple clematis, dark heuchera leaves, and blackberries still on the cane. “We looked to the way plants naturally coexist,” Lauren says of the brief. “Nothing competed for attention. Instead, every stem retained its own movement and character, creating the feeling of discovering an overgrown garden that had always belonged there.” Unripe blackberries read as something found on the walk in rather than something that arrived in a bucket that morning.
The Brides
Two brides, two completely different silhouettes, and one deliberate thread between them. “Bianca and Megan were intentionally styled to complement rather than mirror one another,” Lauren says. “Shared pearl details subtly connected their looks while allowing each bride’s personality to remain unmistakably her own.” The looks came through The Law Bridal and White Door Bridal, and the jewelry – the gold hoops with pearl drops and the layered gold chain – is from Astor & Orion.
The bouquet is the ceremony florals in handheld form: scabiosa, iris, smoky plumes for air, and a trailing vine that runs well past the hand. A cascade this dark holds its outline against ivory satin where a pastel one would blur into the dress.
The other bride went with separates: a sheer organza barong with balloon sleeves and a high buttoned collar, worn over white lace wide-leg trousers. It’s as formal as a gown and moves like something you could dance in all night. With her hair pulled sleek and back and a single pearl drop at each ear, it’s the most modern look on the lawn.
Gold hoops on both brides, gold rings on both hands. Lauren’s line about harmony coming “not from sameness, but from celebrating individuality within a shared whole” is the dressing rule for any couple who do not want to match: share one element, a metal, a pearl, a hem color, and let everything else be yours.
Lauren describes Captain Whidbey as a place where memories were being made long before weddings arrived: suspended tree nets to climb into, a bridge over the lagoon, wooded trails that pull guests off the lawn. “Rather than transforming the venue, we let it shape the shoot,” she says. The teal trim on the old lodge picks up the dusty blue of the ceremony chiffon, which is the kind of match you only get by designing to a building instead of around it.
Under the hem of the gown, light blue slingback flats with a small bow, the one unexpected color on either bride and the one piece we would wear the next weekend again.
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One Long Table Over the Lagoon
Four farm tables pushed into one, running the length of the deck, with rentals from Deo & Duke Event Rentals. The single communal table is what carries the ceremony’s no-front-row idea through dinner. “It felt less like a formal reception and more like the tables many of us remember most,” Lauren says, “holiday dinners, family celebrations, meals that stretch long into the evening because no one is ready to leave.”
The banner, from Olive Juice Design, hangs from a copper rack at the end of the table: felt letters in olive green, dusty pink fringe, pale blue stars. It was made to greet guests as they arrived, and it turned into the brief for everything else. The words mattered, Lauren says, “not because they described a location, but because they described how we hoped people would feel.”
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Here is where taste shows up: the fruit. Apples, pears, two colors of grapes, and plums set directly on the wood between the arrangements rather than piled in a bowl. Lauren compares the effect to a Dutch still life, “not because everything had been meticulously arranged, but because it celebrated abundance.” Butterflys Rest ran ornamental grasses, dahlias, coneflower, and smoke bush down the center with the same no-hierarchy logic as the ceremony, and the tapers, olive, blush, and plum, pull their colors straight from the stationery.
By dusk the tapers are lit and the table starts to drip. “Candles slowly dripped onto brass holders. Fruit rested naturally between platters. Linen shifted in the breeze,” Lauren says. “It no longer felt like a tablescape waiting to be photographed. It felt like a celebration already unfolding.”
Some of what reads as cut arrangement is still rooted. Many of the plants stayed in their own pots, tucked into the centerpiece, and Lauren has a plan for them: “We loved imagining those plants leaving with guests at the end of the evening. Instead of the celebration ending when the last candle burned down, pieces of it could continue growing on kitchen windowsills, front porches, and backyard gardens, taking root somewhere new.” A centerpiece guests take home alive is the easiest idea on this table to make your own, and the one most likely to still be growing a year later.
The Cake on the Moon
The moon is from Off Black Arts, a tall white crescent with a painted face, blue eyes and pink lips, and the three tiers from Crescent Moon Cakes sit in its curve on crushed olive velvet. With a prop this big, the cake stays plain white and the velvet stays one color, so the moon gets to be the character and the cake gets to be the cake.
Vintage piping, scrolls and ruffles and tiny rosettes, with fresh botanicals pressed into it: spiky purple chrysanthemums, green grapes, a single dark-centered sunflower, a thistle on top. The grapes on the cake are the grapes from the table, carried over.
Plum chiffon in the madronas, fruit straight on the wood, a cake sitting in the curve of a moon. None of it is hard to borrow, and all of it comes back to the banner at the end of the table, which said it before anyone sat down: you’re in the right place.
Wedding Vendors
Photography: Lauren New Photography // Venue: Captain Whidbey // Event Design: Aspen & Pine Event Co. // Wedding Planner: Aspen & Pine Event Co. // Florals: Butterflys Rest // Wedding Dress: The Law Bridal // Wedding Suit: The Law Bridal // Hair Stylist: The Barrier Range // Makeup Artist: Celeste Hexe // Videography: Elita Coralee // Handmade Details: banner: // Cake: Crescent Moon Cakes // Tabletop Rentals: Deo & Duke Event Rentals // Moon Prop: Off Black Arts // Jewelry: astor & orion
