A Saltburn-Inspired Wedding Weekend in Palm Springs: More Red, More Chrome

Palm Springs in October is green and blue: the lawn, the pond, the palms, a clear sky over the mountains. Amanda and Nate set a flat scarlet panel down in the middle of it and got married in front of that. Against all that green and blue, everything else arranges itself around the red.

The two of them work in brand marketing and product management at adidas, and they planned this the way people who build things for a living tend to: from mood boards pulled out of interior design and cinematography, not other weddings. Planner COJ Events and design studio Luna Design Studios worked the concept up with them over what Amanda calls “wonderful and collaborative ideation sessions,” Mirabella Estate supplied the lawn, the pond, and the palms, and Adam Griffin shot a good deal of it on film, which is the right call for a palette this saturated.

More red, more silver chrome. That was the instruction Amanda and Nate kept coming back to, and it ended up answering every design question they had. The reference was the saturated red party scene in Saltburn, and what they wanted from it was “a visual descent: starting the day with a polished, bold all red look that slowly dissolved into a glorious, colorful mess as the celebration took over.” The team at COJ Events traces the palette back further than the film, to “the colorful art-filled home they share in Portland.”

A Weekend in Palm Springs

The invitation suite lays out the whole weekend: a scarlet card with the names blind-embossed into it, an orange RSVP card, a lavender schedule of events, and a holographic card for the pool party. That last card is the tell. The weekend wedding is the format we are watching hardest right now, and this is the version that makes the case for it: get everyone to the desert, have the wedding, then hand them a Saturday with nothing on it but a pool.

The fashion ran the length of the weekend too, “a weekend-long love letter to the people closest to us,” as Amanda puts it. Her rehearsal dinner look was a custom piece by her best friend Lyndsay, “a nod to Palm Springs retro-glamour complete with a feathered cape and antique button closures.” For getting ready, she wore her mother’s wedding dress, repurposed into sheer lace track pants, with a blue Oxford shirt with the wedding date hand-stitched in red. Her words: “the first appearance of our ‘red thread’ motif.”

Red at the End of the Aisle

Red is a color almost nobody commits to at a wedding, and this is how you commit to it. One saturated shape at the end of a grass aisle, then the same red repeated down the rows in gerbera daisies, roses, and gladioli spikes until the eye stops arguing with it. The chairs are cane-back with white cushions, the aisle is lawn, and the pond sits right behind the seating, so the guests on the far side got water and mountains behind the red.

Up close the red is several reds. Orange gerberas with dark centers, scarlet gladioli, roses running toward burgundy, crimson dianthus tucked low, and then the orchids, spotted-throat moth orchids in pink and purple threaded through the middle of it all. Luna Design Studios built the columns either side of the panel out of the same mix plus hot-pink monstera leaves and dark coral-like branches, so the flat red wall ends up as the calm thing in the frame.

And their recessional had a third member: their dog Piper!

Tucked into the stem wrap of Amanda’s bouquet, under the orange roses and the trailing burgundy amaranthus, is a small oval locket with a rhinestone border. Inside it is a photograph of her late grandfather, an heirloom the women in her family have carried down the aisle for generations.

The Three-Act Gown

Amanda went to Kim Kassas with a request for a gown that could change over the course of a night. What came back is what she calls a “three-act” gown: two designs fused, the Cersei base, a strapless ruched bodice over a sheer skirt of botanical lace embroidery with a cathedral train, topped with a choker bolero, the pearl-and-lace high collar and those long billowing sheer sleeves. “It was designed in layers, which I peeled away hour by hour.” Act one is every layer on, plus white lace gloves with pearl cuffs and a sculptural cocktail ring, with hair in loose waves and makeup both by Chelsea Nicole.

Beyond their siblings, Amanda and Nate skipped the formal wedding party. Everyone staying at the estate was named a “Vibe Curator” instead and asked to act as a “party enhancer,” and the brief was dopamine dressing. What showed up: a strapless emerald sequin gown with green feather trim, a hot-pink fringed halter, a yellow asymmetric column, a light blue off-the-shoulder top over wide-leg trousers, and a blush blazer over a zebra-print shirt held at the collar by a bolo tie whose slide is a roaring tiger head with green crystal eyes. “Our guests overdelivered on the brief,” Amanda says. “Seeing all of our guests fully embrace the Palm Springs aesthetic with such creative twists made us so happy.”

Dopamine Guest Fashion

Here are a few dresses we love to get this vibe.

Hutch Scoop-Neck Sequin Midi DressSHOP NOW

Helsi Leslie Strapless Sequin Midi DressSHOP NOW

Mac Duggal Pink Tulle High Ruffled Hem Hi-Low GownSHOP NOW

Act two came after the ceremony. The bolero came off, a wide sheer organza wrap went on over the arms like a stole, and Amanda added white cat-eye sunglasses, a lace choker with a single pearl drop, and a pearl-fringed sash at the waist. The corset back, laced in white satin, showed for the first time all day. Same gown, entirely different afternoon.

The Reception

The long tables alternate between bare wood and red satin, set by Bright Event Rentals with woven bronze chargers, red napkins with a tassel at the tip, ribbed glassware, single red anthuriums in tall bud vases, and the chrome: mushroom-cap table lamps, mirrored domes throwing starbursts, taper holders, silver spheres. Each place holds a transparent red acrylic menu card with the guest’s name printed at the top and the Whoa Nelly menu beneath it, plated salad through grazing station, carving station, sides, and sweets. Overhead the pergola is wrapped in red, red drum pendants trail long fringe at different heights, and sheer white fabric billows off one end of it.

Act three, on the floor: the gown down to its strapless base, the organza wrap catching mid-spin, one lace glove still on, a hairpiece in her outstretched hand. Downbeat‘s A List played the reception, and months later the guests are still talking about it. Amanda reports that “Nate’s uncle has officially pledged his hypothetical lottery winnings to keeping them on permanent retainer for all future family functions.” For the after-party she traded the Kim Kassas layers for “a sparkly silhouette and a cowboy hat.”

Then came a long-standing friend-group tradition called “Tarps Off.” As the night wound down, the men’s dress shirts came off and went overhead, “a rhythmic, cotton-flailing salute to our matrimony,” in Amanda’s words. Both fathers joined the shirtless mosh pit. That’s the image the night ended on.

Advice from Amanda and Nate

Get married on a Friday. If you want a wedding weekend instead of a wedding day, that one move does most of the work, and it’s the piece of this weekend we’d most like to see catch on.

Asked if there was anything else to add, they needed two words: “Embrace color!” Congratulations, Amanda and Nate! All the best from GWS.