A Vintage California Wedding: Ashley + Ian

Today’s sweet wedding was sent over by the super creative Jesi Haack. I love that she really helps her couple’s personalities come through in each wedding she designs. Each wedding is so unique + personal! For Ashley + Ian’s wedding, vintage keys played an important role. In lieu of a ring, Ian had a key tattooed on his ring finger. Ian gave Ashley a key necklace on the day they would become husband and wife. Keys led wedding guests to find the seats where they would celebrate Ashley and Ian’s love. Keys were not the only source of inspiration for this wedding, though. Ashley’s love of everything vintage inspired Jesi and her team to create a romantic table of gray with white lace and milk glass vases, a wall of clocks, a wall of books, and a pretty backdrop of gloves and hankies. Congrats to Ashley + Ian!

From Ashley, “There was one thing we knew for sure when planning our wedding: we wanted it to be unique. We had tons of different ideas when we first met with our planner, Jesi, and by the end of our meeting we decided instead of isolating one of the ideas we should incorporate all of them. From there, our “Things” inspired wedding took off. We also wanted our wedding to be personal, not just for us, but for our guests as well. Our friend played all the music for the ceremony, one of Ian’s friends officiated the ceremony, we wrote our own vows, and our first dance was to a folk song by the lead singer of one of Ian’s favorite bands, Millencolin (“Nobody Without You” by Nikola Sarcevic). Ian is obsessed with the 1950’s, so it had to have a vintage feel.”

What song did you walk down the aisle to? Our friend put together amazing acoustic versions of the songs we chose for the ceremony. Listening to this music was one of my favorite parts of the day. My grandparents and our parents walked down to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s melody of “What a Wonderful World/Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which I chose especially for my grandma. The girls and kiddos walked down to Coldplay’s “Green Eyes” and I walked with my dad to Ben Harper’s “Beloved One.” When Ian and I exited the aisle together, our friend played Nikola Sarcevic’s “You Make My World Go Around.”

Ashley + Ian had “Mad Libs” style RSVP cards and they used those to create a photobooth backdrop.

My great-grandmother left my mom a ton of cool gloves and hankies, so we used those as one of our backdrops. I am a teacher and love to read, so there had to be books involved! I have always loved my aunt’s chocolate chip cookies and my best friend’s mom’s snickerdoodles, so they had a place amongst our dessert table. Since Ian loves pies, mini-berry pies were one of the many mini-desserts from Sweet and Saucy Shop As for dinner, instead of going with the food that was offered to our guests, Ian’s wedding meal was an Elvis sandwich (peanut butter, honey, bananas, and BACON!). Overall, we were both very pleased with the way our personalities came through.

Most memorable moment of your wedding day? Of course seeing my husband for the first time and saying our vows was memorable, but honestly what is most memorable is how much fun BOTH of us had. Contrary to what we had been warned about, we weren’t stressed, we were able to chat with everyone, we enjoyed our meals, and we danced ALL night. It was truly a blast.

Any advice for those planning now? First of all, don’t expect your fiance to be involved in every little detail of the planning. Guys really don’t care what kind of flowers are going to line the aisle or what type of paper your invitations are printed on. In addition, some of the best decisions we made for the day-of was doing a first look and greeting our guests as they entered the reception. The first look was great because then we were able to get our pictures taken and out of the way so we actually got to partake a little bit in our cocktail hour. Our cocktail hour was outside and the reception was inside, so as our guests grabbed their seat assignments, my husband and I took a second to say hi and thank everyone individually. Being able to see everyone was special, but this was also great because then we didn’t feel obligated or pressured to make the rounds when we really wanted to be eating. One last thing… bring an extra dress if you want to boogy. Those things get H-O-T! I would not have enjoyed my night nearly as much if I hadn’t thrown a lighter, shorter dress in my bag at the last minute.

vendors:

photography: Focus Photography // venue name: UCI University Club // event design: Jesi Haack Design // videography: Weddings by SML // paper goods: Posh Paperie // music: So-Cal DJ // floral design: Bunch Studio // dessert display: Sweet and Saucy Shop