How They Met

Brandon and I are high school sweethearts, we met through mutual friends during high school and began dating over 10 years ago.

The Proposal

Brandon proposed on Christmas morning in our apartment. After we opened the gifts we got for each other, he surprised me by proposing!

Wedding Venue

I found Memory Garden on a wedding-venue website and thought it was really cute and had a ton of potential, but the photos of other weddings I found didn’t really show a lot of the venue, so I wasn’t sure. I decided we should just go down to Monterey and check out the property in person. As soon as we got there, I fell in love with it and knew it was the one! I love its Spanish style architecture and garden vibes.

Wedding mood

The overall wedding aesthetic was bright, colorful, Spanish, and boho garden.

Color palette

I love lots of colors and flowers, so I pulled inspiration and our color palette from things I love. Our colors were dark and light blue, oranges, yellows, pinks, peach, and gold.

Custom jacket

My best friend surprised me at my bridal shower and told me she was hiring a local calligrapher, The Bright Line Studio, to do custom calligraphy on a denim jacket for me. I was so excited! I chose white denim as a fun alternative to a classic denim jacket—it felt more "bridal." And we had "Mrs. Marshall" lettered on the back. I wore the jacket for our grand entrance and most of the reception.

The Invitation

After looking at almost every single invitation online, I kept coming back to the blue, letterpress one ("Handmade Ornate Frame" by Katharine Watson) that really matched the aesthetic of our venue and was so unique!

Mix-and-match stationery

Rather than choosing an entire invitation suite that was all the same style, I chose different Details ("Pastoral" by Up Up Creative) and RSVP ("Bad Dancing" by Amy Payne) cards that complemented the invitation and our overall wedding colors. The blue, blush pink, and golden brown all tied in with our wedding colors and overall feel. I love the look of mix-and-matching cards together, rather than having the same design. I also changed the fonts on some of the cards so they looked more cohesive.

The ceremony

Our ceremony took place in a garden and I got to include some of my own potted plants from my garden in our wedding design which was so fun and sentimental. I love cacti and plants, so leading up to the wedding we got different cool plants from the nursery to incorporate into the ceremony space as well as the reception table arrangements.

Wedding advice

Hire a wedding planner. This is definitely the number one thing I always suggest to my couples, you will never regret hiring one! Another tip I would suggest is choose things you love. Throughout the entire planning process, I always chose things that I loved and felt very “us” rather than just choosing things that I thought every wedding should have.