I met Amy and Mina after they were referred to me by my previous fantastic clients, Tad and Tammy (big thanks to Tammy and Tad)! Amy and Mina wanted to throw an outdoor wedding in a venue with a vintage vibe somewhere in San Diego and preferably in La Jolla. I immediately thought of the Darlington House. It’s definitely vintage California in style and a true gem.
Amy wanted to create a garden style wedding with vibrant colors, mixing turquoise and pink and yellow. We started working with florists Chris and Kim of Indulge Weddings and quickly decided that all of the turquoise should be in our glassware and accents and that our flowers should be a mixture of yellows and pinks. We also chose a fuchsia pink for the bridesmaids dresses and accented with a turquoise hutch. The hutch first held our luggage tag escort cards (created by the ever fabulous Nic Roc Designs, mixing yellow, pink, and turquoise font on the white tags) and later held our Middle Eastern dessert display (a nod to Mina’s heritage).
Above and below: we mixed fuchsia and turquoise into the attire and the flowers and everyone looked so beautiful!
Below, the ceremony at the Darlington House. We draped the gate and adorned it with flowers to make it a focal point for the ceremony.
Below, some of our vintage travel details. The wedding was considered a destination wedding as only the groom and some of his friends live in San Diego. Both of their families and the bride and the majority of their friends all descended on La Jolla for the wedding week. The bride and groom have also done a significant amount of traveling together and we felt a few vintage travel details were a great accent!
Since we were going “garden” in our motif, I thought we should bring in vibrant patterned linens and of course went to La Tavola to make that happen. We used a striped linen on the head table and a floral linen, in similar colors, on the guest tables. It’s rare to be able to use a linen that is this “busy” but it was perfect for outdoors. Notice below how the two different linens compliment each other perfectly. Then we added a yellow napkins and turquoise glassware and it was perfect. We also mixed the fuchsia and turquoise throughout our paper products in the menus, table numbers, and escort cards.
Continental Catering provided the amazing food and beverages, Classic Party Rentals the chairs, tables, and market lights, and the always impressive True Photography captured the day. As the day faded to night, the market lights added a perfect twinkle. And of course, then there was dancing!
Steal this idea:
If you are throwing an outdoor wedding, don’t be afraid to use lots of color–especially in a vibrant garden atmosphere. Also, not every color has to be used in the florals. Maybe it works to use one color in your glassware and another in your flowers. and maybe your linens mix all the colors or just pick up the tones from the flowers. And don’t be afraid to mix your patterns and textures, as long as they are all the same color scheme. We used different linens for the cocktail hour, for the guest tables, for the head table, and for the cake table in just variations of the same colors and it looked amazing! Happy planning!
Following dinner, J of J Soul Productions, one of my favorite DJ’s, invited Adrienne and Ben to do their first dance on a small dance floor outside the tent and then encouraged the entire crowd to join in the hora afterwards. Adrienne and Ben purposely kept the dance floor small, in case the lawn games were more of a hit, but found that all their guests danced away to DJ J and took over all the grass adjacent! Everyone danced until we had to end at 9pm. It was a perfect event! So fun and SO Adrienne and Ben! My team loved being part of it!
Cynthia Zatkin Events 