If you love color, you will love this beautiful California wedding from Christine Glebov Photography. With a vibrant color palette of pinks, purples, yellows, and peach, this summer wedding was filled with lush florals that brought the color scheme to life.
We both envisioned an elegant, classic, romantic wedding without being so stuffy that our guests wouldn’t have fun. We both love peonies, so we tried to base our colors around having seasonal peonies included. As such, the colors were bright oranges and pinks with a background of green. The table cloths were plain white and the napkins were celadon green in order to accentuate the color of the flowers and the surrounding greenery.
We were looking for a classic, elegant and romantic look for their attire, while being comfortable from start to finish. I spent countless hours researching and visiting local bridal boutiques, and ended up at I Do! Bridal Boutique owned by Tracy Lewis on College Avenue in Oakland, California. Tracy immediately took my vision of an elegant, strapless A-line gown and found three amazing dresses for her to try on in-store. I ended up going with the Allure style which had a bit of sparkle on the satin waste band and silver thread for floral detail on the skirt. Tracy made sure I felt 1000% comfortable in her gown choice, was patient, and created the ideal wedding dress shopping experience, with champagne as well!
We immediately knew we needed a wedding planner to help us create our ideal wedding within our budget, and to help us navigate vendors and deadlines during our first year of law school. Diana Dorsey, owner of Simply Elegant Weddings was an absolute savior. She was endlessly understanding of our time pressures and busy schedule and helped us begin the planning process right away by dividing up the process into stages with “soft” deadlines and hard deadlines. She made so many recommendations for chairs, uplighting, color schemes, and made sure each part was cohesive and within budget.
About a year before we got engaged, Isabel saw some photos of an event at the Brazilian Room and was immediately captivated by the exposed beams, lush greenery, flagstone, and dramatic tree line backdrop. It was incredibly stunning, and after our engagement, we looked at several other venues online and they were either well outside of our price range, or too far away distance-wise. Having a strong affinity towards the national park lodge-style architecture of the Brazilian Room and the outdoors in general we settled on the Brazilian room without hesitation.
We thought choosing our wedding day to be on the summer solstice was incredibly romantic, and allowed us would savor and highlight the lingering light in the sky. We wanted our flowers to also symbolize the bright colors of summer, without being overwhelming or distracting. Shannon did an incredible job capturing our vision and was flexible as we changed the number of centerpieces and aisle markers. We repurposed the aisle markers after the ceremony to be cocktail table arrangements, and our alter pieces to be decorations on either side of our sweetheart table inside which was a genius way to reuse the arrangements, save money, and add to the beauty of the reception.
We searched high and low for an inexpensive wedding favor that still said something about us as a couple. We both love birds and bird watching, and we thought it was appropriate to have a “lovebird” them that said something about us as a couple. When Zach found antiqued bird bottle openers, we knew we had found our wedding favors.
Isabel follows a strict gluten-free diet, so we were extremely particular with our cake selection. Frank at Hopkin’s Street bakery surpassed our expectations with a delicious gluten free polonaise cake. It is normally made as a flat sheet cake because of the delicate layers of almond and hazelnut meringue between French chocolate ganache with buttercream, but our vision really included a three tiered circular cake. Of course, his long-time bakers modified the structure of the cake without compromising the taste and texture.
Photography | Christine Glebov Photography | Venue | Brazilian Room | Planning | Simply Elegant Weddings & Events | Florals | Rare Sparrow Floral Design | Stationery | Shutterfly | Accommodations | Berkeley City Club | Cake | Hopkin’s Street Bakery | Catering | Miraglia | DJ | DJ Jeremy Productions | Hair | Taylor Cody Hair Salon | Makeup | Wow! Pretty Professional Hair & Makeup | Chair Rentals | The Chiavari Guys, LLC | Decorative Lighting | Quantum Party Productions | Dance Lessons | Conor McClure | Drinks | Condor’s Hope Vineyard | Dress | Allure Bridals from I Do! Bridal Boutique | Bridesmaid Dresses | Weddington Way | Groom’s Attire | J.Hilburn | Wedding Ring | Oaks Jewelry | Submitted via Matchology
