This week’s wedding is an elegant orange and red wedding in Santa Barbara. I am in love with the gorgeous Spanish architecture of the venue and the simple and chic details. And short hair brides take note: a great pair of statement earrings is all you need for your wedding look. The bride Rubi is totally rocking her pixie cut with some fabulous earrings!
The gorgeous bride Rubi shares:
Marc and I live in NYC, where I work in policy/engineering and Marc is doing his medical residency. I was nervous about planning a wedding in Santa Barbara since I am not familiar with the area (although Marc is from the area), but his family and our wedding planners True Blue Events did a great job. The ladies at True Blue understood that the most important thing to us was to have an elegant, chic, but casual wedding. It was important to us to pick beautiful venues that didn’t need much enhancement since we always felt that natural beauty goes a long way to save money and stress. Mt Carmel, a small intimate church Spanish/Mission style church in Santa Barbara and the elegant La Cumbre Country Club were perfect spots. We also wanted to keep it a very family and friends-oriented wedding, so we had family and friends be part of the ceremony in terms of singing and officiating, kept our wedding party small, speeches minimal, and had small and low red and orange centerpieces surrounded by plenty of candlelight so that people could talk easily to each other.
The day of our wedding was great. The weather was beautiful and the day went very smoothly thanks to True Blue. I did my own makeup and since I’m fairly petite short-haired bride I opted out of a veil and wore a sheath Provonias dress purchased at a sample sale in NYC with only earrings and a bracelet given to me by Marc’s mother. Marc bought his tux at Men’s Warehouse. Marc’s sister took me and my MOH in a decked out bridal car decorated by his family which was a nice surprise. The best memories of the day was truly seeing everyone we love gathered in one spot and meeting new and old friends from allover the world. There was a lot of fun dancing with multiple conga lines, and we also had a photobooth which was the surprise hit of the night.
My favorite details were the flowers that Alpha Floral provided which were red and orange, and verynatural-looking. The programs, provided by Lilly and Louise, were small, beautiful tri-fold cards on recycled paper, and the placecards were put into photo frames that people could use for the photobooth (doubled as favors). We grouped people together in tables based on how they all knew each other and so did not have table numbers. At the end of the wedding, we had a shuttle bus that took people (or whoever was still standing!) to the afterparty.
For the details, I recommend deciding with your significant other what details ARE important enough to stress about. For us, we really cared about the stationary being somewhat eco-friendly which is why I loved Lilly and Louise’s designs on recycled paper, and I really cared about sticking to an amber + natural theme, which meant beautiful dark orange and red circus roses,lillies, and daisies and lots of red and white votive candlelight. Finally, I think having a good wedding planner (if you choose to do a wedding outside of the area where you currently reside) is key– and you should take a look at their portfolio to make sure they can also share your vision.
Danielle Capito was a joy to work with because of her talent and friendliness. I’d recommend going with a photographer whose style you really enjoy, and I’d also recommend focusing your energy on big ticket items rather than getting crazy about all the little details- in the end, it’s the venue, food, music, and people that most folks remember.
