It doesn’t get sweeter than this handcrafted summer wedding from Casto Photography & Cinema. This couple infused so much of their love story and journey into their day, relying on friends and family to help come together to create their dream wedding. I love the soft pastel color palette, which played perfectly into their venue and it’s blooming hydrangeas.
Our wedding was a Southern Spring garden-inspired wedding filled with pastel details, fresh flowers, and mixed metals. The ceremony was held in the Botanical Garden Day Chapel in Athens, GA, and we had our reception at a beautiful antebellum home just down the road from the chapel. We chose to have our ceremony in a small, wooden chapel in the woods because we originally met in the cloud forest of Costa Rica and greatly enjoy the outdoors and spending time together in nature. So the chapel reminded us of the place where we first met and just felt “right” and perfectly serene to both of us.
I wore my great grandmother’s diamond ring on my right hand (she is 96 and was unable to attend the wedding). My bouquet was wrapped with lace from my maternal grandmother’s wedding gown and decorated with my “something blue”: a blue gemstone my paternal grandfather collected in the 1970’s. We also had a “generations of love” table with photos of our parents’ and grandparents’ weddings to remind us of the love that came before us.
We really wanted the wedding to be representative of our relationship and our shared “culture”, so to speak, so we infused the day with many elements from both of our personalities. Our wedding incorporated Southern, Persian, and Costa Rican elements! It was also very important for us to establish early on in planning that the wedding was not just about the bride (as weddings are sometimes perceived), and that it was truly a celebration of love and the marriage of two people and joining of two families. To this end, we tried to involve our families heavily in the day: our fathers handmade our sweetheart table together, our mothers baked desserts, and our attendants were all siblings and their significant others. We think this really helped everybody get to know each other beforehand and highlighted that the celebration was very much about us beginning our lives together, but was also recognizing our families’ roles in our lives.
The ceremony was fun and personal, and simply beautiful. Plus we both over-watered the bamboo during the ceremony and had to suppress giggles, which was a little funny.
The guest book was a cookbook compiled from recipes that guests submitted with their RSVPs. We love that we can now use our guest book regularly and remember all of our loved ones and their well wishes from that day. Cameron home-brewed 15 gallons of beer for the wedding. He made a coffee stout using the coffee from the farm where we first met in Costa Rica. He also brewed an IPA and a farmhouse ale. Cameron is half Persian, so we set up a traditional Persian wedding spread, a “Sofreh Aghd”, which included various symbolic decorations that represent different elements of a happy life and marriage. Rebekah made a traditional Persian wedding dish, “Jeweled Rice”, that was served as one of the dishes at the wedding.
Our fathers handmade our farmhouse sweetheart table together over the months leading up to the wedding. It was made of alder wood sourced from Georgia. We had our first meal as a married couple at the table and we brought it with us to California and plan to keep it in the family for generations to come. Cameron and I used the scrap wood from the table project to surprise our fathers with hand-made watch boxes that were engraved and given to them on the wedding day.
Our favors were coffee cups with our wedding date written on the handle and burlap bags filled with Costa Rican coffee from the farm where we met. Rebekah actually traveled to Costa Rica for a University trip several months before the wedding and was able to bring back many pounds of fresh-roasted coffee for the favors and beer-brewing.
We decided to have a receiving line that doubled as a cake-serving line! Cameron and I dressed in our matching aprons and handed out cake slices to our guests as we greeted them and thanked them for coming. This was one of our favorite parts of the evening, because 1) we got to share amazingly delicious cake with people we love, and 2) we got to personally thank each and every one of our guests for celebrating with us.
We had a blast during our first dance! And all of the perfect bluegrass music of the evening. As we have recently moved across the country, we LOVE having the memories of the bluegrass band at our southern wedding. For the final song of the night, the band came out onto the dance floor and played “Wagon Wheel” acoustically under the stars. It was almost magical, and everyone was singing along and dancing. This was one of the coolest experiences of our lives.”
Photography & Film | Casto Photography & Cinema | Ceremony | UGA Botanical Gardens Day Chapel | Reception | Taylor Grady House | Coordination | Georgia Grace Weddings | Florals | Moonflower Farm | Catering | Mama’s Boy | Rentals | Barrons Rentals | Invitations | Wedding Paper Divas | Entertainment | Bluebilly Grit | Dress | Monique Lhuillier from Bridals by Lori | Sash | Recherche Veils | Headpiece | Atlanta Bride Couture | Hair | Model Citizen Salon
