A pretty rustic + touches of DIY wedding held at Nestldown in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. The bride spent most of her money on the location and made most everything else for decor and details.
From the bride:
When Mark and I started planning the wedding, we knew we wanted it to be in Northern California and outdoors. When we found Nestldown, the minute I saw the pictures, I knew that was it. I’m not a gushy romantic, and I was almost in tears just looking at it.
We went there and one other place with my parents in May of 2010, but knew Nestldown was our top choice and convinced them it was worth the expense. Because of the cost of Nestldown, I was going to have to keep costs low on pretty much EVERYTHING else and do a lot of things on my own, which I was cool with.
For catering, we had a list of about 10 companies we could choose from. Of them, at least half were so far out of our budget, we didn’t even contact them!. We ended up trying Toast and one other, and decided on Toast-couldn’t have been happier! They were super helpful & accommodating; Steve was wonderful, and the cost was reasonable. We were thrilled with the food we chose, and got tons of compliments from everyone :)
I had an exact picture of what I wanted my dress to look like and the only one I ever tried on was the one that I bought. I had the bow and buttons added, the dress shortened and some extra structure put into the bodice.
OK so I guess those are all just facts, when you need some emotion! So, I had this vision of my wedding being this wonderland in the redwoods, with a lot of our own unique, personal touches. I wanted it to be rustic yet elegant, fun but classy (haha, yea, who doesn’t want that??) I was INSANELY picky about my decor etc-I despise anything that is “ready-made” for weddings, it reminds me of tacky prom stuff. So, I decided early on that I was going to make all of those things myself. It took a lot of time, but was totally worth it. I’m really lucky in that Nestldown is already rustic/elegant/fun/classy all at the same time, so I just had to kind of take that and run with it.
Our wedding was friend-centric, as opposed to having tons of family, which we loved :) but at the same time, we wanted to make sure that everyone had fun and was comfortable, which I think went pretty well. Music was also super-important to us, so Mark & I spent HOURS picking out every single song, and requesting that the DJ play nothing but our playlist-which he did very well :)
We were so, so, so, so happy with how our wedding turned out. I had this vision for the whole thing, and have a hard time relinquishing control, but realized early that day that I had to just let go! My bridesmaids, catering team & Nestldown staff did an amaaaaazing job at putting everything together perfectly. I walked into the barn and was overwhelmed at how everything was just how I imagined it would be. The whole day was utter perfection, I just wish it was longer! I don’t miss the planning per say, but I look back on the experience very fondly.
