When I opened the email from Amy & Stuart and saw their incredible photos of Kate and Jesse’s garden wedding, I couldn’t wait to share them with you. And then when Kate told me that she’d found inspiration on Snippet & Ink when she was planning her beautiful wedding, that just made my day. Dear readers – I love seeing your gorgeous weddings! It was really tough for me to narrow down the photos, so this post is a little longer than usual, but I didn’t think you’d mind.

 Says Kate, “It was 103-degrees that day in Ojai, so we served lavender-infused lemonade and blackberry mint lemonade before the ceremony to help guests cool down.”

Kate tells us about the ceremony:  ”Our wedding party was comprised of our parents, step-parents, and siblings, but we also wanted to honor our friends in some way. We asked our dearest friends and siblings to come stand around us in a circle at the start of the ceremony while everyone took a moment to silently make a wish for our future. In looking back on the photos, we’re so happy we made the decision to do that – it was such a beautiful moment! We both would say that one of our favorite moments was hearing each others’ vows for the first time. Jesse brought the house down with his, and I surprised Jesse by reading from the first love letter he wrote to me over 10 years ago.”

At the end of the evening, guests lounged on rugs and pillows on the grass, enjoyed dessert and Chai tea, and watched an old black and white film projected in the garden.

Here, a few more details from Kate about the day:

Why did you choose this location for your wedding?  Jesse proposed to me on my birthday – Christmas Eve – in the garden of my family’s Ojai, California home. Within hours of the proposal, we decided we would be returning to that garden to be married. To us, the property has always been reminiscent of places like Tuscany and Provence. From the roses and lavender to the citrus groves and ancient oak trees, we felt as though we were able to capture what we love about those places without leaving home.

Tell us about your fun save-the-dates.  Jesse and I had so much fun making our save-the-dates. We took some of my old cameras up to Ojai and shot a series of Polaroid pictures that our talented wedding planner, Emily Kelly from Unscene, Inc., laid out and printed for us.

Any other fun DIY details?  Instead of having our florist arrange flowers for the cocktail tables, bar, and cake table, we spent a day potting succulents in pretty containers and putting together bud vases of roses from the garden. My sister and I also went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market where we were able to buy lots of the little touches at very reasonable prices, like trays and cutting boards for the dessert table and umbrellas to shade the guests from the sun.

Is there anything else that helps tell the story of the day?  Our parents all got together and surprised us by making medicine pouches in the Native American tradition for all of our guests – medicine pouches are something I’ve always loved and I was given one as a child. They were set on the tables with a little note explaining their meaning and how each parent contributed to it. It was an incredible surprise and meant so much to both of us.

If only all of us were so lucky to have such a dreamy garden, I don’t imagine there’d be anything but at-home weddings!