As a Bride-to-be with a military fiancé myself, this wedding from Heidi-O-Photo hit my heart in just the right spot. With their venue chosen and deposit made, these two lovebirds got the news that the Groom would be deploying a mere two weeks before their set date, but they didn’t let that stop them. They whipped up this absolutely gorgeous day in just five months—it’s heartwarming, to say the least.
From Heidi-O-Photo…Sarah & Bud recently moved from the East Coast to San Diego and chose the Darlington House for their wedding. All their friends and family traveled to California for the wedding.
Sarah chose the wedding colors to go well with the Darlington House and it’s decor.
From the beautiful Bride…We came very close to having an entirely different wedding. So close in fact that we had made a deposit at a vineyard in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and started planning our wedding in our hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. That is, until Bud checked into his duty station at Camp Pendleton and was informed that he would be deployed to Afghanistan two weeks before our scheduled wedding. After weighing all our options, we decided it was most important to us that we were married before he deployed and that we would be able to share that day with our friends and families. That left us a five month window to plan an event in a place we had only lived for a matter of weeks.
The Darlington House was the only venue we toured in San Diego. We were immediately attracted to the history and intimate feel, and could not help but feel at home in a place that still felt very foreign. As essentially all of our guests were coming in from out of town, we wanted a space that would allow us to visit with them personally and that would showcase the unique style of Southern California. We also decided to include a few reminders of home, like the collection of family wedding photos to honor everywhere we’ve come from, and the selection of pies it could not be a real Southern party without. We relied very heavily on recommendations from our vendors to build a wonderfully experienced team that made our wedding feel both like us and iconically Southern Californian.
Many of our friends and family took our wedding as an opportunity to vacation in San Diego for the week, but due to their military obligations, Bud’s friends could not and the last of his friends did not arrive until 1 AM the morning of the wedding. Finally having everyone there was this immense feeling of relief and set an amazing tone of celebration and reunion for the event the next day. It was very important to Bud that we incorporate some military traditions into our wedding, such as the sword arch and cutting of the cake with his mameluke, the Marine Corps officers’ sword. Like the traditional vows we made, said by our parents and grandparents before us, these traditions have been a special connection to the larger Marine Corps family we have both decided to join, through good times and bad.
Photography: heidi-o-photo | Florist: Whole Foods Market Preston | Bakery: Sugar And Scribe | Invitations: Made In Brockton Village | Bride's Shoes: Banana Republic | Catering: The Abbey | Makeup & Hair: Tiffany Monday | DJ: DJ Daniel Peterson | Officiant: Reverend Mark Bray | Venue: The Darlington House | Bride's Dress: Saja | Save-the-dates: Starboard Press