A Fall, Watercolor Inspired Wedding at DeLille Cellars

Samantha Melei
June 10, 2019
Categories: Real Weddings, The Blog

For this bride and groom, seeing is believing…from meeting in optometry school (get it?) they decided to tie the knot two years later at DeLille Cellars Estate in Washington, their new home state, which was only one of the special and unique touches they added to their day. One of my personal favorites, allowing Valley & Co. to surprise them with details throughout, from specialty “eye-inspired” cocktails (served from a custom watercolor bar) to incorporating Canadian details for the groom. O’Malley Photographers captured the rest of these details including not having a traditional cake and the couple spending as much as time as possible with their guests, which was the most important to them! Take a look and take note of every well thought out detail!

From the bride…Kory and I met in optometry school in 2012 in Oregon. Kory is originally from BC, Canada and I am from California. We dated for two years before Kory proposed using a personalized Ben and Jerry’s label put over a pint of our favorite ice cream flavor Phish Food.

Our first wedding planning decision was to hire a wedding planner and we cannot say enough good things about having a wedding planner and our planners, Valley & Company Events, in particular. From the start of our planning process, we knew that the most important thing to us was having an event that our guests would enjoy and that would show them how much we appreciated them celebrating this special day with us. We chose Valley & Co as our planners because they create beautiful, thoughtful events that would be both personalized for us and guest-centric. Nick and Aleah with Valley & Co are truly wonderful people in addition to being extremely knowledgable and professional. Once we hired them they helped guide us through every decision from that point forward.

We wanted to get married in Washington so we could share our new home state with all of our loved ones, and we decided to get married in Woodinville because it’s beautiful and has a lot of fun amenities. We then discussed what was most important to us about the event and what we wanted from each vendor and Nick and Aleah gave us recommendations for vendors they thought would be a good match. For us, having trusted recommendations on vendors was invaluable and we ended up loving every vendor we used. We chose to have our ceremony at Saint Teresa of Calcutta Catholic Church and our reception at Delille Cellars Estate. When we thought of our wedding reception we knew we really wanted it to be a celebration so we prioritized having good food, good drinks, and good music. We chose Lisa Dupar Catering to do food stations for the event and the Chris Friel Orchestra for our band. We LOVED both of them. We chose O’Malley Photographers to document the day and as time has passed since the event we appreciate their ability to not only shoot beautiful, timeless photos of people but also of all the décor and details. We’ve found that those details really make the day come to life when we look back through the memories. Jen Lagers of The Outer Edge did the bridal party’s hair and make-up and was so talented, but also such a joy to be around.

We kept our bridal party very small and chose to rent the bridesmaid’s dresses and groomsmen’s suits to keep things as simple as possible. The most important thing to us was having a reception that reflected us as a couple and maximizing the time that we got to enjoy with our guests celebrating. Some of the touches that helped personalize the day included: having eye-themed names for our signature drinks and cocktail napkins with eyeglasses printed on them, including Canadian maple syrup at one of our food stations and a Canadian beer option at the bar, Portuguese desserts instead of a cake, photos of us both growing up and of our lives together displayed in the cocktail area, and having the watercolor artwork that was created for our invitations featured throughout the reception décor. Kory also got to use his late father’s wedding band as his band and that was very meaningful for us and his family. We opted to forgo a lot of traditions like the bouquet toss, garter toss, and cake cutting to maximize our time with our guests and minimize the amount of time they had to sit at their tables.

We chose to do a first look and get most of our photos done before the ceremony so that we could spend cocktail hour with our guests. We also chose food stations to get people moving around, limited our first dance to only part of a song, and combined all of the parent-child dances into a single song. After cocktail hour we welcomed everyone to the reception and toasted our guests before dinner. We also chose to have a welcome event the night before the wedding and look back on that as one of the best decisions we made. It allowed us to talk to everyone before the wedding and took a lot of pressure off of us the day of the wedding. The one thing that people told us over and over was that the day would go so fast, and while it did, we feel like we were able to maximize our time together and with our loved ones by keeping in mind what was important to us as we made decisions through the planning process.

Our advice to other couples: Decide on the things that are most important to you about your experience and your guests’ experience and use those things to guide your decisions. It is important to keep your mom, mother-in-law, bridal party, etc happy throughout the planning process, but remember that it’s your wedding and make sure you prioritize your desires

From Valley & Co…. Katie and Kory were incredibly sweet and wanted to throw an unforgettable experience for their guests (almost all from out of town), full of unique touches peppered throughout during their Labor Day weekend soiree. They turned to us to plan and design a visual surprise for them – focusing on watercolor elements we carefully peppered throughout (Momental Designs created the motif when we learned Kory wasn’t into having an abundance of flowers but enjoys greenery – perfect for the vineyard setting at DeLille Cellars Estate). They met at optometry school, so we surprised them with a few sweet nods on the day – namely the spectacle cocktail napkins and the bar menu with funny eye-themed cocktail drinks. And Kory even humored us, letting us add deluxe maple syrup from his home country of Canada to the fried chicken and waffle station! These two were just so lovely and threw such a feast for the senses for guests – starting with the champagne greeting (a must!).