This Couple Tied the Knot at a Stunning Church Nestled at the Foot of 13,000 FT Peak!

Lauren Megerdichian
December 17, 2019
Categories: Real Weddings, The Blog, Traditional Elegance
Tags: Southwest Venues

In all our years here at SMP, we can’t believe we’ve never known about St. Malo Chapel in Colorado – standing alone at the foot of a 13,000 ft peak! It seriously looks like something out of a fantasy and completely took our breath away when we first laid eyes on it. This entire day is stunning, Calluna Events made the bride and groom’s dream of a “black tie in the wilderness” wedding come to life. From the romantic ceremony to the tented reception complete with a wreath-adorned donkey, check out the full gallery captured by Alp & Isle to see it all!

From the Bride… Ian grew up in California and Kate in Colorado. We live in San Francisco now, where Ian works in business operations for First Republic Bank and Kate works in software investing. We met in business school at Stanford, so maybe it’s not surprising that in the years we’d been dating and attending weddings together, we developed a list of wedding “best practices”.

Those ideas fueled some of our favorite details of our wedding. For example, we had learned not to let the party go too long if you want it to end with a bang, so we made the decision to cut things off on the earlier side in order to have a (very worth it) sparkler send-off. We also loved a friend’s idea of pin-on buttons to signify how guests knew the bride and groom, so we did our own version, complete with sketch-style images echoed the hand-drawings woven through our invitations, programs, menus etc. Our overall vision for the wedding was “black tie in the wilderness”.

We’re an outdoorsy couple and we loved the juxtaposition of a formal party in a wild setting. It was important to us to have a religious ceremony in a church, and St. Malo’s chapel was just the right fit. Nestled at the foot of a 13,000 ft peak and standing alone, it has a rugged elegance. To complement that, our ideal reception venue was a naturally beautiful place with no buildings visible from any angle, that way we could build out a tented space and it could feel like the whole party was somewhat apart from civilization.

After a multi-month, multi-state search, we’re so glad we found that perfect field. We owe a lot to the talented team of vendors who built out something so substantial in such a sequestered spot. Another eccentric interest that we share is a love of paper and mail. Ian sends over 50 birthday cards a year and collects stamps and Kate has built a software tool for tracking mailing addresses. So, we invested a lot of thought into paper products for the wedding. Blackbird Letterpress helped us create incredible volvelle invitations made of two concentric circular pieces. Guests could spin the inner circle to expose information about different events over the weekend. Further paying homage to snail mail, we opted for stacks of postcards and a mailbox in lieu of a guestbook.