When we tell you our jaw dropped when we saw this ceremony at the bride’s family vacation home… I mean wowza!! Today’s seaside affair is what happens when you mix Miami color, glamour and heat with SoCal cool vibes. The bride, with planning help from her mother and the creative genius that is Nancy Kaye from Mark’s Garden, pulled off the wedding of a lifetime. This is no average backyard wedding, folks – this is the stuff of fairytales! Check out the full gallery of details, all taken by Kristen Kilpatrick!
From the Bride… Originally, Johnathan and I were to be married this January, in a large colorful Miami wedding at the Faena Hotel. We were just about to sign a contract with the Faena, when covid-19 seriously reared its ugly head. All planning came to a screeching halt and we had to re-group and decide what to do. So, we went from the vibe of Miami heat to California cool and planned the wedding in our backyard, which just so happens to be a cliff overlooking the Pacific at my family’s vacation home in San Clemente, California. Scaling back meant my mother and I became wedding planners for a wedding from our quarantined homes in Texas. Our guest list was reduced from 250 to 30, and we no longer had a year to plan, but four months, as we had decided we wanted to get married and start our lives together. We immediately reached out to a few vendors in Los Angeles and were lucky to come across the magnificent Nancy Kaye, who is senior event designer at Mark’s Garden, Los Angeles. A silver lining to planning a wedding during the pandemic was their creative and incomparable team who happened to be available on short notice. Once we started brain-storming with Nancy, we narrowed in on the idea of having an intimate, English inspired rose garden spilling out towards the pacific.
She and her team were able to gather mountains of the most gorgeous garden roses in every shade of pink from Grace Rose Farm in Santa Ynez, California. Roses, hydrangeas, peonies, and many more garden flowers were potted and styled along the aisle. They were magnificent and fragrant and truly created the dreamiest English garden setting on the coast. We had a dance floor hand painted by the head artist of Mark’s Garden, and hundreds of hurricanes glistening around the pool, walkways, and balconies. My husband’s grandmother, a true Texas socialite and tastemaker of her own, Joan Schnitzer, was best dressed of the weekend, wearing original Halston from the 70’s with canary diamond jewelry. Helping to create a vision of elegance, lightness, and romanticism, she was generous enough to lend me her heirloom multi strand pearl and diamond choker and diamond cluster pearl drop earrings. It was if they were made for my dress, which leads me to also add, that because we moved our wedding date up to August, my original Zuhair Murad wedding dress would not be ready in time for the new wedding date. So, I quickly got to looking for something that would fit the setting and fortunately found an off the shoulder white organza couture gown overlaid with multiple tiers of Chantilly lace, also by Zuhair Murad, from Luisa Via Roma in Florence. As magnificent as the original dress is, I really enjoyed wearing my second selection as it was perfect for our wedding setting. The groom, his brothers and our fathers wore custom Ermenegildo Zegna from M. Penner in Houston. Even though I missed out on having a large bridal party due to downsizing our wedding, some of the most memorable moments of the planning and weekend were spent with my sister Jane, who was my only attendant. Prior to the wedding, I would send her ideas and we would scream with laughter over the phone as she would say, “oooooh no, Lily, you must do something more like this.” Her guidance and flawless sense of taste helped create what turned out to be the best day of my life.
Before the ceremony, my mother gave me a sixpence, which was given to her by her mother on her wedding day, to be worn in my shoe. This was quite an emotional moment for me as I am my grandmother’s namesake and we were very close. She was a fashion icon and loved sparkle and color, to which I attribute so much to my own sense of style. Because I was wearing sandals, we tied the sixpence with a hand dyed blue satin ribbon to my lily of the valley wedding bouquet which was a gift from my groom.
When we are at our vacation home in San Clemente, our idea of entertaining is favoring sushi. So, we really got lucky when my friend recommended her dear friend Edoardo Baldi, of E. Baldi Restaurant in Beverly Hills, as a possibility to prepare our wedding dinner. Thanks again to the silver lining of covid, he agreed to travel with his team of ten to prepare the most divine seven-course wedding dinner in our open air kitchen. Usually on a Saturday night he is packed and has reservations weeks or months ahead. But on this day, he regaled our guests with a menu planned the week of the wedding so all items were the very freshest and each course was a delicious surprise, even to us! Every course was so delectable it left you wishing you had just one more bite when the plate was cleared. Some of the courses served were pan fried dover sole a limone, filet with peppercorn sauce, sweet corn agnolotti, tortelli of butternut squash, and Florentine style crostino di polenta topped with porcini mushroom sauce, which were paired with beautiful Italian wines and Tuscany’s famous Sassicaia. There was absolutely no shortage of food, which was served on my favorite Richard Ginori Granduca dinner plates. Gorham Chantilly sterling flatware and sterling Chantilly goblets were carefully transported from Texas which created a more personal setting at the table, each place setting either dating from my great, great grandmother’s monogrammed sterling to my mother’s. Dessert were miniature delectables and wedding cake by The Butterend. Django Foxtrot, a jazzy string quartet from Los Angeles, entertained us as the moon glistened on the ocean. Being in our family home and dining over this candlelit dinner with our closest family and friends was the most perfect way to celebrate our wedding. We made our departure in a silver 1963 convertible Porsche.
Sunday morning our family hosted a going away breakfast at the Montage while all of the wedding decorations were dismantled at our home. We donated the flowers to a volunteer group of high school young ladies, called the Pollenaters, who recreated them into individual vases as donations to teachers who were working hard on restructuring learning environments for children, and also for residents at nursing homes during the pandemic.
Photography: Kristen Kilpatrick | Cinematography: Blueberry Creative | Floral Design: Mark's Garden | Wedding Dress: Zuhair Murad | Cake: Butter End Bakery | Catering: E. Baldi | Hair: @jasonhaiir | DJ: Django Foxtrot | Groomsmen's Attire: Zegna | Wedding Venue: Bride's Family Vacation Home | Beauty: Gabriela Gutierrez MUA | Rentals: Theoni Collection