Dusty Blue With a Vintage Touch at a French Inspired Chateau in Carmel Valley

Lauren Megerdichian
June 13, 2022
Categories: Real Weddings, Romantic, The Blog

Drawing inspiration from the French and Italian countrysides, today’s sweet SMP couple gravitated toward cream and dusty blue hues for their wedding color palette. After what felt like a never ending venue search, the two found their dream locale – Folktale winery, a french inspired chateau in Carmel Valley. From her fairytale dress to romantic arrangements by Gavita Flora, there’s just so much to love at the full gallery of inspiration, captured by Anya Kernes Photography with planning by By Your Side Events!

From the bride, Ashley… Tom and I got engaged on September 4th, 2021, during peak Covid times. Prior to Covid, I always dreamed of getting married at the Chicago Public Library, however, during Covid the city lost quite a bit of its charm that I grew up loving.

Tom and I went to the drawing board to figure out what our dream wedding looked like. As we searched, one thing became clear, we drew inspiration from both France and Italy, primarily the countryside. I gravitated towards creams and dusty blue with a vintage touch. As wine lovers, we knew we wanted wine to play a central role in our wedding. We knew we wanted a small, intimate wedding.

We realized it would be difficult if not impossible to have an overseas wedding during the time we wanted to get married, so we began to research beautiful areas within the US that gave us the same feel that we wanted. We landed in none other than wine country, Napa Valley. During our scouting time, unfortunately the Glass Fires hit and a few of our favorite venues were destroyed. By chance, after we had booked our Napa and Sonoma trip to visit around 6 venues, I was browsing the web to make sure there wasn’t anything else that really called to me… low and behold, I found Folktale. Folktale encompassed everything we wanted in a venue including a beautiful winery with gorgeous vines and a French inspired Chateau. I knew almost immediately that this was our spot, it just called to me. Folktale was a few hours south from Napa, towards Big Sur in Carmel Valley. We decided to add this onto the front of our trip and needed a place to stay. We found Carmel Valley Ranch which we immediately fell equally in love with. By the end of our first day, we knew we had found our special place to get married. We also knew we wanted to incorporate Carmel Valley Ranch into our big day. We ended up having our rehearsal dinner here and having a large room block for guests to enjoy. We loved the idea of a destination wedding since traveling is one of our favorite things to do together. We also knew we wanted a small, intimate wedding so we thought, why not! We absolutely HAD to have our wedding outside (we both love nature and being outdoors) so that limited where we could pick due to weather. We loved the idea of sharing a place that we adore with our guests and having them make it an incredible vacation. We spent a lot of time thoughtfully providing recommendations on our wedding website, hoping our guests would make a vacation out of it.

From the start we knew that we wanted our dog, Maya, a 2 year old fox red Labrador retriever to be at our wedding. We decided to have hints of Maya throughout our rehearsal dinner night, featuring hand drawn coozies, cocktail napkins, drink stirrers, and cookies all featuring our favorite girl. They were a huge hit. She was of course in attendance, getting all the pets.

For our rehearsal dinner, we wanted minimal décor outside of our Maya touches, with the focus to be on the beautiful Carmel Valley. We settled on an outdoor location, high up on the ‘Harvest Landing’ so we could take in all of the beauty of the valley. We incorporated creams and lavender down the middle of the long king’s tables, which smelled heavenly all night.

A few things that were absolute musts for us on our wedding day were a live band with a string trio or quartet for the ceremony, a unique and fantastic food and wine experience, and details such as the gorgeous wedding invitations and day of paper we designed with Erin.

The main themes of our wedding were timeless, romantic, with aspects of a fairytale. Tom and I got engaged in the pouring rain on the Boardwalk in Disney World so of course we needed fairytale aspects included in our wedding. We had small details such as ‘Be our Guest’ on top of our menus, a single rose in a glass dome, and a happily ever after sign surrounded by roses.

Being a true Gemini, I was stuck between two styles of wedding dress and couldn’t commit to just one. I quickly realized I wanted both the true bridal gown with a long train for my ceremony to feel like a princess but I also wanted a dress with an edge that spoke to my rock n roll side. After trying on around 100 wedding dresses, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to find just one and ending up finding the two most beautiful dresses which were just made for me!

I was inspired by long kings tables, with florals down the middle, candles everywhere, something truly romantic that would take your breath away. I wanted to have cream and white roses everywhere, something romantic and timeless. I wanted a simple 2-3 tier cake with buttercream frosting, decorated with flowers. I knew I wanted to incorporate light blue goblets as a pop of color on our dinner table. We searched for months to find the perfect glasses, although they were darker than I originally envisioned, it all came together so well!

One of my favorite things was our incredible cake flavors. I knew I wanted something less traditional that people don’t always have at weddings. We ended up having Honey Cardamom and Plum, Cardamom cake soaked with honey, vanilla bean buttercream, and plum as our first flavor and Pistachio-Apricot – white cake, pistachio buttercream, and apricot jam for our second flavor. Continuing on with our French inspiration, we added a variety of macaroons in Provence Lavender, Earl Grey Tea, Madagascar Vanilla, and Meyer Lemon which were such a hit!

A few of my favorite moments were watching Tom bring Maya to the father daughter dance floor and dancing with her. I also loved having a preview of our wedding space prior to guests entering. This was such a special experience to see everything I worked so hard on for a year come to life, uninterrupted before any of the guests. Tom and I also both loved our time after our salads to take our sunset photos. I was such a wonderful moment to be able to have some more private time together as newlyweds, just soaking up our happiness! We also loved our guest reactions to their welcome bags. Seeing our ceremony space, with the beautiful bell hung in the small structure was such a jaw drop moment for us both. I knew from the moment I saw the space, that is where I wanted to get married. I envisioned that space coming to life and it did not disappoint!