The bride selected her colour palette to be dark orange and cream. It features a fabulous fur shawl, festive lights, beautiful Christmas trees and Hawaiian leis!

The fur shawl that the Bride wore was absolutely gorgeous, it gave off such a winter glamour look.

The dark orange and cream flowers placed so beautifully throughout the Arctic club along with the Christmas lights and Christmas trees gave such a gorgeous backdrop to Shantelle and Alex’s winter wedding.

We also loved the Hawaiian leis the groomsmen wore to represent the Hawaiian heritage on Shantelle’s side of the family.

Suppliers:

Photography: Heather Mayer Photography

Venue: The Arctic Club

  The wedding day was absolutely perfect, it was a sunny day in Santa Barbara. The bride and the groom were very relaxed and everyone was in the best of spirits.

    The ceremony took place at the Santa Barbara Mission with the cocktail hour and reception at the Bacara Resort– both extremely beautiful locations.

The wedding had a Tuscan/Old world feel. Both the bride and the groom are of Italian descent and Matt proposed in Italy so they wanted to tie that into the wedding.

The colors were soft pinks, peaches, white and golds. Ambiance Floral did an amazing job incorporating vintage broaches into the floral arrangements. The reception site had tons of candles and market lights strung above.

The reception was very warm and inviting. During the reception, Matt and Kaitlin’s father surprised Kaitlin during the father daughter dance with a special recorded version of Kaitlin’s father singing Blackbird. She had always loved his rendition of the song so she was extremely touched. The reception concluded with a cover band.

 
    At the end of the wedding, everyone was so sad that it was over and wanted to continue celebrating Kaitlin and Matt — so the party traveled to the Bacara’s bar and everyone continued to celebrate alongside the bride and groom until their departure.    Suppliers:

• Photography: xsightusa.com
• Venue: Bacara Resort & Spa
• Flowers: Ambiance Floral

From the Bride: Although my husband, Scott, and I grew up and went to high school about a mile apart, we didn’t meet until we both attended a mutual friend’s birthday party when we were 30.

The party took place in Santa Monica, where we had both lived for years but never met. We felt so lucky to have finally found each other, and spent the first year of our relationship getting to know one another and exploring the beautiful beach cities that surrounded us.

Other than a love of the beach, another common thread that drew us closer was a mutual love of music. We relished listening to new albums for the first time and going to concerts by bands and performers we loved. So when it came time to plan on our wedding, there were two things we knew we wanted to involve: the ocean, and music.

The second we walked into the ballroom at the La Venta Inn, we knew we had found our venue. Perched high on the cliffs of Palos Verdes, the stunning ocean view brought tears to my eyes. Choosing our venue was the very first thing we did…and the rest of our wedding seemed to fall into place from there. Given our mutual love of music, we decided to go with a vintage “Music & Memories” theme for our wedding.

For “Music,” we used sheet music accents on everything we could: our guest book, ceremony programs, menus, table numbers, banner signs and escort cards. For “Memories,” we went with a Polaroid guest book to capture the looks on our guests’ faces as they entered our wedding, and a photo booth to capture moments of fun as they unfolded.

We didn’t have a wedding planner, but we did have a ton of help from family, friends and the good old Internet. One of my bridesmaids accompanied me to the famous Fairfax High Flea Market where we picked up the beautiful vintage suitcases, picture frames and perfume trays that were displayed throughout the venue.

I bought the chalkboard signs displayed in the courtyard on Craigslist and Etsy, and my mom and I wrote out all of the signage. I went to the Found Vintage Rentals warehouse and picked out all of the vintage furniture displayed throughout our venue.

Our guest book, escort cards and flower girl dresses were all hand-made by various vendors I found on Etsy. And the table numbers, ceremony programs, and menus I designed and bought on Zazzle. Although planning our wedding ourselves was stressful at times, the payoff was more than I ever could of imagined.

There was a moment during dinner when I turned to my husband at our sweetheart table, tapped him on shoulder and told him to look out over the dining room. Our guests were buzzing with conversation, the room was glowing with candle light, and I remember saying: “I can’t believe this is our wedding…everything looks so beautiful!” I don’t think it gets much better than that.

Suppliers:

• Photographer : Melvin Gilbert
• Videography:Solano888productions
• Coordination : Mike Halish of La Venta Inn
• Make Up : Pa Kou Xiong
• Hair Stylist : Pa Kou Xiong
• DJ: Mike Sincere of Scratch
• Lighting : La Venta Inn
• Photobooth: Magnolia Photo Booth Co
• Florals: Flowers by Laurel
• Cupcakes/Cake: New York Food Company
• Catering : New York Food Company
• Reception Venue : La Venta Inn
• Decor : Bride
• Wedding Colors : Dusty Rose, Peach, Champagne, Ivory & Moss Green
• Wedding dress : Pronovias
• Groom’s Tux/Attire : J. Crew
• Bride’s Shoes : Badgley Mischka
• Groom’s Shoes : Gordon Rush
• Bridesmaid dresses : Dessy Collection
• Accommodations : Terranea Resort
• Limo / Transportation : GTS Charter
• Invitations : JWD Paperie

Over to the bride:

• Suppliers:
• Photography: Kelly Kirkland Photography
• Venue: Lord Thompson Manor
• Dress: Majesty Bridal

Tell us about your relationship:

She is the boss..especially when it comes to food Happy wife = Happy life

We enjoy going out and eat together. Gloria usually picks out the restaurants, as she is very particular about the food she eats. If it is salty and spicy or involves shellfish (preferably raw), then those usually are the winners. We love to travel, watch movies and TV, and will occasionally play golf and go for long runs together.

Funny/special/unique episodes?

Before the proposal, I ordered the ring online from Blue Nile and had it delivered to my work. However, I had it shipped under my first name that I normally don’t use and it caused confusion at work. Blue Nile sent me an e-mail saying that the ring was delivered to my work, but when I checked with the mail room, they were not able to locate it! I called Blue Nile again, and they said someone at my work had signed for it, but the mail room didn’t have anyone of that name.

After a couple of more hours of worrying and fear, and back and forth with the mail room and Blue Nile, I finally got the tracking number and the mail room found the box in the “Suspense” section. Since there were a couple of other guys at my work with the same name, they weren’t sure who it was supposed to go to! Luckily, I was able to get it in time, as one of the other guys would have thought it was their lucky day.

How did he propose?

I asked my son if he had any ideas on proposing to Gloria, and he said that I should put the ring on one of our Nintendo Wii controllers and then ask her to play Super Mario Brothers with us. When she gets the controller, she will then see the ring and then I can ask her then to marry me. I thought this was a really cute and creative idea, but we decided to do something slightly different.

Gloria wasn’t feeling well on Saturday, June 22, 2013. She had a headache and was lying in bed for the most of the morning hoping to sleep it off. I woke her up around 11am and asked if she wanted to go for a walk to try and clear her head. Prior to that, I had shaved, which I normally don’t do on the weekend. She thought it was odd that I shaved, but it was just a quick, passing thought because of her headache.

As we walked outside, the temperature was about 90F, without any breeze. It was an abnormally warm day for Redwood Shores, which is usually breezy and cooler since we are right near the water. As we walked along the bay trail with my son and kicking the soccer ball around, I wanted to propose to her at a lookout area about a half mile from our house. As we were getting close to the lookout area, a jogger decided that he was going to run to that same lookout area, so I knew we would have to wait for him to leave before we went over there.

The guy then decides that he wants to do standing pushups against the railing there for the next 15 minutes! I don’t know what kind of results you can get from those types of pushups, but he would be better off doing those at home against a well. Finally, after he was done, we walked over there and really appreciated the views on this gorgeous day. My son and I were kicking the ball around and I asked him if this was a good spot. He said yes, and then turned around so I could do my thing.

I got on my knee as Gloria was looking elsewhere, and when she saw what I was doing, she thought I was doing a Yoga Crescent Pose that I do sometimes at home ;). When I brought out the ring from my pocket, she kept saying “No”, and started to cry. I asked her if she would marry me, and all I kept hearing was “No”. Luckily, the “No” was for cries of disbelief and joy, and she agreed to marry me!!!

Tell us about your perfect wedding:

It was such a perfect day in every sense. In the prior weekend, the temperatures up in Rutherford were over 100F. For our wedding, it was a comfortable 80F with a slight breeze at the time of the ceremony and cooled to about 70F in the later evening.

When I first saw Gloria that afternoon, I was awestruck by how revealing, yet beautiful her dress was! I felt like the luckiest guy in the world, yet wanted to cover her up at the same time because there was a lot of skin showing. She looked amazing!

As we exchanged vows and then rings, Gloria had a hard time getting the ring onto my finger! I had sprained my fingers playing basketball in the prior week, and the ring finger in particular was bit swollen. Luckily, after greasing it up and struggling a bit, she was finally able to get it on! That ring certainly was not about to come off anytime soon.

For our first dance, Gloria wanted to do something different, as she thought a typical slow dance would be boring. Thus, we practiced doing “The Hustle” and surprised everyone with a few Hustle moves ;). The song started out slow, and then Gloria pushed me out into the middle of the dance floor for me to Hustle. She then copied my moves and we did them in sync a couple of times before bringing some of the guests onto the dance floor with us. Soon, there were Hustlers all over the dance floor! The dinner at the Auberge was incredible and everyone enjoyed their meals.

Later on after dinner, my family surprised us by doing some dance performances. First, my cousins did a dance routine to “Cool It Now”, one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite groups: New Edition. Then, to our surprise, my parents, aunts and uncle did a routine to another New Edition classic: If It Isn’t Love. They followed that up with some toe tapping to the Tavares song: Heaven. For their encore, they brought out my 9-year old son Tyler, who lead them through an energized and hilarious “Gangnam Style”! We couldn’t stop laughing, as the older folks were trying to keep up with the moves of this 9-year old who didn’t stop moving! It was such a treat for all of us to see these dances, and the video footage we have will be part of our family relics forever :.

We continued dancing into the night with our friends and family, and the evening for Gloria and I ended with rose petals in the shape of a heart outside of our room at the Auberge.

Anything you would like to add?

Joseph and Mark from IQ Photo were fantastic photographers to work with the whole night! They were cool, personable, made us feel at ease during the event evening, and took some very artistic shots!

• Suppliers:
• Venue: Auberge du Soleil, California
• Photographer: IQ Photo
• Entertainment: Eloquence Strings
• Flowers: Tesoro
• Cake: Pastrychik 

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