Tent weddings (fancy word for “tent”!) are delicate matters-how do you protect your guests and your party from the rain or the scorching sun while making the scene beautiful?
Well, one way to do that is to find a magic tent like this one! This whimsical lavender wedding at the rustic calamigos ranch in Malibu, California, underlines the norm of the traditional tent wedding. Not only did they find a nice tent for their wedding ceremony, but their design is a masterpiece in itself, adding beauty to their photos rather than being a hindrance.
Sent by their fabulous DJ (it was a big priority for the couple!) and photographed by Tracy Rinehart, we give five stars for this awesome tent wedding performance.
Wedding Style
We were not too distracted by the search for a topic. Instead, we focused on finding a place that would set the theme/mood for us, which is why we fell in love with Calamigos. Torin loves trees and nature and Sarah loves the sun, and Calamigos provided both. The trees, the windows and the greenery around us organically define the subject. We like the natural and simple aesthetics and don’t appreciate anything too much, so it was easy to reduce everything and keep it simple.
Flowers and dresses
We chose very natural neutral colors. Sarah has always loved pink, so she gave her bridal party the autonomy to choose colors from this palette that complement her complexion. The bouquets and the centers were white-simply with a baby’s breath-and we added green and tan accents and a tablecloth to go with the natural environment provided by the trees.
Destination
One of the best pieces of advice we received during the wedding planning process was that we can’t worry about everything, so we should choose three things that we care about. For us, it was to entertain our guests who were kind enough to come to Malibu to be part of our wedding. We wanted to be authentic to ourselves, and one of the things we like to do is welcome our friends home. We wanted our guests to feel that their trip to Los Angeles was worth it-we thought that the “success” of our wedding depended on this aspect. To this day, our friends still contact us and say that it was the funniest wedding they have ever attended, so we feel satisfied in that spirit!
Tips for other couples
For each decision, ask yourself: “Why is this important?”We got rid of a lot of unnecessary decisions by just thinking about our motives. Was it to impress our guests? Was it because of the pressure from our parents? Do we think we should do this?
Wedding planning is an emotional and overwhelming process, so it was important to take a step back and add logic to our decisions and go back to the priorities we decided from the beginning (which was once again a fun party for our guests). It’s easy to get distracted trying to impress the guests, so we constantly committed to “the joy of the guests” and not to the “wow factor”.”That’s why the DJ, the photo booth and the open bar were more important than the flowers, the wedding favors and the invitations.
