I don’t know what I love the most about Harmony and David’s wedding. Is it the fact that it was in the middle of the forest, all the pretty little handmade details, or the fact that they cancelled what was about to be a quite traditional wedding to have something that looked more like them? I know there’s a lot of couples that dream of an intimate and personal wedding, but then don’t have it because one parent or relative says it’s “not wedding enough”… Well, I can tell you these two have guts, and if you’re having this kind of dilemma right now, please read their story! Photography by Nick Radford (and don’t miss the honeymoon video this couple made!).
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Their wedding took place on August, 17th 2012, at a little Airbnb cottage in Soquel, California, USA. Here’s how they ended up having their wedding there.
David and I were planning our 100 person wedding at some expensive venue when, 3 months before our wedding, we realized it wasn’t what we wanted at all. We were only planning this larger wedding because we felt like we had to so that we wouldn’t offend anyone. What we really wanted was a super small and intimate wedding in an amazing location with our closest friends and family. So we took the plunge. We cancelled our venue and everything we had set up and began our search for the perfect place to have our wedding. While we were looking through some of the amazing houses on Airbnb for our honeymoon we thought, what the heck, why not ask if we can have our wedding there too! We asked around for weeks and weeks and all we received were “no’s”. Then on one glorious night we received our first “yes” from the owner of this tiny little cottage in Soquel, CA. I will admit that it wasn’t my first choice, but once we got there we were blown away by the beauty and character of this place and from that moment on, I couldn’t have imagined our wedding anywhere else!
Name one thing you regret…
The only thing I regret is not having a professional wedding planner for our wedding (or at least a family member to take charge on the day of!). I didn’t think I needed one because our wedding was so small and I thought it would be too difficult since the wedding was taking place 6 hours away. Because of this, I was the only one who really knew our timeline and the order of events, which was pretty stressful on my part. Luckily our wedding was small enough that everyone just went with the flow and everything worked out perfectly.
… And one thing you’re really happy about/ proud of.
We are overjoyed that we were able to go with our gut and plan the wedding of our dreams, instead of the wedding that we thought we had to plan. But honestly, as long as we were married by the end of the day, I was a happy camper! :)
The word of the photographer.
Being that David & Harmony were in the wedding industry, they understood how important timing the day around optimal light was. The way everything was arranged around having a beautiful aesthetic made my job entirely too easy.