Amie & Jonathan celebrated their garden wedding at Serendipity Garden Weddings in Oak Glen, San Bernardino County Southern California. Serendipity is an elegant wedding and reception location in beautiful Oak Glen. Garden Ceremonies, spectacular sunsets and twinkling city lights made their day amazing! Photography was captured by Paul Schaefer of PS Photo Media.
How did you meet?
Online. Not so crazy a story now-a-days. However! Amie was living in Washington, and Jonathan lived in California but just happened to be visiting his brother and some college friends up north. Jonathan’s married friend wanted to see what these “apps” were all about, and he is the one that actually “swiped right.” Jonathan sure wasn’t complaining! We did the long distance thing for a few months, and then Amie’s work moved her down to California. The rest is history!
How long did you plan the wedding after the proposal?
We actually booked the venue, photographer, and floral before we were “officially” engaged. I guess you could say we knew what we wanted. Jonathan proposed almost exactly one year before our wedding date, but I wouldn’t say we were very active “planners.” We already had a vision of what we wanted and we -for better or worse- took our time and got things done here and there throughout that year. We didn’t have a full-on wedding coordinator, just “day of” through the venue, so I did almost forget a few things, but my maid of honor was a superstar so it all got taken care of.
The top 3 challenges/difficulties of planning the wedding.
1. We didn’t have a “plan” dictating when we needed to do things. Overall, this wasn’t a huge deal, but there was a bit of forgetting followed by rushing to get things accomplished (again, praise to my MoH!).
2. Most everyone in the bridal party and most wedding guests were from out of state. Again, not a huge deal, but since we are both originally from other states, travel kept some people from being able to attend, and getting the bridal party coordinated on attire was a process full of trial and error (or orders, exchanges, and tailoring).
3. Amie’s brother passed away Christmas Eve, completely unexpected. That left a huge hole in our hearts, but also in the vision we had for the wedding. Going through the motions for activities he was supposed to be involved in was difficult. We did honor him at the wedding though, his urn marked his place at the table.
The top 3 most fun/easiest parts of planning the wedding.
1. All the DIY decor. Aside from the floral, Amie made or procured all of the decor. It was a lot of fun to do that knowing everything would be exactly how we wanted it, not to mention a money saver considering not even two weeks post wedding we had already managed to sell it all!
2. We had THE BEST vendors. The venue took care of so many things, some of which I didn’t even realize until looking back that I didn’t have to do this or that. Paul and Sharie, (our photographer and florist) made the whole process so easy and more importantly FUN! I particularly enjoyed going out to Sharie’s shop – on more than one occasion – and going through her insanely huge selection of flowers to pick exactly what I wanted! So fun!
3. Going with the flow. I know I mentioned earlier that not having a plan had it’s downside, but overall our laissez-faire attitude about everything made the whole process fun. Even when we were rushing to take care of things, we were laughing about it!
What fun/unique feature of your wedding made you the proudest?
In the week leading up to our wedding, the weather forecast took a nasty turn. It was supposed to snow 2-4 inches the day before our wedding, and be cold and raining the day of. Preparing for the worst, our venue was ready with a fancy tent and heaters as well as umbrellas and covered golf carts. Our photographer kept reminding me that even if it did snow (1) the photos would be amazing and (2) it’s the photos I would remember. Our florist assured us she had a plan in place to adjust to whatever was required. They were all so positive and really helped lessen the stress, as I had been freaking out about the weather! Fast forward to the day of the wedding. It definitely was cold, in the 30s. It even started raining while we were taking our first look photos. By some stroke of luck it stopped raining and the sun even poked out just as our ceremony began! The rain held off again until we were all “safe and warm” in the heated tent. I can’t say enough about how happy we are for that hour the rain held off, but also thankful for all the work our vendors put in to make our day great despite the weather! Rain on your wedding is lucky anyway – right?
If you had it to do over, what would you change, add or do differently?
Honestly, we wouldn’t change anything! Well, if we could control the weather, we would have done that! Yet despite the weather, we wanted to get married on March 3 and we wanted our venue. We would not have been willing to compromise on either of those.
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