Jake and Courtney's Wedding in Desert Hot Springs, California
Modern Fall Gold
11/23/2019 567 1
J&C
23 Nov, 2019
The story of our wedding
My husband and I really wanted a small-intimate wedding in a beautiful place, and we both have HUGE families, so our solution was to do a destination wedding in the Palm Springs, CA area. We knew it would be no small task to slim down our guest list, so we kept it to immediate family, aunts & uncles, grandparents, and our closest friends, and honestly it was the best decision ever! We had a blast!!!
Most of the things we did were a bit non-traditional; we wanted to keep things simple and fun! We didn't do save-the dates, we send out e-vites instead of formal invitations (saved a lot of money and trees!), no kids (not even a ring bearer/flower girl), we didn't request gifts because guests were traveling to our wedding (although we still got some), and we didn't have a wedding party besides our immediate family. We ended up with a total of 58 people (including us), which was the perfect size to be intimate but still a rowdy party!
Planning a destination wedding is a lot of work and definitely stressful, but we got lots of help and input from our awesome wedding planner - we would not have been able to do it all without her! Most of our vendors we found through our planner (which all of them were spectacular), and a few we found from our venue's preferred vendor list.
Continue reading »We had to fly to CA to get to our vedding venu. We brought our dress/tux with us on the plane, and shipped other wedding materials out to our hotel (some decor, guest book, wedding facors, etc). We left for our honeymoon right after the wedding, so we had to pack both for our wedding AND honeymoon- it was a lot but worked out just fine!
We got into town a few days before the wedding, which gave us time to run last-minute errands (like getting our marriage license) and also hang out with family and friends leading up to the big day! We got in on Wednesday and ran errands (marriage license), attended a street fair Thursday night, had the rehearsal dinner with our immediate family on Friday night and afterwards met the rest of our guests at a local bar for cocktails, and then Saturday was the wedding. We even maganged to fit in a few extra activities leading up to the wedding, like golf and a yoga class. It was a lot of fun!
The wedding was perfect and so much fun! We spend the whole night dancing and because the wedding was small and we spent the prior days with guests, we didn't have to spend the night catching up with anyone. We felt like we got a lot of quality time in with everyone! I wish we could relive the best day ever!! All of our guests even said it was one of the best weddings they'd ever been to! (in my opinion, small weddings are a lot more fun than big ones!)
Other The Lautner Compound weddings
View all
Other California weddings
View all
Galway Downs by Wedgewood Weddings
Terrace On The Park
Shay Meadows Ranch and Resort
Get inspired with Real Weddings
