Jessica and Paul's wedding day was all about them. There was a cozy feeling throughout the day, everything felt very personal and thoughtful. They got married at Wagon Road Ranch, owned by Jessica's aunt and uncle. The location definitely helped to give a nice intimate feeling to their day while still being able to share it with a good number of close friends and family.
There were so many personal details added to make their day thiers. Jessica was able to include her late mother in the celebration through her bouquet in a beautiful pendant containing some of her mother's ashes. I had not seen anything like that before and thought it was such a beautiful way of including her. Jessica added beautiful gold and copper leaf to her veil. During their ceremony they had a toast with mead that Paul had made (that was soooo delicious by the way, they gave me a bottle as a gift because they are amazing). They had their wedding party each read a meaningful quote and they read their own vows from a beautiful little hand written vow booklet.
I think my favorite thing they added to their ceremony though was afterwards. Jessica and Paul had a jewish ceremony, signed their katubah before the ceremony, smashed a glass at the end, but they incorporated another jewish tradition I had never heard of that I thought was pretty awesome, yichud. Yichud is a 15 minute period where the bride and groom are alone immediately following the ceremony. So while everyone headed over to cocktail hour they got to be alone and just soak in the fact that they are now married! What a wonderful tradition to add to your day!
It did also help that they had a first look and got all the family formal portraits done before the ceremony, so that made it easier to let everyone got to cocktail hour while they had their yichud.
One last detail I really want to mention is that Jessica's dad made them a two person rocking chair that was incredibly beautiful and I wanted to steal it!
Congratulations Jessica and Paul on a lovely wedding day, thanks for letting me be a part of it!
