Trabuco Canyon Ranch Fall Wedding

There are some weddings that I look forward to all year long and this Trabuco Canyon ranch fall wedding with J & S was one of them.

Story time… Many years ago, my last wedding of the year was on a hundred year old family ranch. It had been one of my most rewarding and trying years in business to date so there was level of tender but weary joy I already had driving the hour plus there. I hadn’t met the couple as they were living in the UK and had planned everything from thousands of miles away. My goal on a wedding day is always to enter in a stranger but leave feeling like a beloved friend who celebrated and championed the couple. Cheesy I know but this is honestly where my heart is at. What happened that wedding day was everything I have always strived to bring to weddings and in turn this family embraced me with the most enthusiastic warmth. When the time to leave came, they asked me to stay as a guest and as I drove home I cried tears of gratitude to end the year in the most wonderful way possible.

S and I remained mutually obsessed social media friends over the years since I photographed her baby sister’s wedding. She had left me the most generous reviews and claimed that one day I’d photograph her wedding. When J finally proposed three years later she immediately reached out when the date was set and I may or may not have told her I would have physically fought anyone who would have tried to be her photographer.

Now to gush about J & S and this love story fifteen years in the making because it’s impossible for me not to. Their families had neighboring lake houses and had become friends but they never registered each other. To be fair J did have some literal growing up to do as he was eight years younger than S and would often baby sit her baby sisters. Then on one of this lake house trips they connected as friends and spent the entire weekend hanging out and talking. J left that weekend and called his friend declaring he had “met” the woman he’d marry. Stuck in the friend zone for fives years he waited it out while they both dated others. Occasionally he’d comment about the two of them being meant to be but S would have none of it. Shortly before her sister’s wedding that I met them both at, S finally ran out of excuses and gave this patient man a chance and found a love that lacked nothing.

These two have the best sense of style and can pull off things you’d never imagine could go together. I knew going into their Trabuco Canyon ranch fall wedding that every detail would be unique and intentionally planned out. The wedding arch was handmade from a tree that had fallen on the ranch, the table settings were thrifted glass and plates, the napkins were vintage scraps of fabric that will later be made into a quilt, and they had thrifted the mugs for the seating chart intentionally for each guest. Their guest book was a custom made table top that guests would brand their initials into and later be made into a table for their future home. In fact they even had a custom wedding brand of their own made to brand the table.

A bbq truck, custom beverages, cutting the cake with a hundred year old family heirloom knife, a sparkly jumpsuit, epic dance moves, a nascar ice cream truck, and branding a table rounded out the day. My obsession with the two of the and forcing their family to adopt me is still firmly in place.