Where to have a barn wedding in Southern California

Love the idea of a romantic, rustic wedding? Southern California is perfect for it — the weather is almost always warm and dry, and there are so many beautiful non-urban areas that have such facilities.

However, if you were hoping to find an actual barn in Los Angeles, I don’t know that you would have much luck. Most of the barns that I found were in Ventura and Orange counties, which makes sense — Los Angeles is known more for its city and ocean views, not so much for its farms. Most of these barns are also under the management of other entities — museums, cities, golf courses — so you don’t have to worry about having to muck out stalls to prep for your wedding.

Probably the closest barn for a wedding you’d find is just up the freeway from me, in Simi Valley.

Facebook photo by Strathearn Historical Park and Museum

As I’ve previously written, Strathearn Historical Park and Museum houses a 100-year-old church, a gazebo and a barn — and is probably a deal because it is a venue run by the Rancho Simi Recreation And Park District. Simi Valley is an easy 20-minute drive from most of the San Fernando Valley.

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Fuchsia and white wedding in San Pedro

I have worked with many variations of pink during my time decorating weddings, but this port-side wedding reception in San Pedro, at what appears to be the Doubletree By Hilton Hotel San Pedro now, was probably my favorite because the pink was actually fuchsia.

Fuchsia is so bright and strong on its own, it really doesn’t need an accent color. In fact, what accent color would you try to put with it? White. And white, like the white linens, the white tablecloths and white seat covers, make the fuchsia seat covers pop even more.

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Decorating a 25th anniversary wedding

Getting to five years married is tough enough these days, so making it to 25 years? That’s definitely a milestone that should be celebrated.

This wedding took place in 2004 at Burbank’s Pickwick Gardens. The bride was a friend of my mom’s, so my mom of course pulled out all the stops to decorate this wedding. Quite honestly, I’ve been wanting to post the above picture for years, but didn’t sit down to properly edit it until just recently (the wedding took place in July and it was extremely bright that day). But I was thoroughly impressed with how the ceremony decorations came out here — large arrangements with lavender roses, orchids and pink ginger and lots of ti leaves spray painted silver, on top of silver lamé-draped columns.

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Yellow wedding decorations and flower arrangements

Yellow is perfect as a wedding color, especially with spring coming up. It’s sunny, its optimistic and hopeful and its just plain happy. So I thought it would be nice to focus on flowers and weddings using yellow as the main color.

This 2003 wedding was at the Pacific Palms Resort in Industry Hills (possibly when it was known as the Sheraton Industry Hills). I really enjoyed decorating this wedding, probably because it was such a bright, happy color — and I had a lot of time to work on the decorations.

As you can see from this closeup, the flowers my mom chose included yellow roses and yellow cala lilies.

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Ah, Paris…! Wedding cakes from France

Chef Ivy Dai

Ah, Paris — the City of Lights, the most romantic city in the world, home to world class fashion and cuisine. I happen to have a friend living there now, working as a pastry instructor for Cook’n with Class and hosting dinners for the Paris Eating Club. Previously, she has worked as a pastry chef at the Ojai Valley Inn and appeared on Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars.” (If you ever watched Cupcake Wars and marveled at the super tall Asian girl, that was her.) I follow her on her Facebook fan page, Ivy Eats, where she frequently posts scrumptious-looking photos of the pastries she and students are creating.

It was her frequent postings that made me ask if she had done any wedding cakes since moving to France. Dumb question!

Photo by Chef Ivy Dai

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Where to buy and how to decorate wedding table vases

Tall flower arrangements are a regular obsession for those of us — myself included — who are into weddings. Tall generally is always good — with men, with buildings, with flower arrangements.

Tall isn’t always cheap, though, so how do you get some of those classic looks without totally breaking the bank? My mom often worked with brides’ budgets by agreeing to use vases supplied by the bride, if she could find her perfect vase somewhere for cheaper than my mom could find.

Flickr photo by r0bm867

So, if we wanted to replicate this martini glass look — which is classic, tall and doesn’t require a lot of flowers, bringing down your costs — I would recommend buying from Koyal Wholesale, which has 19.5-inch vases for sale for $27 each if you buy more than 18. I would estimate the average wedding at 200 people, so buying more than 18 will probably not be a problem.

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Details from a Mexican-Filipino wedding

A friend of mine, who happens to be a friend of this wedding’s groom, Michael, sent me a link to his wedding photos and didn’t even need to tell me, “you need to blog this wedding.” She knows me well — as soon as I saw these photos, I knew I had to feature it. It’s not just the fact that I am also Filipino — it was the fact that so many of the lovely details from both Mexican weddings and Filipino weddings were combined so flawlessly into this one event.

Photo by Stacy Kokes

In case you weren’t sure, the bride, Bianca, is Mexican and the groom, Michael, is Filipino. I don’t generally include photos of the bridal party or guests, preferring instead to focus on the wedding decorations and details. But in this case, the bride and groom and their entourage are wearing so many of the details, there was no getting around it. For example, the groom is wearing a traditional Filipino formal shirt, called a barong Tagalog. Barongs are worn instead of suits in the Philippines, because, well, suits are way too heavy to wearing the hot, humid climates of the Philippines.

Bianca is wearing a traditional Mexican wedding veil, called a mantilla, which stand out for their especially elaborate edges.

And here’s another interesting, kind of lovely, culture-blending incidental fact: both Filipino and Mexican wedding traditions are heavily influenced by Spanish culture, since Spain colonized both countries for several centuries.

These photos, by the way, were all shot by Stacy Kokes Photography.

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