Real Weddings:

Melissa and Gus’s

featuring Ginny Silver Retrospect Images

Melissa and Gus’s wedding at Avila Beach Golf Resort is a vision of green and white against the breathtaking coastal California backdrop. MIRA Events + Design combined glam and modern and romantic wedding trends in a palette of neutrals. Especially impressive was the abundance of florals by Adornments Flowers & Finery including a voluminous rose and greenery ceremony arch set in front of bold, green topiary walls. Relaxed farm tables and romantic white arrangements perfected the calual elegance on the reception and lucky for us Ginny Silver Retrospect Images was on hand to capture it all!

What made the wedding special and unique?

We felt our wedding was special and unique mostly because of all of our amazing family and friends who came all that way to celebrate our day. We also had our dog there as a groomsmen and it made the day feel complete having him be a part of everything.

Tell us about the gown and where/how you found it!

I had been obsessed with the wedding dress designer, Hayley Paige, for a long time so I was looking through her designs before I went dress shopping and found a dress that was exactly what I had been looking for. I decided to look for dresses at Haute Bride in Los Gatos because I had always admired the shop. I showed them the few Hayley Paige dresses I was looking for and tried on the one I had seen online first and completely fell in love. It felt meant to be that I was in love with the first dress I tried and it ended up being more perfect than I could imagine.

What were some touches added to make the wedding personal?

One of the most special things at the wedding was having my close family friend, Denise Del Piano, be our officiant. My mom passed away 8 years ago and Denise was her best friend, but Denise and I have also worked together for 10 years so our relationship means a lot to me. Not only was she an amazing officiant, but it meant so much to have her be a part of our day and it made it feel like my mom was being represented at the wedding. Another one of my favorite personal touches was our guest book. Gus and I love playing corn hole so we had a custom corn hole board made with our funny nicknames for each other, “moose” and “goose”, and had guests sign the board. Gus’s family in Hollister has grown apricots for many years and they also make homemade organic olive oil. We love both of these things and use them at home all the time so we really wanted to incorporate them into our day. Heather at Splash Cafe was amazing and helped us by using the olive oil in our salad dressing and the dried apricots on our charcuterie board.

What was the most memorable part of the day?

The most memorable part of the day for both Gus and I was the ceremony. I felt like so much planning went into the reception portion of the day so I wasn’t expecting it to be my favorite part, but the ceremony is really what it’s all about. I loved everything about our ceremony from Denise’s great stories as our officiant, both of our Aunts doing special readings, our nephew running up to greet me as I walked down the aisle to hug me before I got to the front, our dog deciding he needed to roll around to scratch his back mid ceremony, and especially the vows we each wrote.

Tell us how you met and became engaged.

Gus and I met in high school when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore. We knew of each other before then because our younger brothers were good friends and played sports together. Throughout high school we became close friends through our families’ shared love of going to the beach and our brothers playing baseball on the same team. We started talking on AIM all the time and eventually started dating just after Gus graduated in 2005. We had known for a long time that we wanted to get married but Gus hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. He finally did after we had just closed on our house that we bought together. We had just got the keys to the house and hadn’t moved in yet but decided to get take out and bring our dog there and have a picnic in the backyard. Gus was taking longer than I expected to arrive with the food and I was getting grumpy and hungry. He finally arrived and just as I was about to dig in, he popped the question. We celebrated our 12 year anniversary one week before our wedding day.