A vine-covered courtyard is such an amazing setting for a wedding. Captured by Lovisa Photo, Hannah and Kaipo were married last April on a gorgeous day in San Juan Capistrano, California. The ceremony and reception were held in a beautiful courtyard garden; quite a dreamy atmosphere. Hannah incorporated her favorite flowers, sunflowers, into many aspects of the wedding, creating the perfect pop of bright yellow! The couple had a beautiful wedding and a rocking party, especially once the glow sticks were passed out on the dance floor.
From the bride on her wedding inspiration:
The inspiration for our wedding was my favorite color yellow. I love all things yellow! I also love when bright colors pop, so that’s why we chose yellow against the navy blue to make it stand out. And we knew that the yellow flowers would love great against the green background at Franciscan Gardens. More than anything, we just wanted to have a fun an inviting atmosphere where our guests could have a great night. I’m very crafty and like to make projects on my own. I wanted to do a lot more, like make the invitations and everything, but I realized I needed to choose which projects were most important to me and put my efforts into those. So we decided to make the guestbooks to put on each table and we had our guests sign a note inside the books at the tables to open on each anniversary. We built the cupcake tower ourselves and we put a few of our favorite quotes into picture frames that we painted. We also had a bunch of mismatched vases on each table for our centerpieces. A lot of the vases were actually wine bottles that we soaked and scraped the labels off of. Lastly, we decorated baskets to hold our programs and wedding cards. We also wanted to add a few special touches like a candle that we lit in honor of our loved ones that are no longer with us. Kaipo and I both had best friends pass away, so the candle was for them, as well as grandparents that have passed away. Also, we decided to tie our wedding bands to my mom’s first Bible, which was walked down the isle by the ring bearer. Another fun touch was that we decided to hand out glow sticks on the dance floor. This ended up being so much fun and a total hit for the night! Some of my ideas were found from different online resources-blogs, websites, and Pinterest- and some ideas we just thought of ourselves. We had such a blast planning each little detail to make everything wonderful for our guests. We just wanted people to have fun and enjoy everything, and all the feedback we got was just that. We were so blessed to have amazing vendors that made our day perfect, and we are even more blessed to have amazing friends and family that we got to share this special day with.
From the bride on how they met:
I was working at a restaurant in Laguna Beach and he was an area manager for a restaurant, and one of their locations was next door to my work. My friends and I would frequent his work when we got off and we originally met just from me going in there a lot. He would travel to different locations, sometimes for a day, sometimes for months, so when he was at the Laguna Beach location we would chat a little. We knew each other for about a year before we started dating. While he was doing a long stint in the Laguna Beach location, we started talking a bit more than usual since he was there more often. One day when I was getting out of work I got a mass text from him with an invite to Taco Tuesday. Since I had no plans for the night, I decided to go. Everyone was going to meet at his house and go together, so I arrived at his house and we hung out for a little waiting for everyone else. When no one showed up, he said they would just meet us there and so off we went. When we got there, still no one. We ended up talking all night and having a blast getting to know each other and realizing how much we had in common. We ended up hanging out all night just the 2 of us, and we both felt something unexpected that we had never felt with anyone else before. So the next day we decided to have lunch. We had so much fun again that after I went home we decided to have dinner together too. After that day, we were basically inseparable! Things moved pretty quickly and we knew from very early on that we had something very special and that we wanted to be together forever. We got engaged after about 2 years of dating, and got married about 5 months after that.
Side note: For the first few months of our relationship I had always thought it was the weirdest “coincidence” that no one ever showed up that first night. When people asked how we met, I would tell them the whole story and say “it was so weird that no one showed up!” Then one day, he decided to tell me what really happened. Once I arrived at his house and he found out that I was single, he told all of his friends that he originally invited that he wasn’t going out any more and not to come. Stupid me.
Photographer: Lovisa Photo
Caterer: 24 Carrots Catering
Event Planner: Events by Evelynn
Floral Designer: Petite Bouquet
Ceremony + Reception Venue: Franciscan Gardens
DJ: Elevated Pulse Productions LLC
Makeup Artist: Makeup by Janae
Hair Stylist: Rochelle Randall
Bridal Gown Designer: Maggie Sottero
Bridal Gown Store: The Wedding Day
Cupcakes: Sara Hagar (friend of bride)
Gluen-Free Cake: Tisha Martin (friend of bride’s cousin)All images by Lovisa Photo
Submitted via Two Bright Lights