Casey & Gabe
Photographer: Christina Richards
ONE SENTENCE SUM-UP OF THE WEDDING VIBE: Emotional, joyful, windy, personal, and seriously fun.
Soundtrack for reading: “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty, as covered by Dan Curcio
Other Cool Stuff We Should Know About
Our venue, Flying Caballos Ranch in San Luis Obispo, has some beautifully restored old homes on the property where we stayed with our friends for several days leading up to the wedding. Getting this time together helped take a lot of the pressure off the wedding day itself, and of course we had a great time wine tasting, hot-tubbing, and catching up with everyone.
We were so lucky to have some talented and generous family and friends who helped make our wedding possible. Everyone helped with all the setup and breakdown, Casey’s former babysitter hand-painted 150 stemless wine glasses, Gabe’s mom provided lots of warm blankets that were essential as the wind picked up, Casey’s dad’s best friend was the officiant, and his wife stayed up until 3 AM the night before arranging all the flowers. It was truly a community effort, making it even more meaningful for us and for everyone involved.
Also, we were pretty adamant about doing things our own way and not sticking to tradition. As is pretty obvious from the photos, our wedding party was very uneven (seven groomsmen and three bridesmaids). That was just how it worked out, and we didn’t want to force ourselves to even it out just to make it more balanced or “normal.” For the traditional first dances, Casey had a grandfather-granddaughter dance instead of a father-daughter dance: her dad loathes dancing whereas her Grandpa loves it, so it was a natural choice and ended up being a really special moment. Finally, we didn’t want a wedding cake but dessert was super important to us, so we organized a dessert potluck that included several kinds of homemade pie, cookies, brownies, and Buckeyes. The cake we cut was a cheesecake from Costco (no shame, their cheesecake is amazing), spruced up with some berries on top.
Favorite Thing About the Wedding
Everything! But some special memories include: exchanging gifts early in the day and realizing we had gotten each other the same card, a rowdy pre-ceremony game of Cards Against Humanity, and sitting around the fire pit with our friends at the end of the night.
