100 Layer Cake

When someone from the event design world gets married, we pour ourselves a fancy cocktail and prepare to have a little swooning session while going through every image and detail. Of course, when the photos are coming from Jose Villa, and the wedding belongs belongs to Cortnie, the talented planner & stylist behind Canvas and Canopy and very admired name around our office… well, you just know it’s going to be a stunner.

The wedding took place on the beaches of San Diego, but wasn’t your typical sunny San Diego beach wedding. In fact Courtnie even hoped for a foggy, overcast day to really create a unique and ethereal vibe. With a huge storm warning on its way, she got what she wanted and the shipwrecked vibe, a washed ashore, nautical, ethereal almost ghostly feel came to life with the help of good friend and coordinator, Carolyn Chen of The Special Day.

One of our personal touches that appeared on the invitations, menus, programs, and cakes were the silhouettes of bears. My nickname for both Donny & our dog Bubba are my bears. Even the ringBEARers wore lapel pins with bears on them, and my bouquet had a necklace that had a bear locket wrapped around it with photos of Donny and Bubba inside.

Ahh! Loving her Jimmy Choos.

Let’s talk about THE dress! Amaze, right? Cortnie wore a custom gown created by Joan Shum. From Cortnie… I basically just told her I wanted long sleeves, a gorgeous textured skirt and I wanted the color to be a mixture of blush + beige. A color I later decided to coin as ‘bleige’. I tried my wedding dress on for the very first time the week of the wedding and it was perfect. Joan came down on my wedding day and even dressed me! The gown matched the colors of foggy day and sand perfectly and could not have been more elegant.