If you want to create chill wedding day for your guests and yourself, take some notes from this beautiful Santa Barbara Carousel House Wedding. This day was the epitome of a wedding created with the purpose of taking it easy, being relaxed, and having fun. I second-shot this beautiful day for Caitlin Higgason. This means, I spent the first part of it with the boys while she focused on the bride and her girls. Then we met up to photograph the rest of the day together, with her as the primary.
The location was the first really obvious suggestion that it was going to be a perfectly smooth day. Santa Barbara screams "laid back" and we were all for it! The groom wore an olive green suit, the bride wore such an elegant and comfortable (as in, it was easy for her to move around in it) white dress.
The timeline was straight forward and smooth sailing. Both got ready in their respective hotel rooms, and did a first look right across the street at the beach. In the same location, we photographed some bridals and went right into bridal party photos. We had the bridal party meet us about 25min after the first look.
SANTA BARBARA CAROUSEL HOUSE WEDDING
Their ceremony/reception space is one of my favorites. They had benches for the older guests, picnic tables for the rest. This was a very smart move because the picnic tables also served as cocktail hour and reception dining areas. Finally, the dance party was in the Carousel House "stage" area. It looks small from far away but actually fits a great amount of people. It's beautiful in that it's pretty much a blank canvas that you can alter and design in any way you choose. This beautiful couple added cute tables with minimal center pieces, and a few Persian rugs to the center. They also added lounge couches on the outside part of it.
The Santa Barbara Carousel House is truly simply a park -- a very beautiful park. But nonetheless, this makes everything very convenient because all is held in one space. They included a cute bar, a gelato bar (yeah, the yummiest gelato) and a pizza oven truck!! It was as chill and perfect as can be.
