Huntington Beach Rustic, Romantic, DIY Wedding: Jessica & Josh {Jesse Thomas Photography}

Prepare yourself for a HUGE dose of eye candy today.  Jessica and Josh’s Huntington Beach wedding was a true labor of love, filled with all the lovely little details we have come to adore - and the most amazing part?  Almost everything in this gorgeous wedding was crafted by this loving couple and friends and family.

Annnd… we get to hear the story from the bride as she narrates their story via pictures :)

Succulents, billy buttons, feathers and mason jars: oh my!

All images are (c) Jesse Thomas Photography.

Meet Jessica.  Jessica is from Johannesburg, South Africa, and she moved to Southern California about 3 years ago with her family.  Besides being absolutely stunning, Jessica is also a student who runs a small coffee shop at her local church.

Meet Josh.  Josh is a very talented musician and quite the looker, too.  He and Jessica make one fine couple, don’t they!

Such an adorable pair.

From the bride: Preparing for our wedding was the most exciting and fun adventure to start our lives together.  We wanted to create our day to incorporate us as a couple but represent our individual personalities as well.  We are both quite creative but yet so different in how we see things.  We started with our favorite colors and went from there.  

Wanting to make it a budget-friendly wedding, and appreciating the value of keeping things as eco-friendly as possible, a lot of our decorations and designs were hand-made, from our table cloths to the favors.  We found this gorgeous venue in Orange County called Newlands Barn, a beautiful red barn with an old white house near it and a big outdoor area perfect to create what we wanted.  

One of the most amazing tablescapes I’ve seen in a very long time.  Prepare yourselves for some beauty, friends!

In hopes of keeping things eco- & budget-friendly, we collected a lot of bottles and jars from friends which helped create our centerpieces as well as vases from around the house which were filled with simple, elegant, and local flowers from the LA Flower Mart, to bring in the green and mustard color.

From our hair accessories, to my shoe rosettes, to the flower arrangements (I could go on and on!) we used the help of our friends and family to add the personal touch to our day.  It was an incredible feeling walking down the aisle looking at all of our family and friends and knowing that mostly each one had a special part of that day and our lives into the future.

Our favors were hand-made metal and seed hearts from friends in South Africa for the ladies, and home-made brownies for the men.  

Each table was named after our favorite songs and guests were able to find their names on old vintage windows.  Guests were able to leave something personal for us, a fun picture to add to our scrapbook in our own made photobooth with props to add to the fun and on our finger tree, where guests used paint provided and their fingerprint to create a leaf-effect on a hand-drawn tree to add to our home.

I have to say that through only 3 months of planning I had the best time celebrating our lives being united together on that day. Everything was perfect and absolutely gorgeous, I look at our beautiful pictures and think wow did we actually do that? It is definitely not an easy task but certainly a rewarding one, one that is fun and exciting. I love the fact that mostly all our decorations are being used in our house today which creates a great personal touch to our home from that very special day. As a couple we wanted to create an intimate day, filled with our closest family and friends enjoying it with us. I loved being able to make mostly everything and create the designs and ideas that we had come to life, from the simple details to the more personal ones. I will definitely remember everything about that day.

I would definitely encourage brides to create exactly what they want on that day, there is nothing more special than creating and adding personal details and touches to your wedding day. A lot of my time was spent looking for great ideas from magazines and the internet and then incorporating our colors and personal touches to that idea. Finding second hand items that worked with our design and making a lot of the details could add so much to your special day like it did for our day.
~Jessica Fowler, the lovely bride