Everyone loves a gorgeous vineyard wedding.  The grounds at most wineries are beautifully kept and wonderfully gorgeous, creating a naturally beautiful backdrop.  Add in rows upon rows of grapevines and you have a enchanting locale, one that Claire Luna & Michael Mysse thought absolutely perfect for their intimate 48 person wedding.  Together Claire & Micheal hand selected details that reflected the course of their relationship as well as little details that were cued from the life they share together.  The result was table places, in lieu of numbers, highlighting some their of their favorite travels together as well as bicycle wheel escort card holders representing their shared love of cycling.  The ceremony and following cellar dinner was kept traditional and classic, with just the right personalized touches crafting a vineyard wedding that is classic winery wedding perfection.

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Novella of the Bride…

My husband and I met during a group ski trip to Mammoth in late 2011.  He is in security as well as a sergeant in the Army National Guard, and I’m the senior vice president of a jury consulting company.  We started dating right away but took it very, very slow, and he proposed during another ski trip to Utah on Valentine’s Day 2013.  We both love travel and have used the miles and hotel points I earn through work travel to explore the U.S. and others.  When home, he is an avid cyclist outside and I love indoor spin!  He actually taught me to ride a bike soon after we met so we could enjoy it together, and it was incredible to spend the first day of our honeymoon in Buenos Aires exploring the city by bicycle!

We wanted a location that felt a little distant from Orange County so our guests could make a fun weekend out of it, and given my love of wine, the wineries in Temecula seemed a good place to start.  Wiens just bowled us over from the very first visit with its gorgeous setting, incredibly friendly employees and “absolutely!  No problem!” attitude toward all of our requests.  Plus the wine is fantastic.  We loved the wine so much we drove out and joined the wine club for our two-month anniversary…and found out a week later that I was pregnant!

We wanted to share with our 48 guests some of the things we value most — family, friendship and great food and wine — in a setting that reflected our shared love of nature and appreciation for elegance and simplicity.  We used bicycles as the theme to tie everything together and found a gorgeous bicycle-built-for-two image that was featured on our invitations, menu and place cards (which were attached to vintage bicycle wheels).  We kept the mood relaxed with a string trio that played contemporary music such as Lady Gaga and Depeche Mode, and for the reception we chose all of the music ourselves and played it through an iPod.  During our ceremony, we included a love letter and wine box  ritual that most of our guests had never seen before: we enclosed in a box a bottle of wonderful wine and two love letters we wrote to each other.  We promised to keep it sealed until our fifth anniversary or a huge marriage-threatening argument.  Thankfully, the box is still nailed shut!

A Little Help From Their Friends ~ We had so much help from friends and family, which was invaluable in sticking to our $10,000 budget and also in making every part of the day more meaningful to us.  My husband’s parents cooked our rehearsal dinner of ribs and tri tip and smoked salmon.  A longtime family friend of my husband’s performed our ceremony as well as our premarital counseling, one of my closest friends did hair and makeup for myself and my bridesmaids, a colleague from my work made our gorgeous cake, and every single one of our guests helped out by having a wonderful time.

Favorite Moments ~ Michael and I chose to see each other before the ceremony for photos to take advantage of the extra time and gorgeous late-afternoon light.  It was the best decision we could have made, to spend that time together just the two of us and talk out all of our nervousness and jitters and just appreciate the chance to be alone for a little while in the middle of a hectic day.  Above all else, it really centered us in our devotion to each other, plus we were able to get out the majority of the tears before we were in front of everyone else.  And I still cried some more when walking down the aisle toward him two hours later.

Vendor Love

Photographer: Courtney McManaway Photography  | Venue: Wiens Family Cellars  | Wedding Dress: David’s Bridal | Shoes: Badgley Mischka  | Hair + Makeup: Charmed Beauty  | Invitations: Birch + Bliss | Music: Ocdamia Strings | Florist: RSVP Events  | Baker: Mallory Larsen