Modern Barn Wedding - Flying Caballos Wedding

Zoe and Wade’s California Modern Barn Wedding was such a dream to photograph. Not only are they the two sweetest people, but their style is amazing. Ever since I saw Zoe’s dress, I knew the rest of the day would be gorgeous. Zoe also has a special connection to Flying Caballos Ranch. Her great-great grandparents built the original yellow farmhouse and raised their children there. Zoe’s grandparents owned the ranch until the mid-00’s. She always knew that she wanted to get married there, even though she was raised in Illinois. Her family would visit the ranch during summer vacations to California. Wade needed no convincing to have their wedding there.

They had a few hurdles thrown at them because of the pandemic. They had to delay the wedding by a year and it ended up being more of an anniversary celebration (they married in Illinois on their original wedding date).

Here are Zoe’s own words describing some of the decisions they made for the day:

We tried to be as intentional as possible with all of our details. We held the ceremony in the field and cocktail hour in the backyard so everyone could see the farmhouse up close. The string quartet played songs that were hand-picked by us and featured more Taylor Swift than I care to admit. This year, we opted to walk down the aisle together to signify our equal partnership. We decided to cut out all of the “extras” from the reception (i.e. cake cutting) so we could focus on dancing.

Wade wore a white smoking jacket inspired by the one that his grandfather wore on his wedding day, and uses my paternal grandfather’s ring as his wedding band. Our design was inspired by our own personal home decor style and we wanted everything to feel very “us”. Nothing for the sake of a trend or tradition. That was also my number-one rule when picking out my dress and accessories. I wanted everything to feel like something I would actually wear in real life.

Overall, I’m really proud to say that I designed (and re-designed) the entire day myself. I work in the not-so-creative legal profession and the wedding really was a much-needed creative outlet for me during the pandemic.