Kari knew there was something special about Kyle the moment she met him. During a mutual friend’s camping trip in Utah, she asked Kyle to teach her how to work the ATV. It was a ploy to get him to talk to her. Soon after, they started dating.
The first three years of their relationship was long-distance, as Kyle was working in Oregon. “We made sure we visited each other often in whatever city that Kyle was working, and we always kept a trip on the calendar that we could look forward to,” Kari says.
After some time, they were finally able to plant roots in the Bay Area together. On their seventh anniversary, Kyle proposed during a flight over wine country. “Toward the end of the flight, I looked down and ‘Kari, will you marry me?’ was written on a field below us,” she says. “I looked back at Kyle and couldn’t hear what he was saying so I just said, ‘YES!’ and had him repeat all the lovey-dovey stuff a few weeks later and again a few weeks after that!”
The couple jumped headfirst into wedding planning. “We didn’t want to lose the momentum and excitement we had,” she says. “We visited lots of venues and churches to make sure it felt right for the both of us. We thought a lot about what would excite our families given that most would be making a trip of it, as they would be visiting from out of town. We were excited to share where we live with our loved ones.”
When they visited Alexander Valley Community Hall, they knew they found their venue. “We wanted the convenience of having the ceremony and reception at one place, she says. “Our designer, Rion Designs, built us an arch filled with greenery and a chandelier above us. We set that up by the building and it ended up being the most incredible backdrop!”
Kari’s vision for the wedding was “an elegant summer’s day,” but sticking to that theme was sometimes a challenge. “The hardest part was staying focused on the theme or vision,” she says. “With so much different wedding inspiration, we had to remember what made sense with the direction we were going. At one point, someone described my early wedding ideas as something like a ‘country prairie wedding’ and I immediately realized we had gone off track.”
At a scorching 106 degrees, the day of their wedding was one of the hottest days of the year. And though those temps could cause perspiration, everyone around the couple felt nothing but utter happiness.
“I remember walking down the aisle feeling blessed by all the faces that were not only enduring the summer’s day heat for us but also filled with so much joy for Kyle and me in this moment,” she says.
— Kourtney Jason
