Taylor and Jon's Wedding at Sylvan Lake Estate in Napa Valley

Lovely Day Events WeddingsNapa WeddingsNapa weddings and Sonoma weddingsWedding Planning

Oct 21

What could be more picture-perfect than a Romantic Napa Valley Estate Wedding? If a Napa wedding is something you've always visualized, then you have to take a look at Taylor and Jon's picture-perfect day at Sylvan Lake Estate! Talk about being absolutely beautiful! Every little detail just comes shining out through the pictures.

A gorgeous palette of peachy blooms and blush ‘maids, combined with personalized details featuring their rescue pup, Frankie, make this Britt Rene-captured family-friendly affair one for the books.

If we haven’t met yet, hi! I’m Lindsey Nickel and I’m a local Sonoma and Napa wedding planner and the owner of Lovely Day Events. My team and I have planned more than 140 destination weddings, so I can tell you firsthand that Sylvan Lake Estate is something special. My clients want the ceremony to be outside, the food to be outstanding, and the dance parties to be epic. If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place.

From the beautiful Bride… We originally met at UC Berkeley on a football game day. Jon was a Senior and I was a Freshman, but we didn’t start dating until after Jon had graduated. So countless BART rides to and from San Francisco were the start of our relationship.

Jon proposed at my parents’ house, in the backyard. I was completely shocked because I had planned a big rafting trip with all of our friends the next day — so on Friday afternoon my mom & I were making enchiladas getting ready for the party, when Jon called me outside because he had a question. I was in my bathing suit and covered in chicken (from the enchilada prep) — so needless to say I wasn’t prepared! It was the perfect proposal for us though, we came back inside and my family was waiting with champagne, and the next day all of our best friends were there to celebrate.

We wanted our wedding to feel like you were at our house. Jon and I (and my parents) LOVE entertaining and having people over for dinners and parties, so we wanted this to feel no different. My family is Italian, so the family style dinner played into that, as well as the long connecting tables. Essentially our goal was to make it a family affair. From Jon’s mom officiating the wedding to our little toddler cousins kicking off the dance party, it turned out exactly how we wanted.

I can never pull off surprising Jon, but he made it so easy for me with the first dance. For the last 8 months about every week he would come up with a new song he wanted to dance to. I didn’t really have a strong preference in the song, so I thought it would be fun to create a mix of all his favorites for the first dance. I sent all the songs to his friend who blended them all together and started it off with the song Jon thought was our first dance song. Before the wedding we took dance lessons, and learned a dance to the “fake song”. Jon kept wanting to practice it, but knowing that we weren’t actually dancing to that I kept pushing it off. Worried since we NEVER practiced, the day of we decided to just prom dance. Which turned out to be a good thing (despite looking very awkward) because once the song switched Jon was so surprised I don’t think he could have handled a choreographed dance! Ha!

The last “little” detail is our pup, Frankie. We rescued her almost 4 years ago, and our lives haven’t been the same ever since. She was a strong theme of the wedding — wine labels, thank you cards, signature drink, and also our ring bearer. She’s a wild woman so we weren’t sure how she would handle the ring bearer role, but she got it together (aside from eating part of her flower collar) and gave a perfect bark of approval once Jon’s mom announced we were married.