Hand-Dyed Silk, Spoken Word, and the Most Spectacular Backyard on the Washington Coast
When couples tell me they're having a backyard wedding, I picture string lights and a tent and a cooler of beer. I have been to many backyard weddings. I thought I understood the assignment.
Jill and Si's wedding on the Washington coast recalibrated everything.
Jill's family home sits on the water — the kind of property that makes you stop walking and just stand there for a moment, taking it in. The trees, the light, the shore. It is the kind of place that feels like it was made for exactly this kind of day. And from the very first moment, it was clear that this family doesn't do anything halfway.
Start with the dress. Jill wore a sleek white dress with a silk skirt that she dyed herself — a watercolor wash of teal and blue that pooled at her feet when she stood still and moved like something alive when she walked. It was one of the most quietly extraordinary bridal looks I've ever photographed, and the fact that she made it herself made it even more so. Her wildflower bouquet — daisy, orange poppy, cobalt blue, fern.
The wedding party wore a full spectrum of warm tones — amber, rust, marigold, terracotta — against the deep Pacific Northwest green of the tree line behind them, and the effect was like standing inside a painting. The flower girl, in a golden ruffled dress with a sunflower crown in blue and yellow.
The reception itself included a live band, spoken word poetry, and interpretive dance. The party spread out across the property in the golden late-afternoon light — outdoor dining tables beneath the trees, Persian rugs laid out as a dance floor, gladioli in every color standing tall in glass vases, guests dressed like they'd been given a color palette and told to have fun with it. The bar menu deserves its own mention: each cocktail was named for and illustrated with a hand-painted portrait of Jill and Si's cats. The first dance happened in full golden hour, the kind of light that makes everything look like it belongs in a museum.
As the sun dropped toward the water and turned everything pink and gold, Jill and Si walked barefoot along the shore. She waded in laughing. He pulled her back. The whole day had been like that — full of joy, full of color, full of people who love each other deeply and know how to show it.
Jill and Si, thank you for letting me into this day. I came expecting a backyard wedding. I got something I'll be telling people about for years.
Photographed at a private family residence on the Washington coast.
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