An Oceanfront Inn Micro Wedding at The Inn at Laguna Beach

A Rooftop-Ocean Ceremony at The Inn at Laguna Beach

The ceremony was set on the ocean terrace, a red-tile deck at the cliff's edge with a round copper arch standing at the center of it. The arch was dressed asymmetrically with pampas and dried grasses and soft blush blooms, and past it there was nothing but palms, the beach dropping away below, and the flat open Pacific running to the horizon. Wooden folding chairs faced the water.

Their friend Becca Barnett married them there — a choice that puts someone who actually knows you at the front, so the vows sounded like Alison and Michael and not a script read off a card. The guests sat close on the bluff, near enough to hear the words over the sound of the surf. A friend officiating at a Laguna Beach hotel wedding gives the whole ceremony that ease. It was short, it was warm, and it was theirs.

“Twenty guests on a coastal bluff, a friend reading the vows with the open ocean behind them.”

Oceanfront Portraits on the Bluff

Family photos happened right on the property, the palms and the white walls of The Inn behind them. Alison gathered in with her parents and bridesmaids — her dad in a grey suit and a teal patterned tie, one mom in champagne sequins, the family close and easy. Michael had a moment of his own with the two moms leaning in on either side to kiss his cheek, one in lilac lace, one in navy, his white-rose boutonnière between them.

Then Alison and Michael walked out along the boardwalk above the sand for their portraits, the Laguna hillside stacked with houses catching the low gold light behind them. The Inn sits a five-minute walk from the beach, so the ocean was behind them almost everywhere they stood. Alison danced a laughing few steps with her dad on the terrace too, the palms reflected in the glass doors behind them — an unguarded moment a small guest list leaves room for.

Filet, Lobster, and the Sand Castle Ballroom

Late in the afternoon they cut the cake at a round wood table set out on the terrace, the sun low enough now to throw warm light across the deck, string lights strung overhead and pillar candles clustered around the base. It was a two-tier cake, white with a blush middle tier, trimmed with a fan of dried flowers and set among pampas and low blush-rose arrangements, the coast behind them turning pink.

Dinner was in the Sand Castle Ballroom, a plated filet mignon and lobster, a hosted bar, and toasts around a room small enough that everyone could hear them. The centerpieces carried the same soft blush roses and dried grasses down the tables, candles between them, the ocean still just past the windows in the dark. The Inn cooks its food in-house, so there was no second venue and no outside caterer to wait on — everything came out of the same kitchen as the rest of the hotel, and the twenty people they'd brought settled in and stayed.