A Marine-Center Micro Wedding at the Seymour Center, Santa Cruz

Portraits Along the Oceanfront Science-Venue Coast

After the ceremony came the portraits, out along the bluff and the paths around the center while the light held gold over the water. Jamie and Oscar pulled the whole crowd together for one big family shot right at the cliff's edge, arms up, Monterey Bay and the distant line of the peninsula behind them and a toddler down in front. One of the fathers took a quiet minute of his own, leaning against a coin-operated viewing telescope on the bluff, the coastal scrub and the flat sea running out behind him.

Then the two of them carried on along the coast for their couple portraits, Jamie's ball gown catching the wind off the bay. The Seymour Center sits on a coastal point, so a Santa Cruz aquarium wedding here means the water is behind them almost everywhere they stood — and inside, the tanks hold the animals the researchers work with, a blue-eyed wolf-eel among them, tucked into the pink-and-purple rock.

Dinner, Cake, and Dancing at the Marine Center

Dinner moved indoors as the light went, into a warm room of wood beams and tall windows now dark with the night coast behind them. The tables were laid simply and green: a lush seeded-eucalyptus garland down the center, sage napkins, green-glass tumblers, pillar candles, and kraft-paper thank-you packets printed with a sunflower at each place. Jamie and Oscar sat at a sweetheart table with a low white-rose-and-eucalyptus arrangement, a lime cocktail and an old fashioned in front of them, laughing through the toasts from their closest people.

They cut the cake together — a layered cake in bright citrus-gold and berry tones under green frosting, from Sweet C's Bake Shoppe — and then came the first dance and the dancing that carried the evening the rest of the way. A close, happy crowd on the Santa Cruz coast, the ocean still just past the walls, everyone in no hurry to call it.