A Family-Only Redwoods Minimony at Old Mill Park

Family Photos in the Grove at Old Mill Park

After the ceremony the family moved through the park for portraits — couple photos and family groupings, everyone a short walk from the amphitheater, the redwoods rising behind every grouping. There were kids in it. One black-and-white portrait catches a young couple grinning with a baby bundled between them, and in another Maggie wraps a young boy in glasses in a hug, both of them laughing. This was a wedding with children running through it, the way the family wanted it.

Cascade Creek runs through the grove, and the park sits around a replica of John Thomas Reed's 1830s sawmill, the first in Marin County, which milled the redwood that helped build early San Francisco. With ten people the portraits didn't take long, which left time to just stand around in the trees between shots — the way the whole day was meant to feel.

A Family Table at Floodwater

Dinner moved indoors to Floodwater in Mill Valley, a local restaurant a short drive from the park, its dining room hung with bright, colorful folk-art paintings. The table carried white floral arrangements and tall dried pampas and wheat, oysters set out on the wood, and everyone leaned in for a toast, glasses raised across the table. Dessert came from Oliver's Market, boxed and waiting alongside the cake.

There were toasts, a first dance, and a cake to cut, all at the scale of the ten people who mattered most. A December evening in Old Mill Park pulls the dark in early and keeps the sound of the creek going through the trees, but the room they ended in was warm and full, every toast landing on exactly the person it was meant for.