A Bluff-Top Micro Wedding at Timber Cove on the Sonoma Coast

The Micro Wedding on the Timber Cove Bluff

The ceremony was out on the bluff, on a stretch of green lawn at the edge, chairs set in two banks with an aisle down the middle and the Pacific filling the whole horizon behind. Kevin's brother, Ryan, stood as officiant between them. Kevin came down with his mom, Shannon, on his arm. Melissa walked last with her dad, Dana, in his grey suit and blue floral tie.

They held hands and said their vows while the wind came steady off the water and fourteen people sat close in every chair. Past the last row there was nothing but ocean — all the setting the day needed. A micro wedding on the Timber Cove bluff runs on exactly this: no distance between the couple and the people watching, and a coastline doing the work a big venue never could.

“Fourteen people on the edge of the Sonoma Coast, the ocean just past the chairs.”

Portraits on the Cliffs, a Sonoma Coast Bluff Ceremony

Family photos and couple portraits came right after, out across the resort's clifftop, while a charcuterie-and-champagne spread was set inside. Photographed by Viera Photographics, Melissa and Kevin moved along the headland with their small group as the sculptural bluffs and the open water rose behind them. Timber Cove has given its cliffs to artists since the 1960s — the sculptor Beniamino Bufano's landmark Peace Statue still rises off the rock nearby — and that same coastline stood behind them all before the light started to turn.

One Long Table in the Commune Room

Everyone came back inside to the Commune Room, with its exposed timber beams and stone fireplace and the ocean right past the glass, for one long table — six chairs to a side, two on the ends. The first dance came first, then Melissa and Kevin's own toast, then a plated dinner. Dana gave the father-of-the-bride toast, and the dances kept going from there: Kevin with his mom, Shannon, then Melissa with her dad.

They cut a champagne cake from Sweet C's Bake Shoppe, finely textured in fine lines and filled with strawberry compote. The night ended out on the coast, a last walk to the bluff for sunset photos before the light went.