An Indian Micro Wedding in the Santa Cruz Redwoods

A Break Between Two Ceremonies at Sand Rock Farm

After the Hindu ceremony came photographs and a pause, time for Neha and Chris to change before the evening. Sand Rock Farm has the room for both halves of a day like this: a ten-acre estate first built in the 1880s as a ranch and winery, its redwood grove threaded with vintage lounge seating — a cream velvet settee with mustard pillows, a gilded side table set with wildflowers, a leather pouf, all of it under the trees in the dappled afternoon light.

With ten people and the whole grove to themselves, the portraits stayed unhurried, the family taking their time with the couple while the children ran the grounds between the two ceremonies. The break a two-ceremony day needs is exactly that: long enough to breathe, short enough that the evening read as a continuation of the same day.

Western Vows and Dinner in the Grove

In the evening everyone gathered for the Western half of the day. Chris's brother organized the vows, and Neha and Chris said them in front of the ten people who had traveled to be there, Chris in a maroon-and-gold sherwani, a champagne flute passing hand to hand as the family folded in for embraces against the ivy.

Dinner was a sit-down meal. The cake — a two-tier white cake trimmed with coral and cream carnations on a lace stand atop an old wine barrel — was cut among the family against the estate's ivy-covered stone wall. The night stayed loose after that, casual dancing, the East Coast relatives and the children still up, the redwoods dark around the property.