Santa Barbara Zoo Wedding
Santa Barbara Zoo Wedding.
The Santa Barbara Zoo was the perfect fall venue for Rozlin and Keith’s bold and whimsical wedding with lots of colorful DIY touches. It was important to Rozlin and Keith that their wedding represented who they were as a couple, as well as incorporated the bride’s Spanish heritage and the groom’s Jewish background. These two wanted their wedding decor to be outside of the box and memorable, so they chose to make their own multi-colored and individualized dried flowers and moss terrarium centerpieces for each table. They also decided to get married under a chuppah, but to decorate it with traditional Mexican paper flowers; which the bridal party also carried in lieu of traditional bouquets. If you were spending time with the bride and groom at the reception, you were dancing! The couple’s favorite part of the day was everyone dancing to their specially curated playlist. From the couple’s wedding attire, to their mixing of traditions, to their colorful decor, everything about this wedding was bold enough to match Rozlin and Keith’s vivacious personalities and their palpable love for each other.
Photographer: Kaitie Brainerd Photography
Location: Santa Barbara Zoo
Q: Tell us about your wedding! What was the inspiration behind your day? Did you have a specific theme, style or color palette? Did you incorporate any cultural or religious traditions in any part of your day?
A: When we were originally planning out the wedding we were looking for the venue to dictate the look and style of the day. We knew we wanted to get married in the Fall, so we knew the colors would be Fall themed, and we knew we wanted the wedding to have some Spanish flair, because of the bride’s background. When we found the zoo, it all kind of fell into place. Somehow our Fall colors and Spanish flowers meshed really well with the natural jungle ambiance of the zoo. Thanks to the animal packages we chose, the flamingo became the unofficial mascot of our wedding, which added an element of whimsy. The groom has Jewish heritage, so we got married under a chuppah, but the bride has Mexican heritage, so we decorated it with Mexican paper flowers. We also incorporated the Jewish breaking of the glass tradition, which is ordinarily done by the groom, but the bride thought it was only fair if she participated too, so we both had a go at it. One last element we incorporated into our ceremony was the Mexican lasso tradition. The lasso we used has been in the bride’s family for 45 years, and has been involved in many family weddings.
Q: Do you have any wedding planning or marriage advice that you'd like to share with other couples planning their day?
A: Give yourself plenty of time, especially if you’re doing DIY stuff. Also, if you are doing anything DIY, it’s really fun and rewarding to include close friends and family with helping out. We threw a couple of centerpiece making dinner parties for our bridal party, which were not only really fun, but made everyone feel like they were much more of a part of things. Another thing we learned is weddings are about accommodating others as much as they are about getting what you want. Although it’s really important to have the day be representative of the wedding couple, you can’t forget that the people who love and care about you matter too. The last piece of advice we can give is make sure you keep everything in perspective. During our planning process, the bride’s mom was diagnosed with cancer. Even though she’s OK now, at the time it was very scary and put our planning on hold for a few months. Yes, there were things to do and deadlines to meet, but life doesn’t stop just because you’re planning a wedding. Things WILL go wrong, and it’s not always going to be a magical, happy, fun time. In fact, in our experience, most of the time you’re not going to feel like a bride or a groom. You’re going to feel overworked and stressed out. But guess what. That’s OK. When you’re feeling overwhelmed and like you just want the whole thing to be over, just take a deep breath and realize no one is going to die because you didn’t choose the right napkins. You also may need to invest time in managing your relationships with people so they understand why you’re not as around as they want you to be. Do as much work as you can, but make sure the rest of your life is taken care of too. That’s what we did and we couldn’t be happier with how our wedding turned out.