Kyle & Marita · Bellissimo Gardens, Salt Lake City

The morning, separately

They got ready in a timber house up in the pines, which meant the first hour of the day had nothing to do with a garden at all. Kyle put on a black tuxedo with his father working the bow tie for him. Marita sat in a window with the light coming in sideways and her mother beside her.

This is the quiet part of a wedding day and it is worth more than people expect. Nobody is performing yet. You get the room as it actually is, and by the time the day turns loud I already know everyone in it.

The letters, then the first look

Marita wore lace opera gloves with the gown. They read letters to each other first, standing at a window with their backs to the room, before either of them turned around. Then the door, then the first look, then about four minutes where nobody needed me to say anything.

Her bridesmaids saw the dress before he did and reacted the way you would hope. Her father saw it a moment after that.

Three gardens, one property

Bellissimo is not one garden. It is a lawn with a white colonnaded gazebo and the mountain standing straight up behind it, a cypress allée that runs long and narrow, and a green ironwork conservatory full of statuary that would not look out of place in Europe. We used all three, and we never left the property.

That matters more than it sounds. Portraits that need a drive cost the couple their cocktail hour. Here we did the whole set in the time it takes to finish a drink, and they got their own party back.

The bridal party went up onto the dry hillside above the valley first, under a sky doing something dramatic. Then back down into the green.

Oversized paper flowers and a saxophone

They married outdoors against a tall hedge, flanked by oversized white paper flowers on curved wire stems, taller than either of them. Kenny Fong played saxophone. Her father walked her up the brick aisle past white folding chairs.

Afterwards they signed the license by candlelight and rang the bell in the garden, which got the reaction bells always get. Rings on, and out into the cocktail hour.

The mountain goes pink at a quarter past seven

The Wasatch sits east of the garden, so the light goes soft here earlier than people expect and the range turns pink while the garden is still lit. We stole ten minutes for it, which is all it takes, and were back before anyone noticed they had gone.

Dinner was in the garden at round tables under white linen. Speeches. Then Marita changed into a sleek one-shoulder dress, the saxophone came back out into the middle of the crowd, and the night ended with her firing a confetti cannon over the whole party.