When Lynda Browning of suburban San Diego headed off to Stanford University, the last thing she expected to do was fall in love with a farmer and end up raising goats, chickens, and bushels of vegetables in Sonoma County. After all, she didn’t even like eating veggies that much. But that’s what happened.

To be honest, she probably didn’t realize Emmett Hopkins was a farmer when they met through friends, because at the time, he didn’t know it either. Like Lynda, Emmett was an Environmental Studies student at Stanford, and although he grew radishes in a window box outside his dorm room, he was planning to work for a nonprofit, as a consultant, or in a government agency, places where most of their classmates ended up.

When 11 exciting young Wine Country wedding pros get together and unleash their creativity, only good things can happen. Photographer Jen Kloss had the brainstorm earlier this year: “We all knew each other from working on weddings,” she said. “I wanted to see what would happen if we got together and designed an event without client constraints.” The result is a beautiful wedding that isn’t real, but I wish it were.


The theme, Prohibition and 1920s glamour, announces itself in the vintage-style invitations by Smashing Cards. “We wanted to play on contrasts,” says Kloss. “We have elements that are both rustic and glamorous, masculine and feminine.”

There’s a big difference between looking at wedding pictures and attending a wedding. The photos tell a perfect love story; you see the vows, the cake, and the wedding party in a small, very pretty moment. What the photos don’t show is Uncle Ray falling over and splitting his pants while kneeling in the aisle during the vows to take his own pictures (this happened at a wedding I attended). But that small mishap doesn’t come close to the series of wedding day disasters that befell Kathy Moore and Bryan Solari during their Sonoma County beach wedding. If rain on a wedding day is really a sign of a good marriage, then this pair has a great life ahead.

This You Tube video tells the story:

Last week we brought you the ultimate in creative wedding proposals, a “will you marry me” written in the sand on Ocean Beach. A lot of wanna-be grooms commented that Jason Fordley was making the rest of the male population look a bit, well, lame. Fellows (and go-getter women), if you haven’t got game, we’ve got your solution. Simply U Events, a wedding planning business that has recently expanded to Northern California, is providing help for the romantically challenged.