bride and groom kiss on a cliff overlooking the ocean as the sun sets behind them at their tropical boho dolphin bay wedding in shell beach, california, captured by slo wedding photography duo poppy and vine

To say Mary & Joe’s wedding is the wedding of my wildest dreams is an understatement.

Every part of their day was absolutely stunning, so full of joy, and so intentionally planned. Their decor was about the closest thing to perfect I’ve ever seen, and I highly recommend scrolling through this gallery to see it for yourself. The craziest part about Mary & Joe’s tropical boho wedding on the oceanfront lawn at the Dolphin Bay Resort, you ask? They planned the whole thing in a month. No joke, you guys, they pulled this stunning wedding together in A MONTH!

Mary, the bride, is a wedding planner herself, so she’s had a very distinct vision of what her wedding would look like one day. She and Joe were waiting for the perfect moment to have their own wedding in the midst of her crazy busy schedule, made worse by covid. They discovered a lull in her wedding season in mid-July and decided to try to make it happen.

Everything fell into place perfectly, from their dream list of vendors to all of their favorite people being able to make the trip out to San Luis Obispo. Mary designed an absolute dream, from the picturesque arch overlooking the ocean, to the tropical dried florals with a boho touch, and transforming the plain white reception tent into a space that had me more creatively inspired than I’ve been in the longest time.

When I asked Mary to tell them their story, this is what she wrote:

“There has always been that saying that when you know, you know. Well I didn't necessarily know right away but I did immediately have quite a strong inkling that something was going to happen with Joe. I saw him outside of class and thought that he was quite the cutie. When we went back into class Joe had taken it upon himself to sit right next to me. We were in a class for our major, Recreation, Tourism, Hospitality Management, which was a very small major. I knew I had never met him before so I asked him if he was new. I introduced him to the rest of the class and every Thursday I would look forward to seeing Joe. From meeting in class we began to date and there really is just something about Joe’s calming and sweet demeanor that you just cant not fall in love with.

After college Joe moved back to Pasadena to be close to me. He started a job that he wasn't in love with and questioned where the next beginning would be. We both decided that we would love to live in a different country and travel. Spain was one of our top choices and we found a program that allowed us to travel on the weekends and teach on the weekdays. (Spain knows how to live it up as every weekend ended up being a 3 day weekend) . We traveled all over Europe that summer visiting Portugal, England, Ireland, Croatia and all the beautiful cities on the coast of Spain. We decided we wanted to work on an Italian Villa for the last part of our European excursion and genuinely had the best time.

We had known we were going to get married and talked about where and when all the time. We thought about eloping at the villa we were working at but of course knew that having family and friends was important to us.”

And so their perfect, sunny Saturday in July presented itself, everything fell into place, and these two were finally able to say “I do” surrounded by everyone they loved, in the most stunning, tropical, oceanfront setting. Keep scrolling to see the rest of this DREAM of a day!