Pelican Hill Wedding

4 min readApr 8, 2021

What does your dream destination wedding in California look like? With the pristine, white sandy beaches, palm trees, and golden hour sunset, California has the most picturesque backdrop that money can’t buy. So it’s no wonder couples are flocking here for their dream destination wedding.

Our clients Mike and Erica were no exception. They chose to host their nuptials in Newport Beach at the legendary Pelican Hill. We worked with them from the very beginning, sourcing the location, extrapolating their vision, and producing the right team of professionals to execute a weekend full of celebrations.

When we first came across Pelican Hill, we fell in love with their rotunda. Therefore, we chose to keep the event day design surrounding this centerpiece structure as simple and non-obtrusive as possible. This also allowed guests to enjoy the gorgeous ceremony views of the Pacific Ocean behind their bride and groom.

At LLG Events, part of our process is to allocate our client’s budgets based on what is most important to the bride and groom. For this wedding and special couple, we decided to focus the majority of the budget on the reception decor. However, we still spent on the main elements, such as the mirrored aisle and aisle runner flowers, to highlight the ceremony area and give it some wow factors.

Our bride, Erica, showed us multiple photos of low Pampas grass ceremony displays, mirrored aisle runners, baby’s breath and lush floral arrangements, so we knew exactly what types of statements she was looking to make with her wedding decor. We love working within our client’s visions — especially ones with such direction. It helps us narrow down the components that they’re willing to splurge on, as well as get an idea of what they want. As the professional, it remains our job to make sure each component is cohesive with one another, and all design elements blend together seamlessly.

For each wedding, we also need to select the professionals that can execute the vision and produce the best wedding possible for our couples. For Mike and Erica’s wedding, Celios Design was the perfect choice, as they took each vision, each mood board, and enhanced it even further! The aisle was lush, romantic, reflective, and utterly perfect. The baby’s breath centerpieces were delicate and modern, as Celios Design used acrylic bridge stands for the rectangular tables and topped them with large clouds of baby’s breath. The decor was ultimately breathtaking. For the lower centerpieces, we tied in elements from the ceremony by adding in roses and orchids that were in the arch and the large centerpieces that stood on the acrylic stands.

Our metallic accent was gold, but we didn’t want it to be too overpowering, so we used it discretely in the chairs, on the menus, and as the decal on the dance floor. The bride also picked out beautiful gold favors from Turkey, which we placed on each table setting and filled with Arabic chocolates. Everything else remained white, vibrant and bright!

The twinkle lights were also such a huge focal point for the event, suspended across the entire dance floor and overtop the band. It created such a dreamy, fairytale effect, thanks to Amber Event Production, who created the entire magical look for the lights, the draping, and the chandeliers in the rotunda.

Overall, the entire day was absolutely perfect for Erica and Mike. As we watched the bride and groom dance the night away under the starry, twinkling lights, we couldn’t help but tear up — as we knew they were dancing into their new life together as husband and wife!