Jess & Sam: A Globe-Spanning Love Story at Harvest Inn, Napa Valley
What a gift it is to get a couple who knows what they want and trust you to execute it.
Jess and Sam were the first couple to ever ask me to plan their wedding, and I couldn't have asked for a better one. They met through an exchange program and spent years crossing the globe together, from London to Illinois to New York, before landing in the Bay Area for Sam's graduate program.
When they came to me, they were a few months into planning. They had a couple of venues they liked and a clear sense of the feeling they wanted. What they didn't have yet was the path from that feeling to a finished room. So we tested the vision against each backdrop, imagined it in every space, and landed on Harvest Inn in St. Helena.
Why Harvest Inn works for a Napa Valley wedding
Harvest Inn gives you a lot in small, quiet ways. It has distinct spaces for the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception, so the day moves guests from one moment to the next and every transition becomes a reveal. The in-house linens, tables, and tableware are a strong foundation, and a few targeted upgrades make the space entirely yours.
It's also one of the best hotels in Napa Valley, and that changes the whole guest experience. Guests wake up on property, swim, have breakfast, get ready, and walk into your wedding as true guests of honor. Nobody is checking a shuttle schedule.
Claudia, the events lead at Harvest Inn, is one of the best venue partners I've worked with. She adapts and stays open to big ideas, and she holds a firm line where one is needed. That combination matters when you're building something ambitious that also has to work on the day. I'm now a preferred Harvest Inn wedding planner, and this wedding is a big part of why.
The brief
Jess and Sam's design brief was simple and complex at once. The palette was deep reds, sky blues, silver, greenery, and warm browns. Together those colors made a rich tapestry that reflected the places they'd been and the places they're headed next.
Ikebana wedding centerpieces and a grass-forward arch
They hired Abby of Nothing Wasted Floral to flower the entire celebration, and they couldn't have chosen better. (Abby is now a very good friend.) She built a grass-forward ceremony arch and two back-aisle arrangements that sang against the Mayacamas Mountains.
For dinner, we went with ikebana-style centerpieces. Each table held a cluster of single-stem and few-stem arrangements: minimal, sleek, and inventive, which was exactly Jess and Sam.
Stationery
Jess and Sam designed their own stationery in collaboration with me. They wanted it minimal, featuring Sam's favorite typeface, Baskerville, with real gravitas for the day. They nailed it.
The dance floor
A lot of people overlook the dancing room at Harvest Inn. At first glance it isn't the obvious place for a party. We filled the ceiling with balloons, added uplighting, and hung disco balls in the right spots, and it became a nightclub. By the end of the night, Sam was passing around carajillo shots.
Filiberto Quintero and his dad kept the floor full all night with jazz, live saxophone, and hot beats. That mattered, because this crowd spanned generations and continents: guests came from Arizona, Chicago, England, and South America. It was the whole tapestry of Jess and Sam's life sewn together in one room, and everyone had the best time.
The details that stay with me
The speeches were so heartfelt that nobody checked the time. And the food was incredible. The short rib was a crowd favorite, and the barbecued chicken they served us upstairs was one of the best vendor meals I've ever had. Nobody plans a wedding for the vendor meal, but feeding your team well says a lot about a couple.
Jess and Sam, thank you for trusting me first. I'll carry this one with me.