The venue doesn’t need much words. Once you step in you feel like you’rein a romantic fairytale. Dallas made everything so simple and was extremely flexible with food and drink options as well as ceremony flow.

It was the perfect setting for what I needed

In 2006 I moved to Europe to do my Masters Degree for what was supposed to be 1 year of school, travelling and adventure away from home. Twelve years later and I’m still living and working in London having never really made it back home.

But it’s April and I’m back home in Nevada City for 2 weeks to get married to a charming blue-eyed Irish man and we’ve brought with us a swarm of British and Irish to celebrate with us in my beautiful hometown. I tell you this because our wedding at The Stone House was planned entirely over email with Dallas (event coordinator) in the 5 months leading up to our big day. We signed the contract without ever meeting in person or stepping foot inside the rustic and dreamy Stone House. We were 100% sure from our email correspondence alone and the events package on offer that Dallas’s team and The Stone House could host our wedding and give us the party we visioned. It was better than we could even imagine.

For the 13th April we hired the patio for our ceremony (and prayed the rain/snow would hold off. It did!), the lounge bar upstairs and the dining room for our wedding from 3:30 - 10pm allowing the tavern bar and music venue downstairs to operate as normal. This didn’t interfere with our event. Our only complaint being we should have hired until midnight and kept the dancing and drinking go all night.

Organizing and planning our wedding was a team effort and Dallas and I worked very closely together (think 100’s of emails, spreadsheets, timelines, visuals) to ensure everything fell into place. She worked tirelessly to answer all my questions (I was a persistent emailer), dealt with me changing my mind a lot, and fulfilled all of our special requests (sourcing a special champagne for toasts, getting us a spectacular selection of local craft beer to choose from after we rejected some of the options, teaching us how to use the sound system so we didn’t need a dj). We were only in town for 1 week before the wedding and in this time she met with us twice to finalize things in addition to doing an awesome evening of food and wine tasting. We understood the responsibilities that each side had for pulling off the day and we knew that Dallas was an event coordinator and not a wedding planner.

We opted for the Family Style Premium package and the Standard Bar package. My bartender cousin studied the offerings in the well liquor on the day of the wedding and designed us 3 cocktails to be on offer in addition to the personally selected local craft beers. (I’m sure the bartender would have done this but my cousin wanted this job). The bartender mastered these and they were beautifully presented to our guests. Our sparkling wine and some of the cocktails being served in gorgeous coupe champagne glasses. Felt like we were in a speakeasy with the candles and low light in the lounge bar drinking our Spring Flowers, Whiskey Sours, French 75’s along with all the other mixed drinks and cocktails that the bartender made to order by request of our guests. This made our standard bar package feel luxurious and more like a fancy cocktail or wine bar. Our guests said it was the best wedding bar they had ever experienced.

The Stone House was a great help in receiving deliveries for us from vendors and even stored our flowers for us in cold storage. On the day, we were responsible for decorating and staging the spaces (flowers, greenery, candles, projector, music, decorations, menus, name plates, hired napkins, etc) in a tight timeframe (1:30-3:30) but I had family and friends who were more than happy to do this for us. We knew from the start that decorating wasn’t part of The Stone House services and we handed out job lists to our family to get the decorating done (my aunties loved helping!) Some of Dallas’s team even jumped in to help outside on the patio and decorated the stairs. The whole thing was a beautiful surprise to me when I arrived and I didn’t have to worry about anything whilst I got ready.

Dallas’s team did a great job on staging the patio with planters, lanterns, wine barrels and the seating for 60 (they had the gardeners in during the week sprucing up the patio and replanting the pots). They also did the table settings; cleared and staged the lounge bar area; delivered the cocktail hour via waiter service inside and out; the waiters did the dinner service serving the family platters and bringing drink orders from the bar; Dallas was good at whispering in our ears to keep us to our timeline. The staff were kind, funny, helpful, and on point the whole night. Yes, guests were served dinner at slightly different times but it wasn’t a problem. I’ve never been to a wedding where every single guest got their food at the exact same time. The kids were fed first by request and ultimately everyone was eating at about the same time. Even though we had family platters the waiters came along to all the tables to offer second helpings of the food to our individual guests.

The Stone House is also in a great setting for photographs. Our photographer Kathryn White captured beautiful shots not only on the staircase and stone patio, but in the woods directly behind The Stone House on the creek and tribute trail.

Feeding and watering our guests was the most important part of our day. We crafted the menu flavors and Dallas did an outstanding job working with the chef to deliver a delicious meal. Nothing was sacrificed in order to deliver not only a delicious food service but also beautiful presentation. The 4 appetizers were outstanding; huge, with interesting and unique flavor combos and each of them beautifully crafted. Better than restaurant quality. For dinner we had a colorful crunchy spring salad; smokey chicken which was so moist with kale; a tender flat iron steak with chimichurri and grilled asparagus; the most amazing twice fried potatoes with aioli; our vegetarians/vegans had green pea risotto (with added sea bass for the pescatarian); and as we had several gluten free guests the chef did an excellent job ensuring the main menu was gluten free so they could enjoy the normal menu. The kitchen cut and plated our wedding cake and served it to guests. They even boxed up all the leftover food for us and we had it the next day! They cleaned everything up and left all our stuff for us to collect the next day (which included lost phones, lost high heels, and all of our personal mementos). I can’t say enough positive things about Dallas, all of the staff, and all of the services offered by the Stone House. They far exceeded our expectations.

I must thank all of our amazing vendors. It was important to us that everything was done locally and all the money spent was invested back in the local community.

Venue & Catering: The Stone House
Flowers: Little Boy Flowers
Photography: Kathryn White Photography
Officiant: Jinnae Anderson (Your Ceremony with Spirit)
Cake: Rachel’s Homemade Cakes and Confections
Hair & Makeup: Lisa Harter
Invitations (London): Blush & Gold Stationary
Rings (London): MacAngus Designs
Suits (Donegal Ireland): Magee 1866 & The Suit Lounge