Old World Romantic Beach Bridal Inspiration in Vero Beach, Florida

Old World Romantic Beach Bridal Inspiration in Vero Beach, Florida

Some people are “married to the sea”.

My mother is one of these people. The beach, the sun, the ocean air… it’s all her love. It’s why she moved from Georgia this year in January to the sands of Florida, and I went down to visit with her. My mom is from East Hampton on Long Island, and she said she never really felt home in Georgia. She moved down to the beach, and voila! A match made in Heaven! I thought that I would do a small, intimate beach bridal shoot while I was down there, and my mom decided to come along with me!

I met up with my cousin Emily, who I hadn’t seen in years and years, and we woke up before dawn to catch the sunrise at a beautiful beach in Stuart, right next to the House of Refuge.

A fun fact about the House of Refuge: it is the last remaining of the original dozen shipwreck life-saving stations on Florida’s Atlantic Coast and was built in 1876 to help stranded sailors. The facility also served as a lookout for enemy submarines in World War II.

Emily had recommended this beach to me, and despite grumblings of waking up and driving at four in the morning to make it in time for sunrise, I was in awe at the beauty that welcomed us.

Huge crashing waves and a sky that was begging to release the rain, it lent itself as a perfect backdrop to tell this beach bridal story in photographs. Emily was so beautiful in her vintage Monique Lhuillier wedding dress. Barefoot on the coral and rocks, and wrapped in sea-salt soaked hair, she made the perfect beach bride.

The tide was so high when we first arrived, almost tempting and taunting us at the same time. It was violent, slamming on the shoreline, shouting its presence. The sun peeked out from behind the dark clouds and left reflections on the ocean that mimicked mirrors and spotlights on the water. The wind whipped around in gusts and then turned to a friendly breeze. Emily got drenched in the sun and the salty sea, and was speckled with grains of sand. With words of love written on capiz shells, a gorgeous invitation suite, and pearl necklaces and rings, the aftermath was something romantic, wild, and free.

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.”

“hark, now hear the sailors cry,
smell the sea, and feel the sky
let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic…”
― Van Morrison

“The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too”

“I was happy anywhere I could see the ocean.”

Ring Box: Mrs. Box
Dress: Monique Lhuillier
Heels: Badgley Mischka
Stationer: Sunkissed Scripts
Bouquet Ribbons: The Poetry of Silk
Flatlay Ribbons: Honey Silks & Co.