Some weddings carry a lot of history in them, and Jessica and Mike’s day was one of those. Jessi grew up on a 15-acre ranch in Indio, riding and teaching horses on land her grandfather worked, and the family stable he built there is still standing and in use today. It made sense, then, that the ranch became the backdrop for the rehearsal dinner and the getting-ready portraits before the ceremony — a genuinely meaningful location before the couple even made it to the aisle.
From there, the wedding party moved to the Emperor Polo Fields, where Jessi had spent countless afternoons playing polo long before it became her wedding venue. Getting married at the same location where her own parents once married gave the ceremony an extra layer of weight, set against the kind of wide-open mountain views that make the Coachella Valley’s polo grounds such a striking wedding setting.
The day was full of small, specific details worth remembering through photographs — Jessi’s lace dress, the flowers placed with real care, the Rolex she surprised Mike with as a wedding gift, and her arrival at the aisle in a 1950s Ford Thunderbird. Watching Mike’s reaction as she rode up said as much about the day as anything else: five years of a relationship arriving, in that moment, at the beginning of a marriage.
For a wedding this rooted in family land and family history, the Polo Fields and the surrounding ranch country gave our team a setting that photographed as beautifully as the story itself.
