How to Style a Desert Wedding Anywhere

There is no shortage of stunning desert wedding inspiration these days, but what to do when you love the wild and arid style but are nowhere near the Southwest? This amazing shoot from Katie Ann Photography and Gwyn Rider brings the desert indoors, pinpointing elements that can be easily recreated anywhere, just as they transformed White Aspen Creative in Bend, Oregon, from a woodland venue into a desert elopement!

Dried Flower and Tumbleweed Ceremony Backdrop for an Indoor Desert Wedding — Indoor Desert Wedding Ceremony Backdrop with Dried Grass and Tumbleweed

How to style a desert wedding

Desert Wedding Style with a Creative Invitation Flatlay

Key Elements to Styling a Desert Wedding

1. Draw in desert colors!

In a real desert setting, the sand and sky create a key color palette of neutral earth tones, offering a blank canvas that can be painted with nearly any accents. When you’re recreating that environment indoors, pulling in the colors of the dunes, sagebrush, and sky will be key to setting the scene. Black Thistle Co created this invitation suite to draw in those colors from the get-go, with a sage and sand palette, accented in cinnamon and ochre to add the warm of sun-baked hills and red rock formations.

Guipure Lace and Crepe Fitted Wedding Dress

2. Desert Bridal Style

To create the perfect airy and outdoorsy bridal look perfectly suited to a desert setting, the team chose this Mikaella Bridal dress from The Bespoke Bride! The Guipure lace bodice and skinny straps are key elements of traditional bridal design, while the sheer top and fitted crepe skirt add in minimalist elements and a stunning silhouette that are perfectly suited for a photo shoot in the sand. The dress can be easily styled to suit any venue, but the subtle bohemian details and non-traditional wedding dress look are a wonderful fit for this adventure-at-home wedding idea.

Neutral Bouquet with Desert Wedding Style

3. Focus on Local Plants

The Bloom and Co. channeled desert plants, dried grasses, and tumbleweeds to create a wild landscape indoors! The painted ceremony backdrop brought the color of sun-kissed sand as a focal point, creating an altar surrounded by foraged plants in glass bottles and architectural sprays of tumbleweed to create a deconstruction of the on-trend flower arch. The Oregon wilderness provided much of the foraged elements, making it easy to recreate a desert landscape even in a forest setting!

The bride’s bouquet added a softer note, with dried lunaria, toffee roses, and speckled carnations – the neutral colors and preserved flowers tied in perfectly with the wilder elements of the ceremony backdrop!

Indoor Desert Wedding Decor in Sandy Neutral Shades

Airy and Romantic Fine Art Wedding Ideas with Desert Style

Romantic Veil Wedding Photos with a Blue Suit for the Groom

Indoor Desert Wedding Reception Style with a Rustic Farmhouse Table

4. Rustic Meets Elegant Reception Style

Even an intimate wedding reception deserves some major style, and Curated Event Rentals added vintage farmhouse charm with this wooden table and bench set! The enormous hanging tumbleweed chandelier added a completely unique element to the reception decor, allowing them to keep the tablescape minimal and filled with organic design elements.

Tumbleweed Desert Chandelier over a Rustic Farm Table Reception

Sand and Cinnamon Neutral Desert Wedding Centerpiece and Table Decor

A cinnamon rose silk runner added desert sunset to the weathered wood tabletop, accented by china, copper, and glass. Keeping the flower arrangements minimal allowed the rougher textures of the reception details to shine, but the long table felt full and effortlessly styled thanks to pillar candles and silk. The geometric acrylic table numbers from Paper Sushi Shop nearly stole the show!

Geometric Acrylic Table Numbers with Cinnamon Rose Runner

Cinnamon Rose Runner with Neutral Wedding Flowers and Desert Style

Rustic Farm Table with Cinnamon Rose Runner with Neutral Wedding Flowers

Vintage Rustic Farmhouse Cake Table with a Dried Flower Cake Topper

5. Keep all Elements On-Theme – Even Dessert!

This lovely vintage farmhouse dessert table still manages to stay on-theme with desert design elements, even for the cake! Crumb Cakery finished off the beautiful dessert in sage green colors and a hand drawn pattern that called back to the beautiful invitations – the tumbleweed and dried lunaria cake topper was the perfect way to finish it off!

Another fun dessert element – campfire s’mores! They put a sophisticated wedding-worthy spin on these desserts with a toasted marshmallow macaron to recreate the flavors of camping in the desert.