Where to hold it, when the light is right, and why September is not the only answer.
The Okanagan is the only place in British Columbia where you can be reasonably sure it will not rain. This is its great gift and its great trap. Couples arrive with a September Saturday in mind, a vineyard in mind, a long table between the vines in mind, and discover that roughly four hundred other couples have arrived with the same thing.
The valley runs a hundred and thirty kilometres north to south, and the wedding you want depends on which part of it you choose. Kelowna is the city: the airport, the hotels, the caterers with the staff to serve two hundred. Naramata Bench, across the lake from Penticton, is where the estates are small, the roads are narrow, and the light at 7 p.m. in September is the reason people cry at ceremonies. Oliver and Osoyoos, in the south, are hotter, drier and more Californian in temper, with the largest wineries and the widest views.
When
Late May and June are underrated. The hills are still green, the vines are in leaf but not yet heavy, and the temperature sits in the low twenties. You will not compete with harvest crews for the lower blocks, and a vineyard in June will let you do things a vineyard in September will not.
September remains the month the valley is known for, and with reason. The grass is gold, the lake is warm, and the harvest lends the whole place a sense of purpose. But it is also the month the wineries are working hardest, and you should expect that the crew will be picking the block beside your ceremony at six in the morning. We think this is wonderful. Not everyone does.
A vineyard in June will let you do things a vineyard in September will not.
Where
Mission Hill is the grand option and it is very good at being grand: the bell tower, the amphitheatre, the loggia with the lake below. It is also a working estate with rules, and the rules are not negotiable. Phantom Creek, near Oliver, is newer and more private, with an architecture that photographs like a Portuguese monastery. God's Mountain, above Skaha Lake, is the eccentric's choice: a hillside villa with a roofless bedroom and a view that does not need explaining.
The private estates on the Bench are where we do most of our work, and they are not listed anywhere. They are found through relationships, and they require a year of preparation: power, water, road access, a well test, a conversation with the neighbours. The result is a wedding that could not have happened anywhere else.
What it costs
An Okanagan wedding for one hundred guests at a private estate, with a tent, generators, a brought-in kitchen and accommodation for out-of-town guests, begins at around $200,000 CAD. The same wedding at an established winery with its own kitchen and licence begins closer to $150,000. The difference is infrastructure, and the infrastructure is invisible when it works.
Whatever you choose, drink what is grown within sight of the table. It is the one rule we hold to.