Sanctuary Gardens

Sanctuary Gardens feels like someone found the edge of the Okanagan and quietly built a place for vows there.

Perched above Gellatly Bay in West Kelowna, this private garden estate looks across Okanagan Lake toward the mountains, with vineyard, rolling hills, sage and native grasses surrounding the ceremony.

At its heart is the Sanctuary.

The open timber-frame structure takes its inspiration from a little chapel, but instead of walls, couples have the landscape.

Up to around 50 guests can gather beneath its roof, facing a covered rose arbour with the lake and mountains stretching away beyond it.

It is intimate in exactly the right way.

Nobody is sitting twenty rows back.

Every guest can see the expression that crosses someone's face when the person they are about to marry appears at the other end of the aisle.

And once the vows are finished, nobody has to immediately leave.

The gardens remain yours for photographs and time together, allowing the newlyweds to wander through the property while family and friends linger in the scenery that brought everyone here.

If Okanagan weather changes the plan, the whitewashed timber Rose Room provides an indoor alternative for the ceremony.

This is not a reception venue, and it does not pretend to be.

There is no dinner here.

No late-night dance floor.

Sanctuary Gardens is about one particular part of the wedding day and making that part extraordinarily beautiful.

The arrival.

The aisle.

The vows.

The kiss.

The photographs afterwards when nobody can quite stop smiling yet.

Then everyone carries the celebration somewhere else.

But for those few unforgettable hours, the lake, gardens and mountains belong to the beginning of your marriage.