Amanda and Cameron’s Anker wedding took place in a garden four decades in the making. Behind them stood Anker – a low mid-century house of cedar and stone. They said their vows on the lawn, under trees big enough to cast soft green light on their guests.
Photos by Voyage and Vine.
Anker, Formerly the Kingston House
For most of its life this was Kingston House. Matt Kelley renamed it Anker in 2025, after the man who drew it.
Anker I. Molver was a Seattle architect, Norwegian by birth, brought to the United States at eight. He came to architecture late and by way of Japan, where he traveled after the Second World War. There he found buildings that defer to their landscape instead of lording over it. The house he designed here, in the early 1960s, is Scandinavian in its restraint, Japanese in how lightly it sits on the land, and unmistakably PNW in its materials. The great timbers that hold it up were cut and milled on the property itself.
Kinam Sohn bought the place in 2003, when it was, by her son’s account, a fixer-upper. She brought it back without sanding off its character, then opened it to guests. In 2022 that son, Matt, bought the house from her and took over as caretaker. His background is in horticulture, which is why the gardens read like the work of someone with a plan and forty years of patience. The interiors he’s handled more like a collector: mid-century pieces gathered slowly, a Sciolari chandelier here, a Robyn Denny canvas there.
He has a word for the whole project, borrowed from German. Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art, in which the house, the art, the grounds, and the land make one composition and none of it is ever quite finished. It sounds grand on paper. On the ground it just feels considered, like a place put together by one person over a long time rather than furnished by committee over a weekend.
Beyond the house, the property runs to 27 acres: rolling lawn and woods threaded with paths, a working lavender farm, an orchard, a pond, a hilltop gazebo, and a waterfall installation Matt built with a few collaborators. It backs onto more than 2,000 acres of forest preserve, so you’ll never hear a sound other than the birds.
The Ceremony
You reach the ceremony space on foot, through the gardens: past flowering beds and along the path until it opens onto a flat clearing of lawn ringed by tall trees. The ground is level, the trees stand close on every side, and nothing is built into the space at all. No arbor, no structure, just the clearing and the canopy over it. Guests sat in wooden chairs on the grass, with nothing between them and the couple but open garden.
Golden Hour at Anker
Anker‘s tree-lined surroundings bring golden hour significantly earlier than your iPhone will tell you. Fortunately, we enjoyed a quick escape during cocktail hour and noticed that the light was too good to pass up. We took just fifteen minutes to snag photos just as the sun dipped below the landscape.
Candlelit Dinner with Friends
Dinner was one long table, lined with candles and surrounded by trees. As the sun went down further, the warm glow from the table lit everyone’s wine-kissed cheeks. This type of setting is an absolute dream to photograph and even more beautiful to attend as a guest. The warmth is contagious, and it has a strong sense of “food is communion.”
Traveling to Anker
Anker sits on the Kitsap Peninsula, close to Seattle but on the other side of the water. Guests have the option to drive, or take the ferry from the Seattle side. From the Seattle side by car, the Edmonds–Kingston auto ferry lands you five minutes from Anker’s gate.
If guests do take a ferry, put the schedule on the invitation. The crossing is easy, but a wedding morning is no time to miss a boat by four minutes.
Where to stay. For your closest people, the house sleeps twelve and makes a good getting-ready base. Everyone else has options fifteen minutes south in Poulsbo, or right in Kingston.
What to do. Give people a reason to come a day early:
Olympic National Park: about 90 minutes to the Port Angeles side. Make a weekend of it. People fly in for one afternoon out here and leave wishing they’d given it three.
Poulsbo: a Norwegian-themed waterfront town on Liberty Bay. Start at Sluys Bakery, then work down Front Street through the galleries and a genuinely serious run of breweries.
Point No Point: a squat old lighthouse on a driftwood beach fifteen minutes north, where people come to watch for orcas, hunt sea glass, and catch Mount Rainier reflected in the water on a clear day.
Port Gamble: a preserved 19th-century mill town worth an hour for the antique shops and the white clapboard.
North Kitsap Heritage Park: trails that start a quarter mile from the venue.
Vendor Team
Photography: Voyage and Vine
Venue: Anker
Coordinating: Vivid Planning
Catering: Heirloom Kitchen
