Los Angeles Wedding from Shannon Renee Photography

Dawn Strong
May 16, 2013
Categories: Casual, Real Weddings
Tags: Jewish Wedding

It’s crazy how awesome Los Angeles weddings can be… crazy gorgeous, crazy fabulous and crazy chic. It’s like each and every one of you Southern Californians were born to throw an amazing soiree, and with this stunning bride, that is most definitely the case. Because together with an awesome team of vendors, including Bluebell Events, Eco Caters and Seed Floral, she crafted a day that will seriously leave your tongue wagging, from the farm tables to the beautiful florals to the always-wonderful Smog Shoppe setting. See every last glorious image (and I mean glorious) captured by Shannon Renee in the full gallery.

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From the Bride…The inspiration of our wedding came from choosing SmogShoppe as our venue. From that point forward it seemed like the overall style, look and theme all fell into place. As a perfectionist and somewhat of a control freak I had a vision and sense of exactly what we wanted for our big day. We started off with the obvious and most important element for us – the food and the drinks. When we met with Eco Caters that seemed to really help bring it all together in a sensible manner… in fact it really made me realize not only what “foodies” we are, but how particular we are in taste! We ended up designing our menu with the help of Eco adding nuances like an oyster bar during our cocktail hour and tray passed desserts! At Eco we were drawn to their food culture – sourcing all their fruits and vegetables from the local farmers markets, something we frequent on almost a weekly basis as well!

The idea of incorporating biodegradable plates and utensils for our cocktail and dessert hour seemed to go well with the organic nature of the SmogShoppe and, along the same lines, so did the succulent-inspired floral arrangements, eclectic silver vases, natural burlap silk runners and full tablecloths as well as the wood bark and vintage decor that was elegantly concepted and designed by Stephanie at Seed Floral. The process of creating our very own “movie set” (as my mom referred to it as) on November 3rd was done in a very natural way. I think this all came from dedicating a lot of time and energy and focus into making our day truly ours. Much of our research and success came from ideas that we pulled from favorite Los Angeles eateries, local furniture stores that intrigue us as well as our outdoor hobbies that we so enjoy like hiking with the dog, running, skiing and surfing! There were many occasions where we would simply be out and about and I would grab a swatch of a fabric or print I liked; snag a menu from a restaurant that I thought was cool or snap a pic of a floral arrangement or cocktail, rose-colored glass or burlap runner that I wanted to be reminded of.

There were many projects that came about that surprised even myself like the stacked trunks and mini chalkboards that I hand painted in gold, the photo sign-in book I designed on Blurb with our beautiful engagement photos shot by the fabulous Shannon, the handmade escort cards I labored over for months and even up until the last few weeks I was purchasing special popcorn boxes for one of the desserts we were serving, having a friend design a loop video for the projection screen, ordering two different styles of cocktail napkins and ordering handprinted kippas. It was as if every small detail made a difference. I remember laughing to myself that nobody will even notice the special jell pens for the sign-in book that I had selected or the bathroom goodie basket I put together for the ladies room! A few additional details that were really special to me were the hand sewn and monogrammed hankies that were passed down to me from my grandmother who had them from her mother. I had the hankies placed around the escort card area and had one wrapped around my bouquet. Another sweet detail was using the chuppa (talit) from the synagogue I grew up at to adorn the top of the chuppa.

The success of the wedding day was truly attributed to our amazing wedding planner, Charley King who was so professional, so buttoned up and so on top of each and every item that we had discussed! She really took an interest in us and understood exactly what we wanted and from the start knew that I was not going to hand it all over for her to plan. She respected that and although she really is a wedding planner extraordinaire she knew that because I work in film and television I could handle a lot of the heavy lifting. I purchased my Ramona Keveza wedding gown at Mon Amie in Orange County, a store I would not recommend to any bride. The dress was then tailored by the fabulous Alice at The Velvet Hanger Tailoring Shop in Newport Beach. I handpicked and designed my birdcage veil with Renee from The White Dress in Corona del Mar. I incorporated ostrich feathers and rhinestones which were inspired from my Ramona Keveza dress which is iconic among royal weddings. The bridesmaids wore chiffon jewel colored dresses in different styles from J.Crew to keep with the eclectic look of the wedding and the men were all told to wear charcoal grey suits. We handpicked their Ted Baker dress shirts, Neiman Marcus ties and Happy socks to keep with the theme… purple being our “pop” of color while everything else staying neutral in color. Aron wore a Ted Baker charcoal suit and PINK mens tie to standout along with his John Varvatos Wingtip red-brown colored dress shoes. I could go on and on but I would hate to bore you with each and every detail! I guess the one thing I did leave out is our awesome choreographed dance inspired from Pulp Fiction, ha!

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