These two cuties? They had an office romance that would make even Jim and Pam a little jealous. Their casual flirtation led to a surprise proposal and eventually, a one of a kind wedding. A cool, relaxed, totally L.A. vibe fit their modern celebration to a T and we’re flipping through the whole gallery shot by The Great Romance Photo.
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From The Groom…Our story begins at our office, where we first met each other almost 3 years ago. I first saw Sally when I interviewed for my current job, while our company was on a different floor renting office space from her. She happened to be covering the front desk, and when I walked in and said I was here for an interview, I could barely get the words out of my mouth because I was in awe of the beautiful girl in front of me: this insanely cute Asian girl with gorgeous eyes and long, dark hair. I was in heaven I was sure, but I knew this girl was out of my league and I didn’t stand a chance, so I did my interview and never thought anything else of it. The day I started a few weeks later, my company had moved to a different floor so there was no opportunity to say hello again.
‘Til one day at the office…I heard we were hiring someone from the old company upstairs to take over our office operations and admin responsibilities. It was surely fate, because it was that gorgeous girl from upstairs that walked into our office soon thereafter. After Sally was hired at our company, I took every opportunity I could to approach this beautiful girl with things I needed help for, and it turned out she was just as eager to seek me out for things she needed help with. This turned into frequent inter-office messaging/texting/talking where we both realized we were amazingly well aligned in our personal interests and passions. We both became completely infatuated with the other! Eventually I asked her out and since then, we have laughed and cried and grown from a blissful infatuation to a deep trusting love and friendship. On to the proposal….
‘Til one day at the office…I heard we were hiring someone from the old company upstairs to take over our office operations and admin responsibilities. It was surely fate, because it was that gorgeous girl from upstairs that walked into our office soon thereafter. After Sally was hired at our company, I took every opportunity I could to approach this beautiful girl with things I needed help for… and it turned out, she was just as eager to seek me out for things she needed help with. This turned into frequent inter-office messaging/texting/talking where we both realized we were amazingly well aligned in our personal interests and passions. We both became completely infatuated with the other! Eventually I asked her out and since then, we have laughed and cried and grown from a blissful infatuation to a deep trusting love and friendship. On to the proposal….
From The Bride… My birthday was slowly approaching and I had let Houston know that I did not want to do anything special. But he insisted that he would be planning something simple and to just be ready by noon on Saturday, April 25th; this is not out of the norm since he is such a sweetheart and is always planning fun things for me. So in true Houston fashion, he sent me an itinerary stating that we would be having a picnic, again not weird because we love picnics and had recently invested in an awesome picnic basket. This gave me no reason to believe that he was being sneaky in any other way. Saturday came and he picked me up right on time. We drove over to the UCLA campus and set up our picnic in the sculpture garden. Though some of the sculptures are absolutely hideous, it holds a special place in our hearts, as this was here Houston had asked me to be his girlfriend.
We laid out our blanket and started to eat some lunch. While we ate we watched other people having their own picnics and laying out in the grass. We also noticed a girl eating her lunch and practicing her violin. I joked about how fortuitous it was to have some music for our meal and, was considering tweeting about it. About 30 minutes into our meal Houston excused himself to go to the restroom. As I was sitting and waiting for him to return, I hear “HEY SALLY!” I look up to the violinist standing in front of me. I was totally weirded out. “I have a message for you” she continued, as I stared at her with a confused look on my face. And then I heard it. Our song being played by this violinist. I knew right then what was happening. I quickly turned around just in time to see Houston walking towards me. Then the waterworks! I was so shocked that I didn’t even stand up from my seated position on the picnic blanket. Houston eventually had to motion me to stand and everything after that was a blur. The most fantastic, lovely blur. I do remember him getting on one knee and asking him to marry me, but it is very blurry!
And it doesn’t stop there, he tells me there is someone waiting for me around the corner, I go and there’s his brother Maxx, bringing me presents! As I am opening my gifts, I turn around again and both our families are walking towards us! I couldn’t believe they were all there. There was lots of hugging, more crying and pictures taken. After the madness, Houston and I went over to the Hammer museum to take some time to be alone and digest what had just transpired. While we did that, the family left to go set up a movie night and dinner on the rooftop of his place. After a few hours, just as I had calmed down from what had happened, the doors opened and there on the roof were all our friends and family for a surprise engagement party! I just about lost it. I don’t think my body could have handled any more surprises but, it was magical. This is just how Houston is; he’s so thoughtful and caring. Only he would have been able to pull all that off without me finding out. On to the wedding planning…
From The Groom…As most couples who being the wedding planning process quickly discover, our experience could more or less be summed up for us with this phrase: “It costs how much for that!!?!?” From the beginning we decided we wanted a small and humble wedding, but being in Los Angeles (an epicenter for expensive wedding taste) forced us even more so to be budget conscious. Our vision for the wedding was fairly simple: find an industrial venue, use simple modern graphics, only white flowers, lots of simple greenery, and show off the venue by not over-decorating. We realized quickly that we needed to find a venue that displays our style that had everything included in it to reduce costs, but allowed a lot of flexibility at the same time. We are both designers (I am an architect and Sally went to school for fashion design), so finding the right venue was extremely important. After doing endless research and venue visits, we landed on the beautiful Arts District venue called Millwick that fit our style exactly: an old warehouse recently renovated into an amazing venue covered in greenery and gold, and equipped with unique features like massive roll-up glass doors, a beautiful courtyard and a killer bar. Millwick allowed our decorations budget to be minimal because the venue did all the work for us.
Our florist and coordinator Sarah Park Events did an amazing job helping us realize Sally’s all white and greenery idea with the beautiful bouquets and garland running the length of the long tables. Accents of gold were used for table numbers and gift card holders to pay tribute to the venue’s gold accents. I created all the graphics myself (with Sally’s approval of course!), to reflect our color scheme and design style – white backgrounds with simple green and light grey graphics. The main graphic we created was the H+S logo which we plastered everywhere we could, and even burned it into the the wood bar top surface at the venue!
For our food and drink we wanted to do something very LA that fit the venue well. To us that meant street food, craft beer, and excellent coffee. Not only was it much more fun for our guests, it tasted better, it showed off our true style, and it was a much more cost-effective route to go. We brought in several kegs of different Angel City Beer, Kogi BBQ to do the catering (mmm blackjack quesadillas), Huntington Catering Company as a service staff, Two Kids Coffee to do our espresso catering, and Jamaica’s Cakes for the wedding cake who did a phenomenal job making Sally’s dreams come true (she has a serious, serious obsession with cake).
The most important thing to us above all else was hiring a great photographer. We both love fine art wedding photography, especially images shot with high-end film cameras. In our search we found Connie and Tommy Chang of The Great Romance Photography and were instantly in love with them as a couple and photographers. They both have an incredible ability to make each image an art piece because of their backgrounds in film and art, and technical ability with their gear. The wedding was better than we even dreamed of and couldn’t have been happier with the team of vendors, the venue and the beautiful day it turned out to be!
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Photography: The Great Romance Photo | Wedding Dress: BHLDN | Cake: Jamaica’s Cakes | Bride’s Shoes: Jimmy Choo | Bridesmaids’ Dresses: ASOS | Catering: Kogi Truck | Groomsmen Attire: ASOS | Venue: Millwick | Event Planning + Floral Design: Sarah Park Events | Hair Accessories: Olivia
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