I love how this couple reconnected so many years after their first encounter in London on a fateful New Year’s Eve in San Francisco and that when the power went out that night, they hit the streets with a giant bouquet of red balloons from the bar. Sounds amazing, right? Like amazing enough to have as a whimsical theme for your wedding day? Totally. They designed every single detail themselves and I’m pretty sure that based on these images from Andria Lo Photography, this was one heck of a day. Click here for even more.
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From the bride… Nisan and I met exactly 9 years before our wedding in front of a cafe in London and became great friends. Years later, after not having seen each other for years, we ended up in the same place for New Year’s Eve. Two things occurred that night: 1) The power went out at the bar we were at, and we took a bouquet of red balloons and wandered around the streets of San Francisco with them, and 2) We decided in the midst of all that that we would find a way to make a relationship work. Granted, at the time, he lived in Los Angeles and I lived in Boston, but for some reason, we both knew in our hearts that this was something we needed to make work. Five years after that, he gave me a book that he had made. It was a hardcover children’s book that he had illustrated about the story of our relationship and at the end of the story, he asked me to marry him with a ring carefully hidden in a box cut into the back pages of the book. I said yes, and that started the whirlwind adventure of planning our wedding.
The one central tenet of the wedding for us was that we wanted people to feel like they knew us better after attending our wedding. We wanted to include all of our family and friends and create a unique ceremony that included traditions from both of our families. We quickly realized that if we wanted it to be as personal as we hoped, it would mean that we would have to make and design almost everything on our own. We welcomed the task and ended up having a great time doing everything together from creating our own website from scratch, designing every component of our invitations and save the dates and creating a unique ceremony that included Sri Lankan, Buddhist and Jewish traditions.
We made the theme and logo for our wedding based around the bouquet of red balloons from our New Years Eve encounter, and everything else began to fall into place around it. One major design adventure we came across was that we had the idea to make a huge centerpiece of large papier-mâché yarn globes to hang in the center of the barn. We could not have gotten it all done without the help of our amazing friends and family. Nisan’s parents helped make the yarn lanterns, my dad designed an amazing Huppah that one of the groomsmen built for us, and my mom put together personalized goodie bags for all the kids to entertain themselves. My brother helped us create table numbers with wine bottles from Nisan’s family vineyard. The flowers were done by the maid of honor’s floral company, Petals & Posy, who created the perfect arrangements, more than we ever could have imagined. One of my favorite parts of the day was when Nisan, along with his band, hello evening, performed a song that he had written for me. We thought it was going to be a day where people learned more about us, and it was that, but in truth it became more a day where we learned how lucky we were to be surrounded by all the people who have made up both of our lives.
Photography: Andria Lo Photography / Flowers: Petals & Posy / Event Design: The bride and groom / Wedding Coordinator: Laurie Laxa (laurielaxa@sbcglobal.net) / Venue: CornerStone Gardens / Invitations: The groom / Shoes: Calvin Klein / Wedding Dress: WTOO / Bridemaid Dresses: J.Crew / Groom’s Suit: J.Crew / Groomsmen Ties: American Apparel / Makeup: Chariss Ilarina (charissfilarina@gmail.com) / Bride’s Hair: Ashlee Hemrick (ashlee.hemrick@gmail.com) / Bride’s Necklace: Katherine Smith (katsmith@gumps.com) / Cake: Occasional Cakes / Caterer: Sage / DJ: John Laxa (johnlaxa@sbcglobal.net)