Rustic meets elegant meets one adorable duo, and the result? Well it’s prettiness defined. The Riviera Country Club set the stage for the prettiest of parties, and with the help of Occasions, Holly Flora and A Sweet Design, every detail tucked in this gallery is worthy of your favorite pin board. So feel free to join us drooling over every detail, right here.
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From the Bride… I’ve loved Quincy from the moment I saw him 12 years ago at the Century City Food Court (very romantic). He was on a blind date with my girlfriend, who conveniently brought me along as her sidekick. That love fizzled, but my love for Quincy grew through the years, even though it took him a little while (9 years!) to “come around.” Quincy and I were both born in Los Angeles and went to USC together (but not “together”) where his fraternity was across the street from my sorority. I would spy on him at football games and hope one day he would love me, and finally a few months after we both graduated, he did! But our relationship was not an easy one, nine months after we started dating, Quincy moved to Georgia to begin his Officer Training in the Army, and I stayed back in Los Angeles. We spent nine months apart and then Quincy moved to Fairbanks, Alaska to his duty station. He deployed a few months after that for a year long deployment. When he returned in April 2012, I decided I couldn’t stand being apart much longer and packed up my things and moved to be with him! And from there, I planned a wedding in Los Angeles!
For as long as I can remember, my dad used to take me into the Crystal Ballroom at The Riviera Country Club and tell me, “This is the place you are going to get married.” So when Quincy asked me to marry him last June, I immediately knew it had to be at The Riv. I didn’t want to do the traditional black-tie affair that The Riv’s atmosphere caters to; instead I really wanted to make it my own. My vision was rustic meets elegant.
Q and I wanted our wedding to be more on the casual side, so instead of making our invitations very formal, Sloane Harmony created a fun, very “us” invitation with pinks, beiges and a burlap wrap. She kept the fonts and overall feel of our invitations for the rest of our paper goods including our escort cards, a welcome note and a very casual program that had a sense of humor (like us!).
To incorporate “us” in our ceremony and throughout our reception, we placed framed photos of us as well as fun items with our initials on them around. Since we have such unique initials (it is impossible to find things with a Q on them), we have been collecting items with our initials on them since we started dating. We used our initials for most of our wedding, K & Q Get Married! We even had our guests hashtag our wedding with #kandqgetmarried so that we could have all of our photos in one place!
I wanted our cocktail reception to really be Q’s moment (a bride gets the whole day, I wanted my groom to have an hour), so we focused on all things Q! He is a lover of Jameson whiskey (and his mom is from Ireland!), so we placed bottles with flowers around the reception area. We also wanted to incorporate America without being cheesy (no red, white and blue) and so we bought this fabulous wooden flag from Pottery Barn and hung it above the escort cards. And finally, Q LOVES coffee. He is a true coffee aficionado and so we had our escort cards sitting in cigar boxes filled with coffee beans and surrounded by flowers.
We had Alaskan beer offered at the bar to give an homage to our current hometown. And Q and I each had a fun signature drink “The K” – Moscow Mule and “The Q” – Jameson on the rocks. At some point in the night, the bartenders began making “The K & Q” which was a Moscow Mule with Jameson added.
For our flowers, I wanted them to look like they had just been plucked from the garden (no big bouquets) and Holly Flora was my one and only choice. For our outdoor ceremony, Becky and Holly covered the 10 foot tall gazebo with vines, which made it look like the flowers had grown naturally from the ground. We also had a gathering of small bud vases on a table behind us to give the gazebo some depth. For the reception, the girls created small groupings of flowers in mismatched vases including colored glass, mason jars, old tea kettles and vintage pieces to make my vision come alive. We also had individual balsa wood flowers placed on every place setting.
Desserts are MY thing. I didn’t want to just have cake, instead I wanted a selection of desserts for our guests. We had the girls from A Sweet Design create mini cookies and milk, cupcakes, cake pops and marshmallow pops for our guests to snack on. And Q’s mom made our wedding cake from scratch for us to cut into.
My favorite part of whole day was walking down through the saber arch, a military tradition where the newly married couple must kiss before being allowed entrance. Once the bride and groom walk through, the bride gets a (very rough) pat on the butt with one of the sabers and the soldiers say, “Welcome to the Army mam!” This was the perfect end to our ceremony.
Our photographer Jen couldn’t have made our day any easier. She captured our perfect moments without being in the way or making our day any more stressful. I love the way she caught the smallest details that I missed when I was walking down the aisle like the bud vases and framed pictures. She made it a night that I can relive forever through photos!
In Japanese tradition, my mom, aunts and family friends made 1000 gold origami cranes for my wedding. A thousand paper cranes are traditionally given as a wedding gift by family, who are wishing a thousand years of happiness and prosperity upon the couple. The construction of a thousand gold paper cranes symbolizes good fortune, fidelity and longevity. When my parents got married, they were surrounded by a thousand paper cranes made by my mom’s mother and grandmother and I was lucky to be surrounded by 1000 at mine.
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Venue + Catering: The Riviera Country Club | Wedding Planner: Mary Sushinski of Occasions | Photography: B&G Photography | Flowers: Holly Flora | Cake: Mother of the Groom | Ceremony Music: 5th Avenue Entertainment | Dessert Table: A Sweet Design | Disc Jockey: Red Shoe | Hair: Jessie Holiday | Make up: Lynn Simpson of Delilah Beauty | Lighting: Aspect Lighting | Linens + Chairs: Elegant Designs | Officiant: Elizabeth Oaks of Marriage To Go | Photo Booth: Shutter Booth | Printed Materials: Sloane Harmony Design
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