Adam & Miyong : Red Couch Photography

Meet Adam & Miyong. Their wedding happens to be one of the chicest and coolest I've ever seen. And as amazing as it looks in photos, apparently it was even better in person. When I asked a guest how it was, the response - "They nailed it. Best wedding ever!"

But even The Best Wedding Ever has it's I Guess I Do moments. Miyong is not only gorgeous, but a great storyteller. Enjoy their entertaining story in her own words below... 

“Oh, that’s interesting.” 

I can’t tell you how many times I heard that response when explaining how my bridesmaids would be wearing their choice of metallic sparkly dress. And if not those actual words, there was at least the quizzical stare back… Yes, my bridesmaids were going to wear sparkles in an outdoor fall wedding. And they were going to look kick-ass. 

I’ve always had a strong aesthetic opinion – I’m that annoying person who walks into a room and starts staring at walls and visually reorganizing everything. I also follow the personal mantra that you should always be true to yourself and stand up for what you believe in. So despite any doubts, when it came to my wedding, I had confidence in my overall vision – but dang did I feel pressure to deliver on it. There ensued my I Guess I Do moments… 

Adam and I met in 2008 when he moved from New Jersey to an apartment across the street here in LA. He was friends with my roommate Lindsey, so we would hang out and go on hikes in that hip part of town called The Friend Zone. Eventually, after I became single and he had confessed his love for me, we started dating. Three years later we were engaged and began planning the biggest party of our lives – a task that brought out some really “fun” parts of our personalities. 

The Ceremony

I think it’s funny that the point of getting married and having a wedding is really rooted in the ceremony, but it always seems to be an afterthought when planning the whole event. Adam and I both grew up Catholic, so it would have made sense for us to be married in a church by a priest. We held out for a while, thinking maybe by a miracle we would meet a priest we shared some fundamental views with and who would marry us outside, off of “holy ground”… but that didn’t happen. A real issue for us was that we felt it would be hypocritical to be married by someone who would not honor that same right for a gay couple. We have too many friends and family we feel should enjoy that experience and can’t, so instead we decided to ask our close friend Tyler to marry us. It wasn’t easy to break the news to my mom who always envisioned her daughter walking down the isle in a church with crosses and the Suffering Jesus. It was also hard for her to understand why we would have a friend and not a religious figure perform such a holy ritual… I asked her to please trust me and after an exhausting amount of arguments, she finally relinquished. 

I felt bad that I was letting my mom’s expectations down, but I knew that only meant we had to really get the alternative right. Adam and I put a lot of thought into how we could make the ceremony unique and meaningful without being obnoxious and realized it just had to reflect US. We asked more of our friends to participate – one to speak on love, one to speak on faith and two more who sang like angels. It ended up being more than we could have dreamed up - 20 minutes of our lives we’ll never forget. Even better, our parents and guests said it was one of the best ceremonies they’d ever been to – the drinks beforehand may have helped, but those were their words, not ours! 

Bridal Party Look

I work at E Entertainment, which grants me access to the style kings and queens of Hollywood - plenty of people to shake me and smack me on the face when I tell them I don’t want anyone in my bridal party to match. I get it – it’s tradition, it’s classic, it’s timeless… but for me, I just wasn’t into the bridal look. Long white dress? Fine. But fully matching bridesmaids and groomsmen just weren’t going to be my thing. I wanted everyone to look amazing and feel beautiful, effortlessly. The only thing is, looking “effortless,” actually requires some effort – especially with the guys. 

Adam was in charge of ordering the guys’ ties, and though my gut was telling me to intervene, I resisted. It was about thirty minutes before pictures were supposed to happen and my bridesmaid Lindsey approached me with a strange expression on her face. The guys were wearing “backup” ties because the ones they were supposed to wear hadn’t arrived yet. She started describing them, but I stopped her when she got to, “duck pattern.” Needless to say, they went tie-less. *

You envision, you put a whole look together, and then something goes wrong. But you know what? It really didn’t matter, because when I see the photos I think everyone looks stunning and happy and that’s all I ever wanted in the end. Sometimes the mistakes add a little bit of charm!

*The ties did end up arriving after the ceremony, if you notice the wardrobe addition. 

DIY  

If you’re someone who has a very specific idea of what you want your wedding to look like, you’re probably also someone who is going to take it into your own hands. When I was a kid, I remember my mom getting a “Do-It-Herself” tool kit as a gift from one of her friends. You see, my mom is someone who takes DIY to an entirely new level – the woman has painted the whole exterior of the house with a paintbrush… TWICE. I’ve taken on a lot of my mom’s DIY attitudes, so of course when it came time to turn my visions into a reality, I rolled up my sleeves and began with the first of many DIY elements – invitations.

DIY Invitations? Welcome to Hell. From the design in Photoshop to the actual printing, cutting and hand painting, I did it all. Here is where you need to have a sense of humor and some friends. I was super upbeat and inspired until I was painting the 75th pocket fold invitation with what now seemed like the mark of the devil AKA our wedding date: 10... 19… 10… 19… Someone kill me. (We had 100 more to go.) On the verge of a long-avoided meltdown, I called my friends Jen and Shannon to come over. They arrived, bottles of wine in tow, and turned the awful task into an outdoor drinking activity – something we were already really good at. It took a few bottles and another week of tricking friends to come over and help out… but we finally mailed them and they looked fabulous. A great reward for the hours of work poured into the mundane task. 

The truth is, I’d take “interesting” over ordinary any day… I don’t think that our wedding was exceptionally alternative, but I think it was different enough that people noticed and felt that it was something special. And things did go wrong (i.e.: the dance floor went MIA, my dad decided to change our Father/Daughter song right before our dance, a few spray paint projects never dried, among other things), but nothing kept us from completing the end goal, which was to marry each other… Interesting or not, everything else was the cherry on top. 

Photographer: Shannon Varis Oberg at Red Couch Photography  Dress: Manu Garcia
Venue - Flying Caballos Ranch  in San Luis Obispo, CA  Flowers: Collaboration with Mollie Garbutt at Say Flower Co.  Catering: Trumpet Vine  Headpiece: Doloris Petunia  Shoes: Rebecca Minkoff  Invitations: Paper Source  Rental Company and Day-of Coordinator:  All About Events

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