The Bride Wore A Floral Dress For This Playful + Eclectic LA Wedding

Kira + Greg’s love story begins in the mountains of Guatemala. They’d both traveled abroad to attend a Spanish language school in a small city called Quetzaltenango, but it didn’t take long for them to realize that they had something uncanny in common: though they were far from home, both Greg + Kira lived in Northern California. Greg was living in Berkeley at the time. Kira was living in Oakland. Chance had brought them together in Central America even though, back home, they lived only two miles apart.

From there the couple built a life full of love + adventure (including a proposal in Tokyo!) that led them to this joy-filled, eclectic Los Angeles wedding. 

“The concepts we turned to for inspiration when making wedding decisions were tongue-in-cheek, campy, playful, and irreverent,” says the couple says of their approach to planning. “We continually tried to bring a sense of levity to wedding traditions. It was important to us that people laugh and have fun at silly and unexpected details.”

The couple combined forces with planners from Grounded Events to bring their vision to life at Franklin Canyon Park in the mountains north of Beverly Hills. There, hidden away from the city, they said “I do” surrounded by nature and their nearest and dearest friends + fam.

We are so into the way that Kira + Greg infused so much sweetness + silliness into their day and refreshed tradition in a totally unique way. It was colorful and light-hearted and Mandee Johnson got so many gorgeous pics!

The couple’s wedding invitations were bursting with fun and funky flair — setting the tone for the vibrant celebration that awaited their guests…

We are so in love with Kira’s blush-tone floral wedding dress (more on this gorgeous gown in a minute…).

One of the things that’s so special about Kira + Greg’s wedding aesthetic is that they found a way to do playfulness + color while not going too subtle or too maximalist, and the floral creations from J. Flowers are a perfect example.

“I got a custom olive green suit made at Pocket Square Clothing in downtown LA,” says Greg of his wedding day look. “The color was actually a suggestion from a friend of mine, who has a sartorial eye, and she was spot on. Andrew at Pocket Square was fantastic in helping me land on the right fabric and figure out the cut and style – something I wasn’t super confident about. We kept things fairly simple, and I was really happy with the fit. We complimented the green with an autumnal red-orange wool tie that was seasonally apt and complemented Kira’s dress and the overall color palette. I felt great in that suit!”

The First Look

“I visited 7 bridal shops in Los Angeles before I found my dress at Claire Pettibone (ironically, the closest shop to my apartment that I went to),” Kira remembers of her dress shopping journey. “I was looking for a dress that was slightly alternative to your traditional wedding dress – namely, I wanted a bit of color.”

“I was going for a nature-y, ethereal vibe and found that in the Peony dress designed by the store’s namesake, Claire Pettibone. It had pastel-colored embroidered flowers on green stems arranged along the bodice, and flowing into the skirt, giving me the color and nature vibes I dreamed of.”

“It was unlike any other dress I had seen, and when I saw it in the shop I became teary knowing that I had found my dress. This was an experience my married friends had told me they had had in the bridal shop in which they found their dress, but which I had dismissed as a schmaltzy symptom of them being too wrapped up in the wedding industrial complex…and then it happened to me!”

The Ceremony

“Kira is Jewish, so we incorporated some Jewish traditions: the Chuppah, the Kiddush, the breaking of the glass and the subsequent everyone yelling “Mazel Tov,” and the hora,” says the couple.

“We loved our vows to one another,” Kira + Greg say. “We both had written rather long, comical vows (there was some schmaltz, too), and thoroughly enjoyed roasting each other in front of our friends and family. We both loved making each other laugh and expressing our love so thoroughly to each other.”

BTW: we put together a super helpful wedding vow writing guide for couples who want to share some words of their own at their ceremony like Kira + Greg did!

“We did a (playful, of course) twist on the traditional seven blessings that are read during Jewish wedding ceremonies,” Kira + Greg remember. “We wrote our own seven blessings, in the form of haikus, blessing the things we value in our life (our cats, our families, Los Angeles, nature, irreverence, our friends, and wine).”

Our Musical Choices
Processional
 "Real Love Baby" by Father John Misty
Recessional
"Too Late to Turn Back Now" by Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose
First Dance
We opted not to have a first dance.

The Understated Bride did a beautiful job of capturing Kira’s playful + ethereal bridal vibe with this wedding hairstyle and peachy neutral wedding makeup.

Our Favorite Memory
- The morning of, Greg and Kira opted to have their family and friends join them at the Airbnb they rented for everyone to get ready together. It ended up not being a wise choice - the place was way too small. But despite the chaos (maybe partly because of it), they had a lot of fun with all their most beloved people around them, hustling and bustling and making jokes and getting in each other's way.

- Kira is the youngest child, and it’s custom at Jewish weddings for the parents to be lifted during the Hora when their youngest child gets married. Seeing her mom and dad lifted in chairs during the Hora was meaningful, brought to life the line tracing back the family’s generations of Jewish weddings, and resolved the many fights that occurred between Kira and her parents during the wedding planning process about how many of Kira’s parents friends that she’d never met were to be invited.

- Greg: walking down the aisle with everyone - friends, family, and people I barely know - all beaming up at me, so delighted to be there and already clearly having a great time. I really credit our song with warming the crowd up perfectly, and making them adore us before we even appeared!

- Having our couples photographs taken before the wedding ceremony started was a wonderful way to spend some quality time together before the craziness of the evening erupted. During that photo session, we felt excited, calm, in love with each other, and relieved to be with just one another and our photographer in between a busy morning and a busy evening. We also had this photo shoot in a park, which meant there were hikers and young families nearby, smiling at us and wishing us congratulations as we crossed paths.

- Our parents and siblings gave speeches at the beginning of the reception, and they were all so heartfelt and beautiful.

- Entering the cocktail hour after the ceremony, and being greeted by our guests with such warmth and excitement. It felt great to enter a space with all our loved ones, and have them gush to us about how much they enjoyed the ceremony we had spent months crafting.

The Reception

“Greg loves doing crossword puzzles, and has become so adept at the New York Times puzzles that he only bothers with the hardest ones (Thursday through Sunday),” Kira says of her husband. “He made a custom crossword for our wedding guests, in which many of the clues were facts about our lives. We hoped that by making a crossword puzzle in which some clues would only be known by certain groups of guests (family members for clues about our childhoods, film school friends for clues about obscure movie-making facts, etc.), guests would mingle and collaborate to finish the puzzle. It sort of worked!”

“Kira spent about $800 buying various kitschy tchotchkes on Ebay to scatter about – on the welcome table, cocktail tables, and dinner tables,” says the couple of how they infused their decor with lighthearted details. “A few examples: cute ceramic mice in boots, several Troll dolls (the ones from the 90s with the neon hair sticking up), a wooden raccoon holding a pumpkin, a metal rooster playing the guitar. Just random stuff she thought was cute. It contributed greatly to our playful, eclectic vibe.”

La Piñata Party Rentals decked the reception out with colorful linens + glassware that supported the fun-yet-earthy design world of the day.

Fundamental dreamed up a gorgeous meal for the couple + their guests to enjoy.

Our Advice
From the bride: "It took us a year of being engaged, debating about all the various ways we could tie the knot (with immediate family at the courthouse, just a small group in my parents’ backyard, or only the two of us in a remote section of Alaska, are just some of the options we discussed). We eventually landed on having a big wedding with all our friends and family. Although we were initially ambivalent about getting married this way, we are so happy we did as our wedding was the best day of our lives and we can’t imagine spending it any other way."

“Kira loves potato chips (for her 31st bday party, she hosted a blind potato chip taste test), and Greg loves whiskey,” says the couple, “so during cocktail hour, we had a whiskey and chip pairing in which we recommended specific whiskey and potato chip flavors, complete with tasting notes. We had guests vote on the best pairing by dropping a dried bean in the appropriate glass jar.”

Such a fun combo of creative wedding cocktails and wedding reception snacks, and Spirit Guides Coktails was there to make it happen.

Congrats, Kira + Greg, on your eclectic + playful LA wedding day! All the best from GWS!