Los Angelenos have mastered the cool, hip, and urban wedding vibes. This wedding in LA’s SmogShoppe was a jungle-like affair.
Urban Jungle was a perfect theme for their first date, as they met through Tinder, the modern dating app. They both love Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. This tropical California wedding featured a variety of eclectic tributes to childhood love and shared obsessions. The “Hang onto your butts!” banner over the cake is too cool.
Robyn, a writer, and Eric hired a creative vendor we hadn’t considered before, a poet from the area! The professional poet wrote poems on demand for guests as a favor, which the guests loved, and so did we!
Find out all about the moments & details captured by the talented Let’s Frolic Together.
Our Love Story
Our mutual love for Jurassic Park led us to meet each other. We also shared a joint half-assing experience on Tinder. Robyn’s profile had no bio. She only wrote “Hold onto your butts,” an obscure movie line nobody recognized. Eric’s first message was about remembering the quote and expressing his love for Jurassic Park.
Eric wanted Robyn to be surprised and proposed the day after their anniversary. Robyn assumed Eric would be working as usual on Friday night and that he was going to dinner with a close friend. In truth, the friend had been tipped off and was not going to dinner. Eric wasn’t at work but was waiting at home.
Robyn opened her door to find twinkling lights, framed signs, and instructions to take the stairs to their roof deck. She thought she was in someone else’s home and almost left. She slowly walked upstairs when she realized this couldn’t be true. She was unaware when she noticed the roof door had been left open. She became upset because Eric hadn’t closed it before leaving for work. She was still oblivious when she saw that the entrance to the roof had been left open. She became upset because Eric went to work without closing it.
We popped champagne, and he hugged her. After Eric proposed to her, we received our favorite Chicago deep-dish pizza. We went to San Francisco, one of our favorite cities, for a one-night surprise trip the following day.
Dress & Attire
RobynJim Hjelm designed Robyn’s lace wedding gown in the evening; she changed to a sequined dress from BHLDN for maximum success at a dance party.
Eric wore a Hugo Boss jacket, a French-cuff Ted Baker t-shirt, a bow tie, and cufflinks that his father gave him. His father-in-law also gave him a watch, and Chicago Bulls dress socks.
Style
Both of us are from Chicago but have lived in Los Angeles for many years. We now consider Los Angeles our home and want to share it with our family and friends. SmogShoppe’s indoor-outdoor autobody-chic feel felt very LA to me, and the gorgeous succulent wall, funky furniture, and quirky decor set the exact tone we wanted. We didn’t have to do much because the venue was nicely decorated. It left us with enough space to add fun and personal touches without coordinating an entire decor room. Robyn and I married in spring and chose a blush, gold, and green palette.
The Photographer
After falling into an internet rabbit hole of looking at real weddings, including one she shot at our venue, we found Jasmine from Let’s Frolic Together. We video-chatted with her and realized she was “our people.”
We knew we’d struck gold when we told her of our Jurassic Park date, and she suggested we take engagement photos in the desert with dinosaur sculptures. She captured the candid style we wanted for our wedding pictures. We can still hear the laughter when we look at the photos.
Favorite moments
We had a Chinese Tea ceremony with our respective families the night before our wedding to honor our cultures. Eric broke a glass at the end of our wedding ceremony. This is a Jewish tradition. It took Eric at least three attempts to break the glass, but when he finally did, everyone cheered. Eric claims it was much more difficult because it was on a carpet.
We have a favorite memory of sitting at the sweetheart’s table that we almost didn’t get. The sweetheart table was added at the last minute to our floor plan. It gave us time alone and a unique view of our family and friends having a blast together.
Our favorite memories are also the emotional and humorous speeches made by our family members and bridal party. It’s what happens when you have some professional writers.
Food
Huntington Catering took care of our bar and food needs. It was our only and first tasting. They exceeded our expectations when we got there. We wanted the dinner served family-style, as it is our favorite way to eat with family and friends. We wanted to ensure everyone had a chance to try a bit of everything.
The Details
We wanted our wedding to be super personal. We wrote our vows, and a friend who was unintentional with us on our first date married us.
We used home videos of us as children to transition our guests from the cocktail hour into dinner. This was a big hit, especially when toddler Eric tried unsuccessfully to somersault. We gave each guest an old-fashioned friendship bracelet as a tribute to our childhood and set up a Mario Kart N64 video game station so guests could enjoy it.
We both enjoy creative writing, so we hired a local, talented poet to write custom poems for us on her vintage typewriter. Many of our guests commented on how personal and touching their lyrics were.
The guests were given a bag of Chicago’s famous Garrett’s popcorn as a gift at the end of the reception. We also hung the sign “Hold onto your butts,” a tribute to Jurassic Park and Robyn’s Tinder profile.
