Jesse and Erica found their dream wedding venue in California’s Smog Shoppe, an industrial boho chic vibe that gave the whole day a fun party vibe all while being surrounded by beautiful botanicals. Pssst, just wait until you see the living wall behind the ceremony!
Keep scrolling to find some fun and funky wedding ideas for your summer wedding. And as always be sure to check out the full gallery of images from Mandee Johnson Photography below.
The Love Story
Erica and Jesse met in high school Spanish class. Jesse and his friends were too disruptive so they were separated and Jesse was seated in front of Erica. After a year of being just friends they began dating and fell in love. After graduating High School Erica and Jesse went off to college and in separate directions. They always kept in touch with one another and eventually rekindled their relationship. There was just one problem Erica lived in Los Angeles and Jesse lived in New York. So, Jesse offered to move to California so they could be together. After a few years of dating in the same city for the first time since high school, Jesse and Erica went on a trip to Paris where he proposed in front of the Louvre.
The Venue
Erica knew she wanted their wedding location to have natural botanical elements. After scouting locations in vineyards and in Malibu the couple ended up choosing the Smog Shoppe for their wedding location. They immediately felt it was just the right combination of beautiful, cool, and unique.
Erica choose to focus on women-owned companies for her vendors and allowed them to bring their creativity to the table. Keeping the loose guidelines of colorful and fun it allowed the florist to create beautiful and unique centerpieces for each table.
Wedding Faves and Best Moments
Fave moment: Being able to celebrate with all the people we love from different parts of our lives in the same place at the same time.
The most important thing to me was that they day felt like “us.” We aren’t very traditional and I don’t believe in doing things just for the sake of doing them. I wanted us to feel like ourselves having a fun time with our friends and family.
Personalized: Our two best friends did our ceremony. David – Jesse’s best friend from sleepaway camp. Ellie- my best friend from college. I asked them to incorporate a few Jewish elements to represent Jesse’s upbringing but aside from that I just wanted our friends to be there with us and say a few words about us. Also, Ellie recited a poem about dinosaurs – which is cool because who doesn’t love dinosaurs?
Making my sister wear a floral headpiece- a running joke from our childhood, having friends marry us, having a band we love see perform be the music, asking the guests to wear floral prints as well to be part of the style.
Advice: Do what you want – don’t let anyone try and influence your day. And on the day of don’t worry about the details, just have fun. First and foremost, it’s a party and you should just let loose.
Focus on having fun and everything will fall into place. Also make sure you have people to help you out on the day of so you can sit back and relax.
Musical Choices:
Processional: Hard To Concentrate by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (No Lyrics)
Recessional: Hard To Concentrate by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (with Lyrics, sung by one of my best friends)
First Dance: Do You Realize? by The Flaming Lips
