Katie + Jake by Klaui Varadi

We really loved the idea of the classic and timeless black & white colours of a wedding.

Tell us a little about yourselves, what you do, what you love…

We are Midwesterners who relocated to Los Angeles 6 years ago. We are avid travellers and are often tourists in our own city. Jake loves music, shooting film, and anything exciting and novel (the weirdest item on the menu, the strangest rest stop on the side of the highway, you get the picture…). Katie deeply loves a diner for breakfast, being a dog mom to their 5 y/o frenchie Squash, and talking Bravo cinematic universe with anyone who has a take.

How/where/when did you meet – and what were your first impressions?

In 2019, we had both graduated from our universities, and I was hired to drive the Planters NUTmobile, and Jake was hired to drive the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile… and that’s how we originally met! At the time, Planters and Oscar Mayer were owned by the same company, so while we were hired to drive different food-shaped vehicles, we were trained to drive the NUTmobile & Wienermobile together. We entered the training program (Hot Dog High and Peanut Prep, respectively) as strangers, met on the first day of training, and we slowly got to know each other over the year in which we were driving the NUTmobile & Wienermobile all over the country, moving to a new city each week. We would often be assigned the same area of the country for a week, exploring countless new cities together with the NUT & Wien being our only modes of transportation.

What styling and visual elements worked best for you? (could be things, the florals, particular hire products or your marquee, etc., something the stylist created or simply just the scenic beauty of your location or the existing design of your venue).

From the beginning, we really loved the idea of the classic and timeless black & white colours of a wedding, combined with the greenery and mountains of the California landscape and vineyard. Every decor detail was picked to be complementary to the landscape, with the white and black of our outfits standing out amongst the decor & scenery. The disco balls and black and white checkered dance floor were part of the vision from the very beginning. That was a requirement for me when touring venues– if they didn’t allow stuff to hang from the ceilings or above a dance floor, we weren’t booking that venue. And for Jake, once he saw how our venue was perched up on the hillside with a view of the valley and mountains, there was nowhere else he wanted to get married.

What did you enjoy most about the planning process, and do you have any tips for couples starting their wedding planning journey?

For me, one of my favourite parts of planning was being able to channel my creativity into an event and building it exactly to our taste! My work has creative elements, but it was really fun to use that part of my brain in a way that I haven’t before and outside of my day-to-day. Writing my vows was also one of my favourite parts of planning. During such a busy time, it was so incredible to take some moments (a lot of moments in my case) to gather all of my feelings and thoughts about what I wanted to say to Jake during our ceremony, and reminisce on the 5 years we’d been together before our wedding.

One of my biggest tips for our friends who are now planning their weddings is to get organised, the earlier the better (and especially with a planner if you can)!! The month leading up to our wedding and our wedding weekend weren’t over-the-top chaotic because we thought about so many elements and logistics in advance, which really allowed us to be present during the month of our wedding and only focus on enjoying our wedding weekend together.

The vows were my favourite part of the process. There’s a park a block away from us, so I decided I was going to go there at sunset every day to write my vows until they were finished. The process of writing them was one of the most rewarding parts of the wedding for me and really put everything into perspective. My tip on vows is not to rush them! Giving myself time and writing a bit each day opened my eyes to appreciate aspects of our relationship that I had not noticed before.

I also loved picking our first song. Music is incredibly important to me, so this was a huge deal. We chose “Our House” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, which represented the simple joys we find in everyday life together.

Tell us about your vendors. Were there any standout suppliers you would like to make special mention of?

Lindsay Dean, our planner, had a vendor for everything!! Our wedding day was so perfect and smooth because of her detailed mindset, and we are incredibly grateful! I knew Lindsay was the right choice for our planner very early on, but the moment she walked up on our wedding day wearing her Britney Spears-style headset and radio to communicate with her team, I knew we were in the best hands possible. The day was flawless, and it’s thanks to her! Also, Klaui Varadi, our photographer, gave us absolutely stunning photos and captured our day with such care. I could cry even just thinking about it– our wedding gallery is so unbelievably stunning, and we’re so grateful that these are the photos we get to look back on forever. We wanted timeless for our day, and she gave us timeless and family heirloom-worthy photos. Just incredible!

Tell us about your main outfits, what was unique, and is there a story?

My dress experience at LOHO Bride in LA was everything I could have hoped for!! Every stylist I interacted with was thoughtful and attentive, especially Jessica, who ended up helping me decide on my Varca gown. I just loved the shape of the dress and how it fit me, as well as the drama of the train. I ultimately wanted a really timeless dress, and to be able to look back at pictures of my dress 20 years from now and not really be able to pinpoint the year we got married by the style of the dress. Also, the designer I went with, Varca, is in a league of their own. Varca is designed in Chicago, and my husband Jake is from the Chicago area, so it just felt right.

Tell us about your wedding and engagement rings.

My wedding band was designed by Willa Hilditch, a jeweller from London. I have followed her work for years, and when it came time to get a wedding band, I knew I wanted her to make it. She takes a memory and carves it into a ring. My wedding ring has the place where I proposed on one side and the view from the place we stayed in Paris after the engagement on the other. I’ve talked to Willa about designing more bands representing different memories in Katie, and I’s relationship down the road.

For my engagement ring, Jake and I didn’t want to go ring shopping together because we wanted to both feel the excitement of seeing the ring for the first time together when he proposed. BUT I knew I still wanted to go ring shopping and try on rings to see what I liked. So we enlisted my best friend to go shopping with me, and then inform Jake post-shopping so we could keep it separate. It was so fun because Jake got to see my genuine reaction to the ring when he proposed, but we knew it was still something I would love since the style was something I had already tried on. And then for my wedding band, I wanted something pretty simple and didn’t want to go for more stones or diamonds, but I wanted a little more than a simple gold band. That’s how I landed on my ribbed wedding band– it feels elevated and styled without adding more stones, which was my goal!

What were one or two elements that were most important to you both that you were happy to spend a little more on? (food, photography, florals, the venue, your outfits?).

Curating a guest-forward experience was really important to us. We knew we were going to have fun regardless at our wedding, but we also knew we would surely have the best day of our lives if our guests had the night of their lives as well. We really wanted our guests to walk away from our wedding feeling like it was the most fun event they’ve ever been to, and we thought a lot about how to infuse our personalities into our wedding to bring an upbeat and personal energy that could also be equally enjoyed by our guests. So everything from carefully curating our silent disco playlists, to champagne being offered to guests to have during the ceremony, to hiring a phenomenal DJ– these were all choices we made to ensure a good time was had by all.

Was there a favourite moment (or two) that you will treasure always?

Our vows were hands down our favourite part of the day. Nothing will ever compare to reading our vows to each other in a space with everyone we love. Well our vows AND the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile rolling into our cocktail hour to surprise our guests with Jake and I inside. All of the guests knew our backstory, but we kept the Wienermobile’s presence at the wedding a secret from almost everyone. So their reaction to it pulling up was electric– everyone went wild!

What does being married mean to you, and are there any special rituals you have that you would like to share?

We have been together for so long and have always felt so solid that I expected the wedding day to be a celebration of the
love that we’ve shared all of these years, but I thought that it would feel the same at the end of the day. It turned out to be
so much more. Beyond appreciating each other more than ever, it truly did feel like the beginning of the rest of our lives. It
was a time to reflect on everything we love about each other and a reminder to actively appreciate each other every day.

My ritual/daily act of love is to make Katie an espresso every morning.

To me, being married means having my favourite person to come home to every day forever!! While we had already built our
life around us in the 5 years we had been together before our wedding, it’s exciting to think about everything we’re going
to be able to build in the decades we have to look forward to. It’s exciting to be able to talk about future plans and know
that this is the person you get to make those big (and small) decisions with!

One of my favourite rituals has become our reality TV nights. Once I successfully got Jake hooked on a few of my shows, it’s
become a very entertaining ritual in our household!