A Retro Vintage Meets Disco Wedding at The Fig House

Tell us more about the proposal at a surprise 30th birthday party. 

If you know anything about Stepha, you know she goes all out for every celebration. While Alex thought she was just spending all this time planning a surprise birthday party, it was a whole secretive plan.

Alex went to lunch with her bestie Sari, and Stepha was left to her own devices. Alex came home, but turns out she was the only one home. Stepha had done it again!

Alex found a card that read to get ready, an outfit already laid out, and a car was set to arrive in the next 30 min. The car took her to the bar where they decided to make the girlfriend label official, so long before. As one would, Alex assumed the bar would be full of her friends for a surprise party, but as she rolled up it was full of regular patrons.

Things were getting strange. Was it just an elaborate plan for us to spend the night together? Was this just a gesture? Who knows. Stepha said she was going to run to the restroom before the next surprise, so Alex hung out with a glass of wine and some olives, not realizing what was about to happen. Alex received a text to come to the back, where Stepha was waiting.

Stepha said this was the surprise. There were happy birthday balloons, decorated cocktail tables, and NO people. “What?” said Alex. “Who did you invite?” she said.

“Everyone we know. Your family, my family. They’re all coming” said Stepha. “Are you ready for the last surprise? You need to close your eyes.”

Needless to say Alex obliged but was most worried about tripping. Down a walkway and up some stairs, we walked no further. Stepha left Alex in place, and told her not to open her eyes yet. When the time was right, there was Stepha — standing under a neon “will you marry me?” sign, in a decorated space, with a ring. Finally it all clicked.

It was perhaps the most well done execution of a surprise engagement, and went off without a hitch. We celebrated the night with our friends and family (who showed up shortly thereafter), and could not have asked for a better night.

Did you decide to have a second proposal?

Don’t worry, Alex did a surprise engagement too (but it was much less elaborate and was at home), but everyone had their moment. 

We could not have pulled these events off without our people, our community, and our families, and that is what has been the supportive foundation our relationship has always rested upon. 

You had some challenges in the wedding planning process, tell us about how you navigated the guestlist. 

To be expected we did have some challenges but we were able to work through them ahead of the wedding day and landed with decisions we were both happy with. The first was with the guest list.

Because we had dated just as the pandemic started, and were getting married as life was getting back to the “new normal” there were members of each others’ families that we had not met yet, but wanted to invite. 

It was a little strange to invite people one of us didn’t know, especially if they had kids. 

We made the call not to have kids, and invited our family members (even the ones we had not met) who each of us felt HAD to be there. 

And, how did you go about incorporating Jewish tradition into the wedding day?

Another thing that we had to navigate was the ceremony structure. I am Jewish, and Stepha is not. One of the things I had always envisioned for my wedding was to have a Rabbi officiate it, and to have some of the Jewish rituals as part of it. 

Although Stepha is spiritual, she felt uncomfortable with certain religious language with reference to god, as well as rituals done exclusively in Hebrew. She wanted to feel comfortable and her family to feel welcomed in this space, and so we found a middle ground. 

One of my oldest friends, Jade, is a Rabbi, and she was our officiant. She did an incredible job helping us find equity in terms of how we balanced English and Hebrew, how we explained the meaning of these rituals to our guests, and making sure we used spiritual-centric language instead of god-centric language throughout the ceremony.

And, how did you navigate walking down the aisle as a queer couple who didn’t want a heteronormative wedding?

Stepha and I agreed that we were obviously not having a heteronormative wedding, but one thing she was really averse to was one person walking down the aisle first, waiting for the other to arrive. I really struggled with this because I wanted us to each have our moment and not force our guests to pick a bride to look at. 

It came down to about a week before the wedding, but we were able to create a dual aisle where our guests had equal opportunity to see each of us. 

It was contentious trying to figure it out, but in the end it worked!

Tell us the inspiration behind your fun retro-meets-disco-meets-vintage wedding.

Anyone who knows us, knows that we are bright, bold, and fun personalities. That being said, we knew we had to have a wedding to match. We kept telling ourselves that we wanted a memorable wedding that was fun, joyful, bright, and unlike any wedding our friends and family had ever been to before.

Stepha is definitely the creative of the couple, and was really inspired by the bright fuschia, pink, and red color palette. She had also gotten a neon “will you marry me sign” that she used at our engagement, and was something we knew was going to be incorporated into the wedding. We took it to the next level though, and said to ourselves why not have neon signs everywhere? All that plus Stepha had a non negotiable that sealed the deal — a light up dance floor.

Honestly I trust Stepha when it comes to these things, and I love neon lights and colors, so was full on board. Once we started putting all this inspo on a pinterest board, the ideas kept flowing, and the vision really came to life.

The only thing we disagreed on was the name — Stepha chose Neon Romance, and I always preferred Rave of Love — whatever name of choice, the vision was clear.

And, to bring that to life you undertook plenty of DIY projects, tell us about them! 

Did we ever!! So our theme (Neon Romance — or as Alex calls it Rave of Love), there were a lot of decor elements that just did not exist in a standard form so we actually did a combination of custom orders, as well as fully DIY projects.

From a decor standpoint, we actually custom designed and ordered all of the neon signs that decorated our walls, as well as the neon table numbers and rope lights.

• Tinsel – This was a labor of love to say the least. Stepha and I knew exactly the look, feel, and movement that we wanted the tinsel tassels to have in the venue, but of course nothing existed like that. We actually ordered over 100 tinsel curtain party decorations, cut them and folded them to make tassels, hand strung each one, and made sure to measure them for the length of the room. Our entire house was a tinsel tassel factory for about a week but it ended up looking great.
  
  We also were able to use the extra tinsel strings that were damaged or fell off as the “flower petals” that our flower boys (our nephews) tossed down the aisles before we walked down.
  
• Custom painted vases – Overall we actually had an assortment of vase shapes, sizes, and materials, but as we were creating a bunch of the decor, Stepha had the idea to actually paint our existing gold vases, something brighter. So within 48hrs of this decision, neon orange, purple, and pink spray paint showed up at our house, and not another 48hrs went by and our entire garage and our car had neon paint dust everywhere. Luckily we were able to clean it up, and the vases were *chef’s kiss*
  
• Flowers – So spoiler alert, while Stepha has a full time career, she is also an entrepreneur and is a Florist! This meant that we got to play a lot with all our wedding florals. We knew from the beginning that we wanted bright colors, lots of wild bouquets, and something very fun.
  
  We picked all our stems together, and had our friends and family help with the arranging in our garage a few days before the wedding. Stepha made each of our bridal bouquets herself, which was such an incredibly special memory for us both. It was somewhat of a full circle moment for us both too since we had originally met when working at a floral startup so many years before.
  
• Heart Shaped arch with Tinsel – This project was great because it had a dual purpose. We had this fun background outside near our welcome table for guests to take photos with upon arrival, especially with their heart shaped glasses, and after the ceremony, this moved inside and was a backdrop for our sweetheart table. We found the heart itself on amazon and then decorated it with some tinsel tassels from earlier. This was definitely something our guests have brought up since the wedding as such a fun addition.
  
• Heart Shaped Sunglasses with table numbers and guest names – This one deserves a MASSIVE shoutout to Stepha’s mom Tina, and our sister-in-law Kim for all the hard work to make these sunglasses. Stepha and I were able to source a variety of these sunglasses online, and then once our final guest list was set and tables were assigned, Tina and Kim (using a Crikut machine) created all of the guest names and table numbers, and put them on each pair of glasses. This one was super tedious and had to wait until nearly the last minute, but they came out gorgeous. Our guests are still telling us when they wear the glasses, and was a really fun takeaway item for them.
  
• Matchboxes – Fun fact, Stepha and I actually having coordinating match book and match box tattoos that we got after our engagement, and we promised each other early on that we would have matchboxes at our wedding. We used some of the designs from our invitations and created custom matchboxes with the help of Etsy. We say we are matched for life, and this was a little homage to that.
  
• Menus – With so many hearts, and pink it was hard to imagine we needed anything else, but Stepha insisted we need to have not just any kind of menu, but a heart shaped one. Because we had a buffet, all the items were available to our guests and meant that there was one singular menu for everyone. I was able to design a heart shaped menu in Canva, and then work with a local print shop in our area to get them cut to the right shape and size for our plates.
  
• Tablecloths – This was not a full DIY but we did end up sourcing all our floral tablecloths to match the theme so we were not stuck with a solid color exclusively. They were able to play off the flowers and the lights in a really fun way

Walk us through the wedding day. 

So one of the things I was adamant about was not staying together the night before the wedding. Stepha stayed at our house with some friends, and I stayed with my mom and bestie Sari at an Airbnb nearby. Stepha had gotten us matching white pjs with teddy bears on them, so we wore those as we got ready for the day. 

Day of was calm but hectic, with everyone at the house getting their hair and makeup done, and then my house. Even though every moment until this point for planning had been stressful, but the day of it melted away. I could not have felt more calm until we got to the venue. 

One of the things we loved about The Fig House was that there are two separate areas for getting ready so we were able to stay apart up until the first look. We both had time to do toasts with our friends and family, and prep for the day. First look was amazing, we were SHOCKED at each others outfits, and the excitement was brewing. 

Our VIPS and Flower Boys walked down the aisle to Here in Your Arms by HelloGoodbye (we are emo forever), and we walked down the aisle to Northern Lights by Kennie. 

We set up the venue with memories all around. Memories with friends and family present at the wedding as well as a dedicated area with memory photos for those loved ones who could not make it or are no longer here with us physically. 

We have two cats, Roby and Olive, and actually names our bar Ruby’s bar. We each had a signature cocktail to match the theme an electric lemonade that was a lavender vodka lemonade, and a WAP margarita that was spicy raspberry. They were both delicious, and guests couldn’t pick a favorite actually. 

Our entrance song was Perfect (Exceeder) which is honestly ironic because we had no idea the song would be thrown back into the mix of top 10 hits just a few months later with saltburn. So this was a slight fail but none of our guests knew, but we actually had two first dance songs. Initially the first song was Can’t take my eyes off of you by Ms. Lauryn Hill, but mid way through we actually shifted into Fantasy by the Queen, miss Mariah Carey. We wanted a bit of a surprise moment for everyone, but it was more for us than anything. 

Isadora Spreads was an amazing performer who did 3 different songs for us, and we ended the night with an emo hour of all our favorite songs. Highly suggest curating playlists for your DJ so you can get the vibe of the night that you want. We actually created playlists for Pre ceremony, ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner, dance, and emo hour — which was overkill but very on brand for us. 

Dinner was an amazing buffet, and we wanted food that everyone would just enjoy instead of just typical wedding food. We had classic american fare — fried chicken, shortribs, mac n cheese, salad, mashed potatoes and ice cream sandwiches. We needed everyone to be ready for dancing, even though we had a late night surprise of Hot Dog on a Stick later in the night (corndogs, cheese dogs, lemonade, and funnel cake sticks).

As the night wound down we were just dancing with our closest friends, in our neighborhood we call home, celebrating a moment that seemed meant to be for years. Our friends crashed at our house since brunch was coming up the next day, and were able to sift through our polaroids before crashing for the night.

It was a dream.