weddings – IAMNOTASTALKER

March 3, 2011March 3, 2011

My Wedding Hair and Make-Up Stylists

There are still quite a few stalking-related wedding posts that I have yet to blog about and I figured I might as well get started on them today since it has already been six months since the Grim Cheaper and I tied the knot. So here goes. For me, the decision of whether or not to hire professional hair and make-up artists for my big day was a complete and total no-brainer, much to the GC’s chagrin. Winking smile I have never been very adept at doing either my hair or my make-up, so I knew that for my wedding I had to bring in the big guns, so to be speak. Martina Maina, owner of the T-Birds Hair Salon in Burbank, has been my hair stylist for over a decade now, pretty much ever since I first moved to L.A. in February of 2000, and I absolutely love the woman to death. More than just simply my hairdresser, Martina is also my friend and I knew that there was no one else I would even fathom trusting my wedding ‘do with. Martina is an absolute hair master (she has even been dubbed the “Hair Whisperer” by her many devotees), is extremely quick and creative, does not need to work off of photographs, and is sassy beyond belief! Simply put, the woman ROCKS.

I told Martina that for my wedding, I wanted her to put my hair in a chignon – something very simple, classic, and Audrey Hepburn-esque – and without so much as even showing her a photograph of what I had in mind, she created it perfectly – and it only took her about ten minutes to do so. Not kidding! The finished product is pictured above. I have to mention here, too, that my hair stayed in perfect shape throughout the entire evening and I never even needed so much as a tiny touch-up. It was simple, easy, and beautiful – in short, EXACTLY what I had envisioned. And it looked great both with and without my veil.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, this post does have a celebrity twist. Because this is Hollywood, Martina has worked with countless stars and on quite a few television shows and movies over the many years she has been styling hair. Just a few of the celebs Martina has worked on recently include Jake Busey, Quincy Jones, General Hospital’s Megan Ward, Eric Roberts, Jennifer Tilly, Sugar Ray Leonard, Crispin Glover, The World Is Not Enough’s Serena Scott Thomas, CSI: New York’s Hill Harper, Cedric the Entertainer, and Scary Movie’s Regina Hall. She was also the head hair and make-up artist for the Cathy Hughes television talk show TV One on One.

For my wedding day make-up, I knew there was only one woman for the job – Rita Montanez, whom I first met through my favorite head-shot photographer Robert Kazandjian. Robert had hired Rita to do my make-up for a set of head-shots he was taking of me back in 2007 and I fell in love with her pretty much on site! Aside from being incredibly sweet, Rita was also insanely fun to talk to and did my make-up in a VERY natural way, which I loved. So, when the GC finally proposed two years ago, one of the first calls I made was to Rita to ask her if she would be willing to do the make-up for my nuptials. Because Rita works regularly now as the head make-up artist for the television series The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, she sadly no longer does wedding make-up. But she THANKFULLY made an exception in my case once she heard that I had remembered her from so many years beforehand. Smile Like Martina, Rita has been working in Hollywood for quite a long time and has done make-up for numerous big time celebrities including Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Andy Garcia, Donald Sutherland, Lisa Kudrow, Bonnie Rait, Ray Charles, BB King, Oliver Stone, Liam Neeson, Carrie Fisher, Kelsey Grammer, Dionne Warwick, Steven Spielberg, Faye Dunaway, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner, and Hugh Grant. She has also worked on the television soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. I cannot tell you how much fun it was listening to Rita’s many Hollywood stories. Sigh!

As you can see in the above photograph, I was not a traditional bride in the fact that there was only one woman in my wedding party – my best friend Kylee. For whatever reason, my closest friends have always been male and when it came time to choosing my bridal party, I did not let a little thing like gender interfere. I believe that your wedding party should be who your wedding party should be – regardless of gender, age, or anything else, really. So, my wedding parting consisted of the following: my best girlfriend, Kylee; one of my closest friends from high school, Stew; my best friend, Robin, whom I have known since I was six years old; and Mike, from MovieShotsLA.

Not surprisingly, aside from Kylee (pictured above), no one else in my wedding party wanted their hair or make-up done Winking smile .

But I did have Martina and Rita do the hair and make-up for my mom.

And her best friend, Doina, who is also my best friend Robin’s mom and who is also pretty much my surrogate mother.

And Robin’s girlfriend, Steffi, who is also one of my closest friends.

Martina even ended up giving my dad a hair-cut that morning! Smile

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The finished results were SPECTACULAR! Honestly so much more than I ever could have hoped they would be! I was absolutely amazed at how Martina and Rita managed to bring out the individual beauty in each of us rather than just creating a cookie-cutter look for the whole group. Pictured above is Kylee;

my mom;

Doina;

Steffi;

and me!

I really do not want this to come off the wrong way, but I looked absolutely amazing on my wedding day – all thanks to Martina and Rita. Trust me, I don’t normally look like that! You should see my appearance when I roll out of bed and head to Starbucks each morning. It is a far, FAR cry from the above photograph, which just proves that it is an absolute wonder – I’ll even go so far as to say it is miraculous, in fact – what a professional hair and make-up team can do. No wonder celebrities always look so fabulous! I would be in heaven if I could hire Martina and Rita to come to my house each morning to make me beautiful! If you are at all on the fence about whether or not to hire professional hair and make-up artists for your wedding day, I honestly cannot more highly recommend doing so! It is money that you will not regret spending. Not only that, but getting ready together, as my mom, Kylee, Steffi, Doina, and I did on the morning of my wedding, is one of my fondest memories of the entire day.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Hair stylist Martina Maina can be reached via her salon, T-Birds, which is located at 1808 West Olive Avenue in Burbank. You can visit the official T-Birds website here. Make-up artist Rita Montanez can be reached via her website, Makeup by Rita, here.

December 10, 2010March 3, 2011

Our Rehearsal Dinner at POP Champagne & Dessert Bar

As I’ve mentioned many times before on this blog, POP Champagne & Dessert Bar in Old Town Pasadena is my very favorite restaurant and, even though I wasn’t even engaged at the time, when I first walked through its front doors over a year and a half ago, I immediately knew it was the place where I wanted to hold the rehearsal dinner for my wedding. The only problem was that the Grim Cheaper and I had long been planning on getting married in Malibu and having a rehearsal dinner at a restaurant located over fifty miles away from the wedding venue wasn’t exactly the most viable of options. After the GC finally proposed, though, and we sat down to begin our wedding planning, my mom suggested that we hold the actual wedding rehearsal in the backyard of my parent’s Pasadena home, which is located just about two miles from POP, and an idea was born – our nuptials would be a two-city celebration! Much to the GC’s chagrin, I had long before decided that all of our wedding guests would be invited to our rehearsal dinner. Because weddings seem to go by in such a blur and because the vast majority of our guests were from out of town, I did not want the time spent with our closest loved ones to be limited to one short evening. I was a little worried, though, that our family and friends might be upset over the fact that each night’s festivities would be held in a different city, which would entail everyone having to rent a car AND moving hotel rooms from one night to the other. As it turned out, though, people absolutely LOVED the idea! Because most of our family and friends were not from the area, many of them told me afterwards that they loved getting to experience two very different parts of Southern California over the course of our wedding weekend. YAY!

Holding the rehearsal in my parents’ backyard actually turned out to be very memorable for my family, because just two weeks after the wedding my mom and dad put their beloved house up for sale – the same house they had lived in for the better part of a decade. So, it was nice to make one last and very significant memory there before we had to say good-bye. And yes, as you can see in the above photographs, during the rehearsal I did wear the Carrie Bradshaw veil that my best friend, Kylee, made for my Sex and the City-themed bachelorette party.

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Because fifty people would be attending, I did not want our rehearsal dinner to be a formal, sit-down event. I wanted our friends and family to be able to mingle and get to know each other and a formal sit-down dinner would not have been very conducive to that. So, we asked Kristin and Matt, the owners of POP Champagne Bar, if they could create a cocktail party-type atmosphere for us and they ended up pulling it off beautifully! In fact, they couldn’t have facilitated it better had I given them a roadmap! They wound up giving us the entire front portion of the restaurant and had several different groupings of tables and chairs set up for people if they wanted to sit down, while servers walked around with tray-passed food. There was also a buffet table set up with wine and champagne and a sampling of the food so that guests could also help themselves. The evening turned out perfect! Not only did the GC and I get to walk around and talk to all of our closest friends, but most of our guests also spent the evening mingling and speaking with different groups of people, so, by the time the wedding rolled around, everyone had really gotten know each other, which was so incredibly cool! And while I realize that it is a (large) added expense, if you can swing it, I honestly cannot more highly recommend inviting all of your guests to the rehearsal dinner. Doing so made our special day that much more memorable.

Not to mention the food was ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE – and almost unbelievably reasonably priced. There are several different special events menu choices available at POP and we chose the most expensive one, which was only $12 per person! Included in that price were seven different menu items of our choosing. We ended up picking the deviled eggs with chive truffle, bacon onion, and blue cheese flavoring (my favorite), POPcorn chicken (pictured above to the right), chorizo and Anaheim chili meatballs, sliders with three different toppings including bacon-gorgonzola mayonnaise, Pasilla chili-chorizo, and goat cheese & date (the GC’s favorite), the flatbread pizza du jour, wild mushroom and goat cheese bruschetta, and olive, mushroom, and sun-dried tomato flavored tapenade crostini (pictured above to the left). And there was no shortage of food! Amazingly enough, after two and a half hours of being there, Matt informed us that we hadn’t even eaten fifty percent of the food we had paid for! LOL For dessert we picked the three-item menu at $6 per person which included chocolate-covered strawberries, a trio of homemade cookies, and the house-made churros served with three different dipping sauces – spiced warm chocolate, Dulce de leche, and creamy strawberry. Because the bottles of wine and champagne offered at POP are all on the pricier side, Matt offered to special order some lower-priced options for our rehearsal dinner. We told him the amount we wanted to spend per bottle and gave him free reign to choose the brands he thought best and he ended up picking out some spectacular options for us. So not only was the party absolutely fabulous – all of our guests were raving about both the atmosphere and the food – but it was also completely affordable! And while not yet a filming location (although it was almost chosen to be in the soon-to-be released No Strings Attached movie, which would have been just about the coolest thing ever!), POP has become something of a celebrity hangout as of late. Such stars as Mila Kunis, Denzel Washington, Marc Curry, and The Bachelor’s Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney have all been spotted there and ’80s pop star Tiffany even threw herself a birthday party at the restaurant! Love it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: POP Champagne & Dessert Bar is located at 33 East Union Street in Old Town Pasadena. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

December 1, 2010March 9, 2018

Our Wedding Photographer – Rob Greer

Deciding the order in which to publish the various blog posts that I am planning to write about the different movie/filming location elements of my wedding has proved to be a bit of a challenge for me. Today’s entry was originally going to be about our invitations, but then I realized that I can’t very well write about them without first blogging about our wedding photographer, as he took the photograph that wound up serving as the inspiration for those invitations. So, while it may seem as if I am doing things a bit out of order, please bear with me, as I promise there is a method to my madness. Anyway, I have always been someone who has believed in the notion of fate, that things happen for a reason, that there are invisible strings in the universe that tie random people together for very significant, if sometimes unknown, purposes. And the way we found our wedding photographer definitely upheld that belief. Back in early 2009, I was doing some cyber-stalking of fave show CSI: Miami when I came across this blog post written by Rob Greer, a photographer who was lucky enough to have had the Season 7 episode of the show titled “Smoke Gets in Your CSI’s” film in his photography studio. Because that particular episode was one of my very favorites of the entire series, I just about had a heart attack upon reading his post and immediately dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk the studio where filming had taken place. Well, amazingly enough, Rob happened to find the post I that I ended up writing about his studio and must have enjoyed it, because he continued to check in and read my blog from time to time. So, a few months later, when I announced that the Grim Cheaper had finally proposed, Rob posted a comment on my site asking if we would consider him as our wedding photographer. Well, I was absolutely FLOORED over that comment and immediately called him up to make an appointment.

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Our meeting with Rob took place inside the studio where CSI: Miami had been filmed, so, as you can imagine, I was in absolute heaven! And not only did he take us on a tour of the space and show us exactly where filming had taken place, but he also played parts of the episode for us on his television so that we could see exactly what had appeared on the show. So incredibly cool!! Well, right then and there I became convinced that he was the photographer for us. Not only were his wedding pictures phenomenal, but my parents and I ended up just really hitting it off with him. And incredibly enough, so did the Grim Cheaper! In typical GC fashion, he had originally been appalled at the idea of hiring a wedding photographer and had suggested that we just have my father take pictures that day. I’m not kidding! But once he met Rob and saw his work, his mind immediately changed. At that time, the GC had just become interested in photography and Rob was kind enough to show him all of his various high-end lenses, teach him some camera tricks, and even gift him with a certificate for a free photography class! Most importantly, though, for whatever reason, the GC just felt comfortable with Rob. He typically does not like to have his photograph taken, but when Rob was behind the camera he really loosened up. Rob’s rates were also reasonable, which only added to the GC’s appreciation of him. So, without so much as even perusing through another wedding photographer’s website, we hired Rob on the spot. And I am so glad we did! His photographs turned out phenomenal! And one of the engagement session pictures that he took wound up serving as the inspiration for our save-the-date cards, our invitations, and our programs. But more on that tomorrow!

In the “Smoke Gets in Your CSI’s” episode of CSI: Miami, Rob’s studio stood in for the loft/black-market organ transplant operating room belonging to Dr. Donald Phelps (aka Peter Lavin). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the property were used in the filming, although the interior was dressed to appear very dark and dreary in the episode.

In reality, the 4,635-square foot loft is BEAUTIFUL, although my photographs don’t really do it justice. You can see some much better pictures that Rob took of his studio here. At the time of the filming, Rob actually lived in the loft, but has since moved to a house in Pasadena. Besides CSI: Miami, three AT&T commercials were also filmed in the space.

I will be posting many of Rob’s photographs throughout the next few weeks as I blog about the wedding, but for today I thought I’d publish one of my favorites from that day – the one in which we recreated the famous Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston wedding photograph. And while Rob wasn’t actually too keen on taking the above picture of us (he didn’t want people who saw it to think he was a copy-cat artist), he really worked hard to make sure it turned out exactly as I wanted, even going so far as to print out a copy of the Brad and Jen picture to bring with him on the day of the wedding and then tweaking my veil to make sure it went over my shoulder just like hers did in the photograph. Love it!

Our wedding was actually quite a bit frustrating for Rob because he typically prefers to take all of the bride and groom and wedding party photographs prior to the ceremony, but I was adamant about not seeing the GC on our wedding day until I walked down the aisle. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that moment of first seeing each other at opposite ends of the aisle is a magical one and I wasn’t going to give it up for anything. Because I wanted to wait, though, our “posed” photography time was limited to the cocktail hour (which in reality was only set to last 45 minutes) and Rob had concerns that, when all was said and done, I would be unhappy over the fact that there quite possibly would not be enough photographs taken of the event. He was also concerned that, due to the time constraint, he would not be able to produce the same caliber of pictures that he is typically known for. For me, though, it was far more important to have the memory of seeing my husband for the first time as I walked down that aisle than to have fabulous photographs of my wedding day, so Rob agreed to wait to take the posed pictures until after the ceremony. And, as it turned out, he really needn’t have worried. Not only do we now have more photographs of that day then we know what to do with, but they are literally ALL fabulous. Shortly after the wedding, Rob asked the GC and me to pick out our 60 favorite images to put in the album that was included in our photography package, but today, over three months later, we still cannot narrow down our favorites to a mere 60! I’m not kidding! The GC and I keep trying to go through the images, but we absolutely CANNOT decide. We love all 750 of them! But, trust me, that is a good problem to have! And I am SO incredibly glad that I waited and did not see the GC before the ceremony. The above photograph was taken of him just as I began my walk down the aisle and the look in his eyes is absolutely priceless. Not only is that look a memory that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, but Rob also magically managed to capture it on film, so I pretty much got the best of both worlds. Thank you, Rob! You can see the entire gallery of the photographs Rob took of our wedding on his website here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: You can visit Rob Greer’s wedding photography website here. His former studio is located at 678 South Avenue 21 in the Brewery Lofts complex in Los Angeles. The complex is a private, gated community, so please do not trespass. If you are interested in stalking the location, there are several public art walks held on the premises each year that are open to the public. You can find more information about the art walks here.

November 30, 2010March 3, 2011

Paramount Studios as a Wedding Venue

Well, I guess it is finally about time that I start blogging about my wedding, but I can’t very well do that without first writing about the place where I got almost all of my wedding planning inspiration – the Studios at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood. When Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I embarked on our very first VIP tour of the historic lot back in September of 2008, our fabulous tour guide, Ian, who sadly no longer works at the studio, mentioned that sections of Paramount could be rented out for parties, weddings, and other special events. And even though at that point in time I already knew without a doubt where I wanted to get married, the thought of tying the knot at Hollywood’s oldest continuously operating studio definitely piqued my interest. Especially once Ian told us that it was possible to rent out the New York Street backlot area, which is quite possibly my very favorite place in all of Southern California. So, pretty much immediately after the Grim Cheaper proposed, I called up the Paramount Studios Special Events Department and scheduled a tour of the lot’s various event venues. And, let me tell you, it was an amazing experience! The special events tours are actually very similar to the VIP Tours in that all of the same areas of the studio are shown. The main difference, however, is that the event tours are private, so ours consisted of only four people – my two parents, the Grim Cheaper, and me – which was absolutely INCREDIBLE! The special events coordinator who we dealt with, a super nice man named Craig who I believe no longer works for Paramount, was extremely knowledgeable about the history of the lot and where various filming had taken place over the years, so the entire two-hour affair pretty much became a private, walking tour of the lot which was customized just for me! And, as you can imagine, I absolutely loved every single minute of it!

Events at Paramount can pretty much be held in any section of the 65-acre lot, making the party possibilities absolutely endless. Available venues include empty soundstages, each of which can hold up to 1,500 guests and can be completely decorated and customized based on each particular event;

the B-Tank, which is a 914,023 gallon water tank that can be filled and dressed to resemble any sort of water setting one can imagine;

any of the studio’s park areas, including Production Park;

and Lucy Park, which I’ve blogged about previously;

any of the lot’s theatres, including the historic Paramount Theatre;

and the smaller Gower Theatre;

the famous Bronson Gate and water fountain area, which can accommodate up to 500 people;

and, of course, New York Street.

As luck would have it, a huge breast-cancer awareness fundraiser was being set up in the New York Street section of the lot during our tour, so we were actually able to see firsthand what an event in that space would look like. And I have to say that it was absolutely AMAZING! I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been more inspired in my life than I was when I set foot onto New York Street that day and witnessed the extravaganza pictured above.

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Because the fundraising event incorporated three of the things that I love most in this world – New York, Hollywood, and filmmaking – I was completely in awe of the whole thing and my brain immediately started working on overload. All of sudden, idea after idea started pouring into my head and it was at that moment that I decided that the Grim Cheaper and I would be having a movie-themed wedding. Which in retrospect really seems like a no-brainer, but for whatever reason, up until we visited Paramount, the thought had never occured to me.

The most inspired wedding idea that came to me while at Paramount was that we could name each of the reception tables after various movies that had been filmed on New York Street and that, upon arrival, each guest would be given a card with a movie line written on it. Each line would correspond to one of the tables and our guests would have to figure out which movie their particular line came from in order to find where they would be sitting during the reception. And even though we didn’t end up getting married on New York Street, we did use that idea for our tables and our guests absolutely LOVED it, but more on that in a future post.

Even though I absolutely loved the idea of getting married on New York Street, the GC and I ultimately decided against it. As my best friend Kylee said after viewing the above pictures of the breast cancer fundraiser, a wedding – especially one as small as ours (we only invited 80 people) – would wind up getting lost in the spectacle of the space. The venue is much better suited for a party – a ten-year anniversary party, perhaps Smile – rather than a wedding ceremony. Oh, and there was also the little matter of cost! Renting New York Street will run you $12,500, which may sound like a lot, but is, amazingly enough, a fairly average venue rental rate for the L.A. area. (According to msn.com, Los Angeles is one of the most expensive cities in the US to get married!) The New York Street backlot area measures a whopping five acres and can accommodate up to 5,000 people and while it, according to the Paramount Special Events website, can now be customized to suit smaller groups, that wasn’t actually the case when we were thinking about getting married there. Even though we only wanted to utilize a small portion of New York Street, we would have been required to rent the entire five acres, which is actually fine – I expected that. What I didn’t expect, though, and what we were not told until we received the actual proposal, was that we would also have to pay to light the entire backlot as well – at a cost of $12,000!!!! – even if we were, in actuality, only going to light a small section of it. And, mind you, that $12,000 only covered “washing” the street in light, so that the space wouldn’t be pitch black during the reception. If we wanted any sort of specialty lighting, that would, of course, be an additional cost. There was also a fee of $3,500 just to power the event. I’m not kidding! And because Paramount hires only in-house employees for its events, you also have to pay union wages for absolutely everyone who works it – from the lighting technicians to the catering staff to the parking attendants. Besides paying union wages, you also have to adhere to union regulations, the most maddening of which was the fact that every employee must be paid for a minimum of six hours of work, whether they worked a full six hours or not. So, while I knew that getting married at Paramount would be pricey, I had no idea it would be as exorbitant at it actually was. Our proposal came to a whopping $41,000 for a pretty bare bones wedding – no open bar, no appetizers, no specialty food. The GC literally almost choked when that email came through! And keep in mind that that $41,000 did not include a DJ, a photographer, ceremony musicians, a dance floor, flowers, or the mashed potato bar that I had my heart set on. As the old saying goes, though, you get what you pay for, and a party at Paramount would have, no doubt, been nothing short of incredible!

Even though we did not ultimately choose to tie the knot at Paramount, I am so incredibly thankful that we considered it. Our wedding would have been a very different event had we not. And now at least I know where I want to hold our ten-year anniversary party. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Paramount Studios is located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. If you are interested in hosting an event on the lot, you can visit the studio’s special events page here or you can call (323)956-8398.