Where They Wed: London
Eunice and Alex tied the knot in the British capital complete with a double decker bus and pub dinner.
Eunice and Alex, both originally from California, met in New York City (the good old fashioned millennial way - on Hinge). The pair dreamed of living in Europe. Several years ago they took the leap and moved to London, where they wed last spring. I talked to Eunice about how they chose the wedding location, creating dinner party vibes and planning an intimate celebration. 
How did you decide to get married in London?
We both love London so much. A confession: I actually didn’t really like London that much as compared to other European cities before I moved. When I travelled through Europe in the past, I mostly saw it as a city you transited through to more exciting European destinations like Paris, Barcelona or Amsterdam.
But I living there now, I really love it. London is absolutely the right place for me, and we can just visit those other European cities on the weekends! Alex and I wanted to show our loved ones how we live our lives in London and why we are so fond of it here. Our guests echoed that sentiment - everyone shared their love for London after the wedding. Mission accomplished!
Did you consider any other locations?
Both of us are from California and our family and so many of our friends live there, so that would have been the natural place to have a wedding. However, we always knew that we didn’t want a big wedding and international travel naturally makes that more of a reality. A draw of London was actually that is it was so far away from California.
Our original idea was to elope with just our immediate family. But then Alex and I each wanted to have our best friend there and that was hard to settle on. In the end, we decided to plan a wedding with just over 50 guests (around 11 friends and their partners on each “side” and some close family members). For us, it ended up being the perfect size event with the perfect group.
We didn’t have a bridal party, though essentially all of our friends who came would have been our bridal party had we gone the traditional sense. We wanted our guests to enjoy the day without any duties or needs. I’ve been maid of honor three times and bridesmaid a million times and I just wanted everyone to have a good time at the wedding without any responsibilities.
Tell me about your venue/wedding location.
Since most of our guests were coming in from so far (all over the US) we wanted to make an event out of the wedding. On Friday, we did a sunset cruise down the Thames to see the London sites.
Saturday was the wedding and Sunday was a pizza lunch/local park hang in Highbury Fields and an after party at our place with Alex DJing.
I’m a Korean America living in the UK and we wanted to the celebration to represent that. We had Korean food on Friday, British food on Saturday, and American food on Sunday.
We got married at Islington Town Hall. We live on the block and see weddings there literally every day walking on the street. Alex once said to me “that will be us one day” as we were walking by, and it was so special for it to be us that day.
After the ceremony, we hired out a vintage double decker Routemaster bus to take us to the reception and had a photo op stop along the way for an epic group shot in front of Big Ben.
Our vision for the reception was a dinner party vibe (since that’s what Alex and I love to host). We choose to hold the wedding dinner and reception at our friend’s pub, The Waterman’s Arms.
Alex has been friends with the head chef, Sam, for many years. Even putting our biases aside, he is such an incredible chef. He is the former head chef of Duck Soup and the Camberwell Arms and does British food so simply and well. Food critics agree: the Infatuation calls the Waterman’s Arms the best roast in London.
Everyone who knows Alex and me, knows we love food so much (maybe a little too much). It was important to us that our guests had a great meal and ate the way we like to eat - which is a lot, mainly shared small plates, in-season variety, and simply good quality food. We collaborated with Sam on the menu, which was the most fun part of the wedding planning.
We had oysters. I made homemade kimchi that was served along side one of the canapés. There were gnocchi with seasonal tomatoes, a lamb courgette salad that Sam created just for us, roast pork collar, and so much more. It was almost to the point of gluttony, but we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. The best compliment we got was that it was one of the top meals that a guest had ever had and definitely the best meal ever from a wedding. Mission accomplished again!
Were your guests traveling in or residing locally?
Nearly everyone who came in from out of town took the opportunity to travel beyond London, which we were so happy they did. One of the great perks of London is how easy it is to get to other parts of Europe and we were glad people got to experience that. A lot of folks took the Eurostar to Paris. We even got pictures of some of our guests, who had just met each other for the first time at our wedding, hanging out together in Paris! We loved that.
We also had some local mates join as evening guests at the pub (like Molly!) on Saturday, which was fun to share a slice of the weekend with local friends here living with us in London!
What was your favorite part of having your wedding in London?
Just showing all of the most important people in our lives why we love London, and having them fall for it too. It means so much to me when people I love also love the things I do.
Any personal touches that you incorporated into the wedding?
My photographer said that our wedding was one of the most thoughtfully detailed weddings he has witnessed and that it was really catered to the guest experience. I felt so seen when he said that.
I love to craft and make things with my hands, so I went a bit deep with a lot of detailed touches for the guests. For example, each person’s name card was a personalized photo of a memory that we had with them along with a card written to them on the back. One guest said “wow, I’m really meant to be here” after reading it, and my photographer caught a lot of tears that were shed while reading the cards… even from people who never cry!
I should note - the whole wedding was really weepy, not only just from us but also from everyone there. Cliche but literally not a dry eye in sight. One of our guests shared that our wedding was the most emotional they've ever attended. Being a touchy-feely type of person and a words-of-affirmation-girlie, it moved me to know that everyone was so emotional alongside us. I think because every person in attendance was hand-picked to be there, and essentially friends we’ve had for decades, it made for such a special and intimate time.
In terms of other little details, I had custom pictures of our faces made up, that were put in our signature drinks as drink stirrers. So many friends took these sticks home and I love getting sent random photos of our face sticks in random things, most recently in a basil plant on an NYC windowsill.
My signature drink was a dirty martini and Alex’s was a mezcal negroni, with his favorite mezcal he brought from a tasting he did on his bachelor party in Mexico City.
Our dog Penny’s drink was a non-alcoholic Paloma mocktail, since we had a decent number of guests who were pregnant or sober. We had a lot of touches of Penny, who was essentially was our mascot for the wedding!.
Any advice to future couples who are planning a wedding?
One aspect of our wedding that helped make it so special was being able to keep the size small and intimate. It was very hard to limit the guest count to 50 people, but it was definitely the right decision for us. Each and every person who came that today is like family to us and have supported and loved us through many seasons of life. Essentially everyone we invited ended up attending - they are our ride or dies. It was amazing to be surrounded by all of our closest loved ones. Do your best to not invite anyone out of family pressure or obligation. This is your wedding, you want to be surrounded by people you want to be surrounded by!
Don’t sweat the stuff that doesn’t go according to plan on the day. There were a lot of unforeseen things that happened, but I just let it roll off my back (which is honestly typically hard to do as a self identified perfectionist lol). No one knows what it was supposed to be, as that is mostly just for you and everyone is having a great time either way. Beauty is in the imperfections.
Don’t do anything you don’t want to just because you feel like you have to or because it is a wedding tradition. We didn’t do a lot of typical wedding things - didn’t have a first dance, bouquet toss, or bridal party. I don’t really like cake but I love cheese - so we had a cheese “cake” made of wheels of cheese stacked to look like a cake. Just do whatever you want, who cares! So many people told us our wedding felt so us and that is what we wanted, to truly stay authentic to ourselves.
It sounds cliche, but it really was the best day(s) of our lives. I felt so much love, surrounded by people who love us so much, as you marry the person you love so much. I would relive that over and over and over if I could. 10/10 would recommend!
Aww the pictures are so sweet ❤️