On January 7, just over a week before her wedding, Karly Frank texted her wedding planner a link to a news story. Her venue, the Bel-Air Bay Club in the Pacific Palisades, was surrounded by flames.
At the time, the entire neighborhood was under mandatory evacuation orders, and no one could seem to get Karly or her fiancé Dave any real updates. Her planner Jillian, of Jillian Nicole Events, told her not to start panicking just yet. But, maybe—just in case—she should make a list of potential backup venues.
Amid the devastation that unfolded in those first 48 hours, Karly and Frank, like many Angelenos, felt helpless, frightened, and desperate to help. A canceled wedding, if it came down to that, is so much less devastating than losing a home, a community. They understood their privilege. But still, they had invested so much time and energy into the wedding. Of course they were anxious.
Two days later, Karly and Dave received an email informing them that though most of the Bay Club’s structure was still intact, all upcoming events were canceled, including their January 18 wedding. They were heartbroken to hear that the day they had imagined for months was no longer a possibility, and to know that dozens of other couples would be sharing their disappointment this year too. Bel-Air Bay Club is one of the most sought-after venues in the area and is often booked out months or even years in advance, especially in the spring and summer.
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They weighed their options as the Sunset fire burned in their own West Hollywood neighborhood, keeping an eye on the red glow that shone through their windows. Though they knew they still wanted to find a way to make their day happen, they also wanted to be sure that their guests could enjoy the evening safely.
“We knew we needed to have it [on January 18], or it wasn’t going to happen at all,” Karly says. “We’d planned this day for a year and a half. We wanted to keep it, as much as we could, the same.”
The devastating wildfires that whipped through the hills and neighborhoods of Los Angeles this month destroyed some 16,000 structures, including homes, schools, places of worship, libraries, coffee shops, and one particularly charming Bunny Museum. Daily life halted and special events were postponed and canceled en masse.
However, January is considered “off-season” for weddings in Los Angeles, meaning there were still beautiful venues available to Karly and Dave. The couple considered themselves lucky.
“I’d talked to brides who were supposed to get married at Bel-Air Bay Club in April, for example, and they don’t know how they’re going to find another venue because April is peak wedding season,” Karly explains. “I have a lot of empathy for that.”
But brides weren’t the only ones impacted: Los Angeles supports some 50,000 weddings every year with an estimated total spend of well over $2 billion across the industry. After the fires, vendors who work the wedding and events industry are already feeling the squeeze. One florist tells me that she had never seen the flower market in Los Angeles as quiet as it was during and since the fires broke out. Her peers and their vendors estimate it could take months to recoup the losses they experienced. They are already seeing 20-35% increases in wholesale product costs, a staggering impact for an already hurting small business community. Not to mention, many of her colleagues navigating this environment have lost homes, supplies, and more.
As celebrity stylist Elizabeth Stewart recently told Glamour, when it comes to the events industry in Los Angeles, “It’s super important that everything that can happen should happen. Everybody in my world does not have health insurance or a structure. It’s a freelance world. It’s really important that people start working…anything that can come back, should come back.”
Amid the devastation, the disaster response from the residents of the city and from people far and wide has been overwhelming in its kindness and consideration. Donation sites are overflowing with goods and turning away volunteers. Dozens and dozens of GoFundMes, each telling a story of a family who lost everything, have been shared far and wide. The Pacific Palisades neighborhood in the west and Altadena in the east will be irrevocably changed, but the propensity for kindness, for compassion speaks volumes of the interconnectivity of one of America’s largest cities. There’s no shortage of love and loyalty in Los Angeles (just ask any Dodgers fan).
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Even outside California, the images of disaster and loss have evoked an unexpected generosity. Across the country in New York, Kelly Mosser, a marketing professional, felt called to get involved in whatever way she could after spending hours watching the news. She knows how much a wedding can mean to a young couple, and though many organizations were navigating immediate relief aid, she wanted to find a way to provide help in her own way.
“My heart was just breaking for these people, watching what they were going through in LA and thinking about what it really means to lose everything,” she tells me. “But I was also thinking about the nonessentials, like a wedding dress, and I was thinking there had to be brides with a wedding coming up that maybe didn’t get to grab that beautiful dress that was so meaningful and special to them as they were running out the door.”
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On TikTok, Mosser offered to personally repurchase a dress for an impacted bride, but as her message spread around social media, the outpourings of kindness and desire to get involved overwhelmed her. The response has been so strong, Mosser has now incorporated a non-profit, The Warm Girl Collective, and is working alongside a team of four to plan an in-person wedding dress event in Los Angeles for brides to come and shop for free this spring. Even more incredible for a brand new organization, Mosser and her team plan to donate a completely sponsored wedding to a couple in need of community support.
“I’m blown away that so many people are willing to donate their wedding dress to somebody else that’s in need, but I’m also not surprised because I know that women on the internet are amazing and there’s nothing like supporting another woman, and I know that people really do have good hearts in times like these,” she adds.
Perhaps under appreciated in times of crises are how traditional human touch points, experiences, parties, life events, can restore a sense of normalcy. How even in difficult times, opportunities to share moments of joy as a community can be so important. Our villages, our people, showing up for each other is what really counts.
Says Mosser, “If we can just restore a little joy, come in and really get to wrap our arms around this community that’s been so affected, that will mean everything.”
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This proved true for Karly and Dave, too. Once the decision was made to go ahead with a new venue, Jillian rallied them into action: They toured three venues and committed one day later to Vibiana in downtown LA.
That week, Karly and her mother-in-law spent dozens of hours on her Cricut machine re-making signs and menus. Their florist changed the whole floral design to work in the new space in a matter of days. The venue was as accommodating as they could be, allowing vendors to work as closely to the original plan as possible and generously waiving their ceremony fee. Jillian and Karly both commented that the staff at Vibiana made them feel so comfortable, it was like they’d been working together for months.
In the end, the event came together as seamlessly as it could in seven days, and the bride, groom, and their 205 guests enjoyed a beautiful evening of dinner, dancing, and live music. “The vibe was pristine,” says Dave. “I think the community, our community at least, actually needed that.”
Karly agrees: “Truly, the most memorable thing about the wedding were the people and the energy in the room. That has nothing to do with who is sitting at what table or what color the linens are…it has everything to do with your people, the people that you chose to spend your special day with.”
The post They Planned Their Dream Wedding in the Palisades for Over a Year. Then the Wildfires Ripped Through LA appeared first on Glamour.
