LA QUINTA RESORT & SPA, LA QUINTA, CA

    Amy and Eric met in 2001 at the Farfalle restaurant in Hollywood. Amy, attending her ten-year high school reunion, struck up a conversation with Eric’s sister-in-law, Mindy, in the ladies’ room. Later that evening, Mindy asked Amy to take Eric, who was new in town, out with her and her friends. Amy agreed. “I guess you never know what a trip to the restroom will bring!” she comments. The couple started dating immediately.

    Eric proposed on Christmas morning of 2005. The proposal was expected, as the pair had discussed a 2005 engagement, but “With only a week left in the year, I was getting a little antsy,” Amy recalls. She awakened to the Beatles song “All You Need Is Love,” to see Eric holding a ring. Amy couldn’t quite wake up, and her first response was, “What? Now?”

    Alex Alexander of Alex Events, Los Angeles, helped Amy and Eric plan their wedding. The couple wanted a triangle-shaped ceremony, with two aisles, to represent their union’s strength. Eric walked down one aisle and Amy went down the other, escorted by her father. The nuptial pair joined at the “sacred space” near a waterfall. Family members and friends served as “preparers of the sacred space” by lighting candles and spreading flower petals. As friends came down the aisles, they handed Amy’s sister white tulips that she tied together with extra silk from Amy’s dress, to form a very special bouquet.
    To complement the “old Hollywood” ambiance at La Quinta Resort & Spa, Amy chose a simple, classic, and flowing gown from the Amy Michelson Montclair Collection.
 Officiant Saral Burdette helped make the heart-felt ceremony unique, even conducting part of it with her back toward the guests so that Amy and Eric could face their friends and family members.
    The reception, held in La Quinta’s Frank Capra Ballroom, featured a décor in rich greens and browns with bamboo, apples, palm leaves, and white orchids and calla lilies. The guests enjoyed a buffet prepared by La Quinta’s John Hansen that included lamb chops with mint sauce, halibut provençale, and a chef carving station for beef tenderloin au poivre. In lieu of a traditional wedding cake, lemon-lavender cupcakes were served, and at the dessert station the guests helped themselves to ice cream sundaes with all the trimmings.

    Following the festivities, Amy and Eric went to the Two Bunch Palms Resort for a two-night “mini-moon.”