Love To The Max - Wedding Design Studio

Love to
the Max
Jenny Shin
and Bob Vukovich
September 30, 2006
Hycroft, Vancouver
Brix Restaurant & Wine Bar,
George Lounge,
and Soho Billiards, Yaletown
By Carolyn Ali
Photographed by Wendy Niamath
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I
IN 2000, BOB VUKOVICH WAS A SELF-CONFESSED PLAYBOY, A VENTURE capitalist
who liked fast cars and a flashy lifestyle. So when he met Jenny Shin one
night at a bar, he just slipped his card to her beneath the table and suggested she call.
But what some playboys have in charm and resources they may lack in
memory and finesse. When she called, a week later, he didn’t remember
who she was.
And on their first dinner date, as he dropped names trying to impress
her, the evening went right off the rails. Jenny wasn’t impressed, and
told him so. “I don’t care who you know, what you drive…I’m here to get
to know you. Either we can just end it now, or change the direction of
our conversation.”
“It was very refreshing for me,” Bob says. “I’d never met a girl who
put me in my place in half an hour.” Pretense shed, they started to really
get to know—and like—one another.
Bob’s proposal in November 2005 caught Jenny completely off guard. On
a trip to Napa Valley, he got down on one knee in a rustic, family-run vineyard. “It was so low-key that I never expected it,” she says.
Not wanting much fanfare, the couple decided to get married in Maui,
just the two of them. They set a date for September 2006 and made all
the travel and nuptial arrangements. They also planned a party for their
return from the islands, to take place at Brix restaurant in Vancouver’s
Yaletown on October 1.
Then, three months before the wedding, “we got a sit-down.” Bob’s
sister and cousin revealed to the couple how much his mother wanted to
see her son get married.
As a result, they decided to cancel the Maui wedding and have the
ceremony at home instead. “It’s one of those things that you do for your
parents,” Jenny says philosophically.
The scramble to plan began. Bob’s friend Patrick Mercer, who owns
Brix and George Lounge, got on the phone. By sheer coincidence,
Hycroft in Shaughnessy had just received a cancellation for Saturday,
September 30. They could hold the wedding there, the day before the
Brix party. “We got very, very lucky,” Jenny says.
The couple felt that if they were going to have a formal ceremony, they
might as well do “the whole shebang.” So they added a reception to follow, with a sit-down dinner. “We went from a no-fuss elopement on the
beach to a full-on traditional wedding with a bridal party…within a week,”
Jenny says.
(above) Jenny designed sexy halter dresses for the bridesmaids and found a local seamstress to create them.
(right) Jenny wore a silver-threaded gown with a scalloped lace overlay, from Lisa’s Bridal, with silver Manolo
Blahnik stilettos.
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Jenny & Bob’s Second Party
Brix, George, and Soho in Yaletown
Bob’s motto for the wedding was
“Go crazy, impress people.”
The Brix courtyard
served as a mingling
space for the blowout
party, where guests
chatted beneath
lanterns. Illuminated
vases of goldfish
added a funky touch.
Brix’s pastry
chef covered
the pool
table with
handmade
truffles and
chocolates.
They immediately dove into the details. Within two weeks, she had designed
the bridesmaids’ halter dresses and found a seamstress to make them. After visiting “every place in Vancouver,” she narrowed her wedding dress choices down
to two. One was a strapless mermaid dress with coffee-coloured trim, from
Sposa, the other, a dress threaded with silver, with a scalloped lace overlay, from
Lisa’s Bridal both on New Westminster’s Columbia street “bridal row.”
“I couldn’t decide. One was more party and the other was more conservative,”
Jenny muses. “So I decided to go with both.” She wore the strapless for the wedding and the silver for the Brix party. Two dresses required two pairs of shoes—
both fabulous Manolo Blahniks, one gold lattice, the other silver stilettos, which
she found on a trip to Las Vegas.
On the wedding day Jenny and her bridesmaids readied themselves in a suite
at the Pan Pacific. Bob went for breakfast with his groomsmen, practical jokers who treated him to a video of Old School, in which bachelor Vince Vaughn
unsuccessfully tries to corrupt a married Will Ferrell.
The weather was “drizzling all morning, so I was really nervous about it,”
says Jenny. But happily, it cleared for the 1:30 p.m. photos. After photographs at
Hycroft, they injected some edge by venturing beneath the Cambie street bridge
in Yaletown, and then afterwards heading to an industrial area that offered
“great graffiti.”
The sun came out in time for their 5 p.m. civil ceremony. “We were so
happy the family was there to witness it,” says Jenny. Dinner for 84, catered by
Culinary Capers, followed.
The formal part over, Sunday was party time. All along, they had envisioned a
blowout celebration at Brix. That was exactly what they got.
With the help of Mercer and Kim Raddysh of Wedding Design Studio, they
transformed Brix’ space into a no-holds-barred cocktail party. “We turned all
three rooms into nightclubs,” Bob says. Aerial spotlights marked the venue.
The party flowed from Brix into George Lounge and through to Soho Billiards.
“Every room had a different vibe,” explains Jenny. The Brix courtyard served as a
mingling space under red lanterns, with funky touches like illuminated vases of
swimming goldfish. George featured a satay station and fresh-shucked oysters.
And Soho became a games room, with sexy daybeds draped in sheers on which
guests could lounge. Heart-shaped velvet pillows, monogrammed with the
couple’s initials, accented the look.
Still flamboyant, Bob’s motto for the wedding was “Go crazy, impress
people.” That was reflected in the hors d’oevres and canapés, which included
Alaskan king crab legs, lobster, and rack of lamb, in the chocolate fountain and
in the handmade truffles and chocolates by Brix’s pastry chef, which covered the
pool table.
It was Jenny’s idea to hire Motown singer May Palmer, and her band from
Seattle. The couple’s 350 guests were also treated to seven deejays over the
course of the night, including headliner Marques Wyatt. “It was over-the-top
amazing,” says photographer Wendy Niamath of the event.
The couple did end up running off to Hawaii. But instead of eloping there,
they went to celebrate their honeymoon and relax. ■
Guests boogied to seven deejays over the course of the night.
42
R E A L WEDDINGS
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1
The Details
7
2
3
How they did it
1
Jenny wore her hair in a loose bun surrounded by
three orchids.
2
Jenny’s bouquet, created by the Wedding Design
Studio, contained pink lilies in a long stem, with a
big crystal for added sparkle.
3
The bridesmaids wore cream, silk, halter-style
dresses with matching velvet-lined shawls to take
the edge off the September chill in the air.
4
Musical Occasions, a string quartet owned by Jan
Trerise, played during the ceremony.
5
Culinary Capers served a gourmet meal at Hycroft
after the ceremony. The Wedding Design Studio
decorated the tables with low, square glass vases
filled with crystals and placed on lit bases. The room
itself was surrounded by tall square vases containing
long stems of pink orchids.
6
Jenny wanted something different, intimate and
local for her reception venue, and found it at the
Hycroft. “It was perfect for us and we fell in love
with it as soon as we saw it,” she says.
7
Jenny found a cream handbag decorated with feathers at Sposa Weddings.
5
6
4
WWW. R E AL WE D D I N G S . CA
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