It was great that we were able to book this wedding just a few weeks before flying out to San Francisco. It was only a matter of scoring a round trip to LAX.

I loved how literally this wedding was mostly DIY. Everybody helped out – from setting up the decor for dinner, re-locating the bar and preparing the flowers. You can’t help but truly savour and appreciate a wedding built like this.

Friends from all over the US flew in to attend the ceremony (by a Jesuit no less). Yep, it was nippy and foggy. The foreigner in me actually thought Malibu was all sand and surf, didn’t realize there was the gorgeous hilly side.

A night after the wedding, a remarkable thing happened. Sharon and Richard, upon picking up their SDE copy at our hotel room, brought up a local sweet red and plastic cups for us and MangoRed. We shared the bottle and stories of the previous day, the rush of the setup, the emotions of the vows and the cathartic release of – “Hey, we did it!”

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I thought I’ve had my fill of LA over the years, but I was proved wrong. Bunking up with MangoRyan and Chyv of MangoRed brought me to places I’ve never been – Los Feliz, Deus Ex Machina, Venice Beach, Lacma among others. I was designated driver and I still sweat my pits navigating I5 and I10. I got the hang of it eventually.

I realised, you can never get enough of California.