Wedding Wars – To Husband & Wife
Dr. Drew Baldwin and local architect, Zoey Richards, celebrated their lavish wedding at The Montague on September 21st. Stylish weddings journalist, Mandy Hart, caught up with the two asking how the modern-day couple planned the most important day of their lives and still managed to say ‘I do.’
Mandy: Let’s tell the readers how you first met.
Zoey: I needed a roommate, and Drew was the perfect fit. Every other guy wasn’t right, and he wore this SpongeBob T-shirt which, when I look back at it, was kinda cool.
Drew: I was a geek.
Zoey: I can’t argue that.
Mandy: Roommates to friends? Makes for a great love story, don’t you think?
Zoey: Not just friends, best friends.
Drew: Pain in my ass. [Laughs]
Mandy: When did you both know that it was more than just a friendship?
Drew: The moment she almost drowned at the beach. I wished everything back. Her careless behavior to messy habits. The way she took your mind on its own journey during one of her incessant rambles. She could name every Madonna song and tell you what color hair she had in each video clip.
Zoey: I think it was two days later. I found myself at this dead end. I almost lost my life being reckless, and he saved me. I guess I always ran to him, and this time was hard because he was the person I was trying to run from. How could I open up to him that things were starting to feel tense between us because my feelings were changing?
Mandy: And did that transition come easy? I’m guessing being roomies had you seeing a lot of that person from a different perspective. Partners, lovers, and the barriers that come from being in the friend zone.
Zoey: Drew had his fair share of women stop by the apartment. I mean, look at him.
Mandy: [Laughs] I’m looking. Just not sure how you got geek from this?
Drew: I had my eye on the prize. She was strawberry blonde, crazy, and had an abnormal obsession with Patrick Swayze. I wouldn’t sit through Dirty Dancing for just anyone.
Mandy: Talk me through the proposal, Drew. Stakes would have been high, you’ve got this great girl who transitioned from roomie to girlfriend. Some would say that’s having a piece of cake and eating it, too.
Drew: I wanted it to be special. It was never a question of if I should propose rather than how. Pineapples were her thing. I scattered them around our balcony keeping to her belief that eight was a lucky number. I knew I had to bring out the big guns ordering a pepperoni pizza shaped like a pineapple. I created a trail of pizza boxes to where I stood and waited for her to come home.
Mandy: And the question everyone wants to know… the ring?
Drew: An eighteen-carat, white-gold canary yellow diamond. I had it custom made based on Zoey’s style.
Mandy: Impressive and rather personal. You’ve got excellent taste. How did the wedding plans begin? Many newly-engaged couples find the beginning the hardest. Agreeing on a date, venue, guest list, cake, dresses, tuxes… the list goes on.
Zoey: A wedding planner wasn’t in our budget, but I did have a good friend who had recently gotten married. She helped a lot and depending on who you ask, maybe not the best influence.
Drew: Zoey became a Bridezilla. It came out of nowhere. One minute we were discussing dates and keeping it low-key, and the next minute, doves were going to drop the wedding rings into our hands.
Zoey: They didn’t exactly do that. I think the female dove was menopausal because she just hovered around my head like a crazed woman.
Drew: [Laughs] Zoey breaking out into hives when she did that was quite comical.
Zoey: I was scared she would lay her ‘droppings’ on my expensive dress. Vera Wang would have dropped to
the ground and curled up into a ball if she saw that happen to one of her designs.
Drew: She did… on your shoulder. According to folklore, that’s supposed to be good luck.
Zoey: Pineapples are good luck, not birds crapping on your shoulder. It was greenish brown and looked like it had worms in it.
Mandy: [Laughs] Take it as a good sign for years to come. And so, The Montague is the biggest wedding venue in Southern California. How did you secure a place that had one of the longest waitlists?