Featured Wedding: Tigran & Mariam

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We recently shared Tigran and Mariam's beautiful proposal story as well as photos from their engagement photoshoot. We are so excited to now be sharing their wedding story! With the help of her sister and Harsanik, Mariam was able to plan her dream wedding. The couple just celebrated their one year anniversary and we now look back with Mariam to find out how everything came together and what advice she has to offer to bride-to-bes. 

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Tell us a little about your relationship, how long you dated, and when he proposed.  

Tigran and I "met" at 17/18. I say "met" because a friend of mine randomly told me that she knows someone who she thinks I'd get along well with and asked if she could introduce us through Facebook. I agreed and we spent some time talking back and forth and getting to know each other. After some time, Tigran asked me out on a date and I said no! (I know, I know, but we got married so it all worked out). We were in our senior year of high school and I was getting ready to go to UCLA and wasn't ready to date anyone just yet. After some time, we stopped talking, he eventually got rid of his Facebook, and our friendship kind of fizzled out.

In college, I decided to open a Twitter account just to see what it was all about. My account was open only a few days before I got rid of it; Twitter is not my thing. In the few days my account was open, Tigran had tweeted me something along the lines of "long time no talk" along with his phone number, asking me to contact him again. I hesitated, but decided to get in touch with him. We caught up on each others' lives and eventually went out and met in person. The rest is pretty much history!

Since we met so young, we were together for 4 years before he proposed (2012-2016). We wanted to wait until we were both out of college and settled into our respective fields. He proposed in February of 2016 (a few days before our anniversary), and year after I graduated from UCLA. That's when the wedding planning started.

How was wedding planning for you?

Working full time and planning a wedding while looking for a place to live could get stressful at times, but overall, I really enjoyed it. It helped that everyone was so supportive and eager to help us make OUR vision a reality. I did have a specific color scheme in mind. I wanted ivory, gold, and blush pink. I've always loved that combination for weddings. I think it's so soft and romantic and pretty timeless. I knew I wanted romantic and traditional, but still somewhat modern. Sometimes, as a joke, I would text Tigran the most horrible tacky images saying "I got this" or "I'm getting this" to try and rile him up, but he's such a sweetheart that he would bite his tongue and say okay to what I wanted, even if he hated it.

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

I found many of my vendors through Harsanik. One being Metropol Banquet. Although I had been there before, I hadn't really given it any thought until it was time to plan my own wedding. So when I saw that Harsanik had a list of venues, I went through each of them and wrote down the ones I was interested in seeing. We took that list and went to visit all of them in one day!

My dress was from Le Marriage Couture in Westwood. My sister had gotten married a few years before, and I loved her dress and the selection and experience she had at the store we went to for her wedding. I called for an appointment and the store had since closed down. I later found out that Le Marriage Couture had bought that store out, so I was determined to visit it. It was in Westwood and I knew the area so I made an appointment right away. Before that, I had gone to Lovella, Karoza, and Panache, and found some good contenders but ultimately found my dress at Le Marriage Couture. It was a big pretty store with a huge selection. Very glam, modern, and the consultants were helpful. I went in looking for a huge poofy ballgown, but after trying some on, I chose something not as poofy (and added the right amount of volume later) because I'm slim and ended up looking like a marshmallow in bigger dresses. I ended up choosing a Mori Lee gown, which was the designer my sister chose as well!

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

How was the wedding?

Our wedding was October 14th, 2017, at Metropol. We got married in the St. Leon Cathedral, my favorite church in LA. I love everything about it, including the fact that my sister was married there as well. We had about 350 guests. 

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

My husband and I love Armenian weddings and the traditions that come along with them, so we knew we wanted to include them in ours. We did the dressing of the bride and groom in the morning, stealing of the shoe, holding the sword against the door, the gatas, gifts and the decor, etc. The morning of Armenian weddings are our favorite part. I love the concept of the groom's family coming to take the bride. There is so much love and happiness and fun, and it means we party for almost 24 hours!

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Did you have any favorite moments from you wedding day?

My favorite moment of the day is too difficult to choose, because every moment of the day was my favorite, except when my bouquet got stolen!. One moment would have to be when I was upstairs alone with my mom and then heard the honking of the horns and the zurna and dhol from a distance. My legs turned to jello and my heart kicked up so fast in excitement, I'm amazed I didn't pass out. Another favorite moment was when I saw Tigran for the first time. He looked so handsome in his tuxedo and happy to finally see me that we hugged for a while and all the tension and stress I was holding in immediately disappeared and it felt so good to stop worrying and just enjoy myself.

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

I also loved not having a bridal party. We asked all of our cousins to join us in the limo and go take pictures with us, and it turned into one of my favorite wedding highlights in our video. We pulled up to city hall blasting the most ridiculous music (courtesy of my brother in law, who kept poking fun saying he's going to play those songs at my wedding, which he did!). And while Tigran and I were off taking photos, our group was on the other side of Pasadena City Hall, drunk and being silly and having a lot of fun, which made me really happy.

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Anything unique or special about your wedding day you want to share?

I'm really happy that Tigran's grandpa was able to fly in from Armenia to attend the wedding. I hadn't met him before and they hadn't seen him in 20 years! My family in Armenia wasn't able to do the same but they were still witnessing everything unfold on social media. It was also nice that my non-Armenian friends were able to attend the morning traditions and finally see what I had been trying to explain during the planning part!

Any advice for other couples planning their special day?

Anyone who is planning a wedding probably hears the same advice over and over again. Don't stress, enjoy your day, try to take it in because it passes by in the blink of an eye, etc. All of that is definitely true and worthwhile advice, but every couple knows that already, so my advice would be to do non-wedding related things once in a while. Sometimes in the midst of all the engagement-happy-wedding-planning-chaos, it's easy to get caught up in all of the decision making, especially when you have a big opinionated family who may or may not agree with your vision. We liked to go out on date nights just us, where we would talk about other things apart from the wedding. Another thing I'd probably tell couples is that your wedding won't be the most perfect day of your life, and to not put so much pressure on yourselves. Things WILL go wrong, but you won't care. My beautiful bouquet got stolen while we were taking photos (this is honestly something I regret freaking out over), I had lost so much weight in the month leading up to the wedding that my dress was too big on me, we accidentally told the DJ the wrong version of our first dance song (it was still beautiful), and my husband's shoelaces got caught in a knot minutes before we were supposed to make our big entrance. These are all little things that don't matter because at the end of the day, you are married to your favorite person in the world, and nothing beats that! :D

ALSO, FOR THE BRIDES: Don't put down your bouquet if your photos are in a public place. My perfect bouquet was stolen while we were taking pictures, and Tigran and my cousin had to call our amazing florist to rush something over so I could walk into church with a bouquet. I was so sad and felt so guilty and horrible because my florist had really made the bouquet of my dreams. I'm just glad I took lots of photos with it in the beginning, so be sure to do the same!

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Where did you go for your honeymoon?

For our honeymoon we went to Cancun, Mexico. It was incredible. We had a big suite overlooking the ocean and spent the week in paradise. The weather was perfect, the service was amazing, and the resort was everything we wanted and needed. We were able to relax and de-stress, eat, drink, and go on adventures (we went swimming with dolphins and snorkeling). There was entertainment every night, and the second night we were there, a magician pulled me up on stage. He had asked for newlyweds to raise their hands, and Tigran and I were the only ones apart from one other couple who had been married for a little over a year. The crowd lost it when the magician asked me how long we'd been married and I responded with "two days?" I then proceeded to forget my new husband as I walked to the front of the room :D They made a lot of fun of me for that, and it was really funny. In my defense, I didn't realize he needed both of us to go up! For the rest of the week, everyone who saw us screamed "HEY IT'S THE NEWLYWEDS!" as we passed by. We made a lot of friends that week!

We loved it so much that we are going to Puerto Vallarta for our one year anniversary!

Looking back, is there anything you would do differently if you were planning your wedding today?

Looking back, the one big regret I have is that I didn't go to ONE MORE dress fitting before my wedding. The reason I didn't is because I went a month before my wedding and it fit like a glove, and I was convinced nothing else was needed. I'm not the type to gain OR lose weight. I've pretty much been the same since I was 16, but I guess without realizing, I had lost so much weight before the wedding that the bust wasn't fitting the way it was supposed to. Obviously not a big deal at all in the grand scheme of things, but it was definitely something I was frustrated about.

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

Featured Wedding of Tigran & Mariam

 We want to thank Tigran and Mariam so much for sharing their proposal and wedding story with us. We wish them a lifetime of happiness and success.

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