From Quiet Moments at the Bel-Air Bay Club Bridal Patio to the Persian Petal Toss: Danielle & Brandon’s Jewish-Persian Wedding
Some love stories begin with a grand gesture. Danielle and Brandon’s began with a pandemic lockdown, a lot of time together, and months of watching Brandon play video games, after which Danielle decided she was going to marry him.
The guests at the reception loved that story, and honestly, so did we. What followed on June 16, 2024 at Bel-Air Bay Club was a Jewish-Persian wedding that moved from one of the most intimate moments we photograph, a quiet Ketubah signing before the ceremony, to one of the most joyful, a Persian Petal Toss that sent rose petals into the air and brought the whole room to its feet. Everything in between was just as good.
Getting Ready at Bel-Air Bay Club
Picture the Boardroom at Bel-Air Bay Club on a June morning: large windows, a sweeping patio, and the Pacific laid out in front of you before you’ve even put on your dress. That’s where Danielle got ready, and honestly, it sets a certain tone for the day. She wore a classic white ball gown, her hair falling softly at her shoulders, finished with a simple diadem that suited the look perfectly without trying to compete with it. The bridal party filled the room with the kind of easy warmth and laughter that tells you this is a group of people who genuinely love each other.
Brandon’s getting-ready space was the Ravello Lounge on the main floor, a completely different atmosphere. Darker, more intimate, with candlelit torches that gave both the portraits and the film a rich, cinematic quality. Two very different rooms, two very different vibes, and both exactly right for the people in them. If you’re considering Bel-Air Bay Club for your own wedding, our BABC venue guide goes into both spaces in detail, along with everything else worth knowing before you book.
The First Look at the Bridal Patio
Before the ceremony, before the Ketubah signing, before any of it was official, Danielle and Brandon chose to see each other. Their first look happened on the bridal patio, framed by the column-style balusters, the palm trees, and that wide, quiet view of the Pacific that seems to put everything into perspective. The time we had there was short, but we’d been thinking about it since we read their questionnaire: Brandon is 6’5″ and Danielle is 5’3″, and fourteen inches of height difference is one of those things worth preparing for rather than discovering on the day. We worked with levels, angles, and moments of natural closeness where the height becomes context rather than something to manage around, and by the end of the first look it had become part of the visual language of their day. It was just the two of them, the ocean, and a moment that belonged entirely to them before everything else began.
A few of Danielle’s bridesmaids couldn’t resist sneaking a peek from the getting-ready room, and we got a handful of candid frames from behind the curtain that were completely unplanned and completely wonderful. The moment itself on the patio was pure. Genuine. The kind of reaction you can’t ask someone to perform. Family portraits followed, and the whole energy of the patio shifted from quiet to celebratory as everyone gathered together. That movement from stillness to warmth is one of our favorite things about how a wedding day builds, and Danielle and Brandon’s families brought exactly the kind of energy that makes those portraits a joy to shoot.
“It was just the two of them, the ocean, and a moment that belonged entirely to them.”
The Ketubah Signing and the Ceremony
Just before the ceremony, while the guests were finding their seats on the Grand Lawn, something quieter was happening in a room apart from all of it. The wedding party stepped back, the witnesses stepped forward, and Danielle and Brandon signed the Ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract that has been part of weddings like this for centuries. No crowd, no processional, no performance. Just two people, a document, and the full weight of what they were agreeing to. We always photograph these moments close, because the intimacy is the story.
And then: the ceremony. The chuppah was set on the Grand Lawn with the open Pacific behind it, and as Rabbi Jeff Marx moved through the service, you could feel the whole room settle into it. The blessings, the exchange of vows, the Kiddush, the hora, the breaking of the glass, each tradition carried its full meaning, and the 146 people on that lawn were present for all of it. When the Mazel Tov rang out and Danielle and Brandon walked back up the aisle together for the first time as husband and wife, the joy in that room was something you could feel in your chest.
The Reception and the Persian Petal Toss
The Dining Room at BABC is one of those spaces that knows what it’s doing. Wood-beam ceilings, wrought-iron chandeliers, the florals from Vibe Florals in ivory, white, peach, and blush setting the whole palette for the evening. By the time the dancing started, the formality of the ceremony felt like it belonged to a different, earlier part of the day, and the room had fully become the couple’s. And Danielle and Brandon’s reception was very much theirs.
The dessert station had gummy bears and M&Ms because those are genuinely their favorites, and somewhere in the room, a t-shirt that read “Vaccinated” caught our eye, a quiet, funny, completely intentional nod to the pandemic lockdown that first brought these two together. Details like that are our favorite things to find, because they tell you more about a couple than any decor choice could.
The evening built through dinner, speeches, the hora, and the kind of open dancing that happens when a room full of people is truly celebrating, not just attending. DJ Farjad and Kiev Morales kept it moving, and Porto’s Bakery delivered a cake that sat beautifully against the blush and ivory of the evening.
Near the end of the night came the Persian Petal Toss, the moment we had been planning for since we first read Danielle and Brandon’s questionnaire. It’s a Persian tradition in which the women of the family shower the bride with rose petals as a blessing of fertility and joy, and it is one of the most alive, most genuinely joyful things we get to photograph and film. The petals are mid-air, the faces are laughing, and Danielle is at the center of something wonderful and entirely uncontrollable. We know what side to stand on. We were ready.
“The petals are mid-air, the faces are laughing, and Danielle is at the center of something wonderful and entirely uncontrollable.”
What We Took Away
What we took away from Danielle and Brandon’s wedding is the feeling of a couple who had already done the quiet work of choosing each other, long before the chuppah, long before the Ketubah, somewhere in the middle of a lockdown, and whose wedding day felt like the whole room finally getting to catch up. In the stillness of the Ketubah signing, in the way their families looked at them during the ceremony, in the laughter when someone told the video game story into a microphone, and every person in the room recognized it as completely true. The Persian Petal Toss at the end of the night was the loudest moment of the day, and somehow it still felt like a natural conclusion to all that quiet certainty that came before it. That kind of wedding is a privilege to photograph and film, and we don’t take it lightly.
If you’re planning a wedding at Bel-Air Bay Club, whether an intimate ceremony or a full celebration, our BABC venue guide covers everything worth knowing from a photography and videography perspective: the light, the spaces, and the decisions that shape the gallery and the film.
And if you’re planning a wedding in Los Angeles and want a team that brings the same level of preparation and care to every kind of celebration, we’d love to hear about your day. We photograph and film all kinds of weddings across the city, and we come to every one of them knowing what to look for.
Vendor Credits
Photography & Videography: The I Do Photography | theidophotography.com
Venue: Bel-Air Bay Club, Pacific Palisades, CA
Officiant: Rabbi Jeff Marx
Florals: Vibe Florals
Cake: Porto’s Bakery
DJ: Farjad & Kiev Morales
