Lissa and Allan Lumutenga didn’t need a wedding to mark the beginning of their marriage. They had already taken care of that part two years earlier, almost by accident.
While making plans to marry, the couple visited Norwalk to pick up their marriage license and were offered a courthouse date. With appointments booking months in advance, they took it, figuring they could always reschedule once they settled on their plans. Instead, they kept the date and eloped.
“We treated the two years between our elopement and wedding date as our ‘engagement,’” they say.
That unconventional beginning suited the couple, whose relationship had unfolded at its own pace. Allan, who was born in Kampala, Uganda, and grew up in the U.K., and Lissa, a Filipino American born and raised in Salinas, California, first met thanks to their mutual friend Michelle Beaver. Michelle had been Allan’s university roommate and later worked with Lissa at YouTube.
In 2015, she realized she knew two single people with a shared devotion to ’90s R&B. Michelle introduced them by email.
Allan and Lissa hit it off immediately, but friendship came first. The two remained close for several years before they began dating. When it came time to celebrate their marriage, there was only one logical choice for the person to lead the ceremony: Michelle.
The celebration at Shade Hotel in Manhattan Beach was designed as a love letter to Los Angeles, the city where the couple now lives and where they made their first home together. There was even a convenient bit of symbolism: Lissa’s and Allan’s initials spell “L.A.”
Their backgrounds were woven into the weekend too. To “celebrate our cultural backgrounds in an authentic and creative way” was one of the couple’s priorities, alongside a larger goal that guided nearly every decision: showing their guests a very good time. They focused on the experience, from the venue and décor to the food, desserts, open bar, and a weekend filled with events and surprises.
The ceremony itself was “short but sweet,” with the people—and pets—closest to them taking meaningful roles. Lissa’s mother walked her down the aisle, an especially poignant choice following the death of Lissa’s father in 2010. Rocko and Miles, the couple’s dogs and everyday companions, made their own entrance in tuxedo harnesses—escorted down the aisle by their dog walker.
Then came a distinctly L.A. exit. Traditional wedding music began playing as the newlyweds walked away from the ceremony, and then the DJ scratched the record and launched into Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
The surprises continued at the reception. During the couple’s first dance, Lissa stunned Allan with a flash mob she had secretly organized with a 30-person crew of her “hooligans,” dancing to Bruno Mars’ “Marry You.” Later, an In-N-Out Burger truck arrived to give out-of-state guests a quintessential taste of California.
Music remained a through line. DJ Mini Skrrt (@freddie) built the night around the couple’s favorite sounds—’90s R&B, hip-hop and Afrobeats—while even the cake-cutting got its own punchline. As the couple sliced into a cake from Sweet Lady Jane, O.T. Genasis’ “Cut It” played.
Behind the celebration was an intentional approach to choosing vendors. One of the couple’s favorite parts of planning was meeting the people who would bring the weekend to life. They made a point of working with local businesses and independent vendors whenever possible, particularly people who are underrepresented in the wedding industry.
Ultimately, there wasn’t a single moment that Lissa and Allan could name as the best. It was the whole arc of the day—from getting ready in separate suites surrounded by close friends to seeing their favorite people gathered together, plus the surprises, the music and, finally, dancing late into the night.
Their expectation had been simple: “to have fun and enjoy our time with everyone and each other.”
And that is exactly what they did.
