How to throw a wedding for less than the cost

of an iPhone — the minimony craze

Ana Soriano and Luis Moreno kiss after their wedding ceremony at the Old Brown House, a
wedding chapel in Highland Park that offered free ceremonies during its grand opening on the
second Saturday in June.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
By Marisa GerberStaff Writer 
Photography by 
Dania Maxwell
June 21, 2023 5 AM PT

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As the couple sauntered down the aisle, an instrumental hip-hop version of the wedding classic
Canon in D oozed from a boombox, and a small crowd, most of them perfect strangers, danced
and cheered in celebration.

The bride wore a sundress and a veil she picked out moments earlier and the groom a black
button-down with a fresh haircut from his family’s salon down the street.
The ceremony itself took less than 10 minutes — affordable, memorable and intimate, exactly
what Ana Soriano and Luis Moreno had wanted.

“It was just us,” she told him moments after their nuptials. “You and me.”

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Ana Soriano and Luis Moreno are married by Kaibrina Sky Buck at the Old Brown House.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
The ceremony took less than 10 minutes — affordable, memorable and intimate, exactly what
Ana Soriano and Luis Moreno wanted.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Soriano and Moreno, both in their early 30s, met on Myspace 13 years ago and got engaged at a
cathedral in Italy a few months before the pandemic shutdowns. Moreno, a studio engineer, lost
his income overnight, and wedding planning moved to the back burner.

The couple knew some relatives who had spent close to $50,000 on weddings, but they wanted to
prioritize saving for a down payment on a home. And being inclined to avoid the spotlight, they
liked the prospect of skipping the pressure of a big gathering.

They had settled on a backyard ceremony until the groom’s sister saw something on Facebook
about the Old Brown House, a wedding chapel in Highland Park that was recently opened by a
couple who, for years, officiated free weddings at Burning Man. Before the pandemic
reorganized their lives and priorities, Soriano said, she felt some pressure to have a larger, more
traditional wedding — but this had been so much better.
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“Plan B is now Plan A for a lot of people,” said Connie Jones-Steward, a Los Angeles wedding
officiant, who said the demand for small ceremonies has remained high since restrictions were
lifted.

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Largely gone are the days of Zoom weddings and socially distanced outdoor ceremonies, but
some of the other pared-down celebrations that were once a pandemic necessity are now
increasingly a top choice.
A crowd watches a wedding ceremony at the Old Brown House this month.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Some of the lexicon popularized during the shutdowns — “micro-wedding” and “minimony,”
the portmanteau of mini and ceremony — still dominates the bridal blogosphere, and hundreds
of companies have cropped up to cater to tiny gatherings.

Google searches for “elopement” — a term whose definition has evolved in recent years, to
suggest a small, destination wedding more than something furtive — are even higher now than
during the first wave of pandemic shutdowns. A survey conducted by a diamond company a few
months before the pandemic found that more than 90% of millennials said they would consider
eloping. Their top reason? Saving money.

Jones-Steward — who offers a beach elopement package starting at $399 — keeps in touch with
many of the couples who eloped during the pandemic and learned that some who originally
planned to have another big ceremony down the road ultimately decided against it, realizing they
were grateful to have avoided the stress and cost. These days, she said, many of her Gen Z and
younger millennial clients prioritize saving for travel and a down payment on a house.

“They’d rather have this quickie ceremony,” she said, “and spend the money on a world cruise
for a honeymoon.”

And if marital longevity is your goal, there’s evidence that’s a good call.
Vintage wedding photos hang in the main office at the Old Brown House.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
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Jen Ballera and William Ascencio have their photo taken before their wedding ceremony.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

A pair of economists surveyed more than 3,000 people who were or had been married and found
that those who spent $1,000 or less on their wedding were significantly less likely to get
divorced than many couples who had spent more. Going on a honeymoon, however, correlated
with a longer marriage.

One of the study’s authors, Hugo Mialon, an Emory University economics professor, said he was
inspired to conduct the study, in part, by ads he’d seen on TV as a child from De Beers, the
company that introduced the slogan “A diamond is forever” in an attempt to boost sales after the
Great Depression.
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The expensive-crystals-equal-everlasting-love messaging proved wildly successful for the

company, which, in another advertising campaign decades later, used an image of a beautiful,
pouty woman to help shape cultural expectations around how much suitors should spend on a
ring.

“You can’t look at Jane and tell me she’s not worth 2 months’ salary,” it read. “I mean just look
at her.”

The Old Brown House, which looks just like it sounds, sits on a fairly quiet stretch of York
Boulevard, across the street from a cannabis dispensary that was once a Pizza Hut.

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Decorated on the inside with vintage furniture and a pump organ, the chapel held its grand
opening on the second Saturday in June — the brain- and love child of owners Tess Sweet and
Dan Gambelin.

Dan Gambelin and Tess Sweet renew their vows after celebrating the opening of their business,
the Old Brown House.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

The couple met at Burning Man in 2009 and returned several years after that to perform free
wedding ceremonies to honor the festival’s tradition of giving. They lent out thrifted gowns,
gifted rubber rings and devised a Mad Libs-style format so people could quickly write
personalized vows. They married more than 300 couples in ceremonies that, although not legally
binding, were often profound.

Sweet, 51, and Gambelin, 54, both faced career crossroads early in the pandemic, and as they
reflected on the intense joy packed into that week at the festival, they wondered if there was a
way to sprinkle that throughout the year.

“We both retired from worlds that broke our hearts,” Sweet said. “This is a new chapter.”

For more than 20 years, Sweet worked to establish herself as a filmmaker, but she grew
increasingly discouraged by the industry and how so much hinges on whom you know — and
how, as soon as you’ve finished one project, people immediately ask what’s next.
At the end of 2020, Gambelin retired early with post-traumatic stress disorder after more than
two decades as a firefighter and paramedic in San Mateo, Calif., a job he loved but one that
slowly ate away at him. He began to disassociate, stamping down devastating images seared into
his mind — body parts in a field at the scene of a car accident, the terror in the eyes of a child
whose little brother died of sudden infant death syndrome.

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Dan Gambelin fills out a Mad Libs-style form devised so people could quickly write
personalized wedding vows.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
William Ascencio, left, and Jen Ballera write their wedding vows inside the main office with
Dan Gambelin.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

He had been there for the worst days of so many people’s lives. It gnawed at him that, even
though they surely didn’t remember him, his presence, his face, had been associated with deep
fear and despair.

Officiating weddings, he realized, offered the exact opposite; now he was the stranger playing a
small part in one of the happiest days of their lives.

Using money they’d saved from selling their home in the Santa Cruz Mountains several years
earlier, the couple bought the chapel in 2021. It was painted white at the time and decorated with
signs that the previous owners used to advertise their tax and notary services, as well as
weddings and divorces.
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Sweet and Gambelin — who both got ordained online through the Universal Life Church to
perform weddings — spent two years renovating the place themselves and, in April, did a test
run of sorts officiating the wedding of Hattie Brown, one of Sweet’s relatives.

She and her now-husband, Daniel Saavedra, who works as a chef at a restaurant downtown, got
engaged a few months before the pandemic and knew they wanted a simple ceremony —
something affordable, lighthearted and poignant to honor the relationship they’d built since
meeting a decade ago while working at Yosemite National Park.

“I didn’t want the whole bells and whistles wedding,” said Brown, who stays home to care for
the couple’s 6-month-old daughter. “That’s a lot of money that we don’t have and a lot of work.”
Hattie Brown holds her daughter at the Old Brown House’s grand opening. She married her
husband at a ceremony at the chapel two months before its official opening.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

On a bright Saturday in April, about 20 of their family members gathered at the Old Brown
House. Before they walked down the aisle, everyone took a shot of tequila.

Two of Saavedra’s brothers, who initially had scheduling conflicts, surprised them by showing
up, and Brown carried a bouquet that included a small picture of her father, who died last year.
During the ceremony, Saavedra recalled looking over at Brown and then up at the strings of
lights lining the ceiling of the chapel.

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“Almost like I was in a fairy tale,” he said.

At the grand opening, the chapel offered free ceremonies all day and the event stretched until
after dark.

Of the 12 couples who had ceremonies, which were split between the indoor chapel and
outdoors, some had brought their marriage license paperwork and others either planned to get
their official license later or had the ceremony as a symbolic union but didn’t intend to file
paperwork with the state. A few other couples, including the owners, had recommitment
ceremonies.
Sweet and Gambelin are still nailing down specifics on pricing but plan to offer weddings for
around $600 — less than the price of a new iPhone and less than a third of the average rent for a
studio apartment in L.A. The couple added that they intend to never turn someone away because
of cost, describing it as a “nontraditional, nonconformist, sliding-scale wedding chapel.”

Ana Soriano tries on veils with future sister-in-law Priscilla Mendoza at the Old Brown House.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Wedding gowns hang in a bridal suite. The Old Brown House provides dresses, outfits and
accessories for people to borrow if they don’t have their own.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

To keep some of the pop-up energy of the weddings at Burning Man, they’ve decided not to
book things more than a month or two in advance.

“It’s like going to Vegas,” Sweet said. “Elope to Highland Park.”

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Early in the grand opening event, people began to huddle near a table decorated with wildflowers
in a mason jar and a yellow legal pad. Soriano and Moreno, the couple who met on Myspace,
were the first names on the list.

Sweet welcomed them and tugged Soriano into a shed filled with loaner dresses and other
accessories. Soriano clipped a layered veil into her hair, tearing up when she looked in the
mirror. The officiant, Kaibrina Sky Buck, one of Sweet’s longtime friends, popped in to
introduce herself and asked what descriptors to use to refer to the couple.

“Husband and wife is good,” Soriano said.

“OK, cool!” Buck said.

“Let’s do this!”

An hour later, another couple, Jen Ballera and William Ascencio, who live two doors down from
the event space, had their ceremony in the indoor chapel. Gambelin, who officiated, asked them
to read from the Mad Libs-style vows they’d filled out 10 minutes earlier.

“My dearest Jen,” the groom said, “together with you, my life is amazing, fun and damn near
perfect.”

“My dearest Will,” she told him, “together with you, my life is full of music and joy and love.”
William Ascencio and Jen Ballera, who live two doors down from the event space, are married
by officiant Dan Gambelin.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
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After they kissed, Crazy Town’s iconic track spilled out of the boombox — “Come my lady,
come, come my lady. You’re my butterfly, sugar, baby” — and Ballera lifted her eyebrows in
excitement, bursting into laughter. The song had been popular when they were growing up and
always had a way of following them.

“Did you ask them to play this?” she asked. Ascencio shook his head.

Sweet had picked it out — a staple on her playlist of favorite celebration songs.

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Marisa Gerber

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Marisa Gerber is an enterprise reporter at the Los Angeles Times.

Dania Maxwell

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Dania Maxwell is a staff photographer at the Los Angeles Times. Before joining the newsroom
in 2018, she worked in Colombia, South America and at the Naples Daily News in Florida. Her
work has been awarded an Emmy, POYi, Sigma Delta Chi and Edward R. Murrow. Maxwell
received a master’s degree in visual communication from Ohio University and a bachelor of arts
from Sarah Lawrence College.