Los Angeles: Apr 30: Encino and Wedding

This day was allocated to attend a wedding. I took few pictures, mainly because I didn't feel like taking pictures at the wedding. Di Yin took similarly few photos. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #80 in the album). When you've passed the wedding pictures and see another brunch picture (picture #89), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

For breakfast, B, E, Di Yin, and I drove to their local downtown in Encino for brunch at More Than Waffles. Indeed, More Than Waffles serves lots more breakfast items than just waffles, but almost everything is served with a Belgian waffle. And, yes, they make their waffles well.

From the drive, I noticed Encino is a hilly, pretty area filled with large estates (all different) and wide sidewalks. Once back at the house, we took a stroll around the neighborhood and admired the houses and gardening. The weather was the same beautiful weather as the previous day.

As for their house itself, it can rightly be called an estate. B and E invested heavily in the house because they want to raise kids there and eventually grow old there. Everything is 50%-100% larger than a "normal" house. Even the hallways are wider as well. It has four bedrooms plus a "maid's room"/den, a sizable pool, tons of patio plaza pool space, and a huge kitchen (six burner range, large island, large stove). In fact, the pool area reminded me of the pool scene in Octopussy. Admittedly, their pool area isn't as large or extravagant but it gave me the same feeling as the setting in the movie.

I especially liked two features of the house: the plantation shades and the recessed lighting. I hadn't seen many plantation shades, but now I know I like them. As for the lighting, I generally appreciate recessed lighting, but I liked this more than usual because the lights are also skylights. You can't tell by looking at them, but the light coming from the recessed area during the daytime is filtered sunlight. It looks like the lights are on even though they're not.

We hung around the house until it was time to go to the wedding.

Di Yin's college friend B was marrying S in the Calabasas Hills. These hills felt like ranch country. It's almost entirely nature, with cactuses and mountains, and the farmland is bounded by post and rail fences.

The wedding and reception were at Saddle Peak Lodge, a hunter's lodge nestled in the mountains. (This is the Santa Monica chain of mountains, by the way.) A cactus garden served as the immediate backdrop to the ceremony, with the mountains visible beyond.

Ironically (given the setting at the hunter's lodge), there were sushi hors d'oeuvre, plus cocktail shrimp. More apropos, elk was one of the dinner choices. Both Di Yin and I had it. She said it was like seared tuna in the sense of being raw in the center. It tasted meaty, like jerky, but was a really tender version thereof. It came with butternut squash puree, brandied cherries, stuffed mushrooms, and ciopinni onions (I love those).

Along with the main course, we ate asparagus soup, salad, bread pudding, and cake. The salad, made with endive, watercress, and apples, included St. Agur goat cheese, one of the few varieties of blue cheese I like. I didn't like much else about the salad however. On the other hand, I definitely liked the banana huckleberry bread pudding served as dessert.

It was clear the wedding was more for the parents than the couple. Indeed, we talked with one couple who'd only met the bride once or twice and didn't know the groom at all but were there because they're friends of the bride's parents. Also, music and dancing weren't a priority either; the dance floor was small and nevertheless barely used.

After dinner, we enjoyed the photo montage of the bride and groom together. I think more weddings should have one.