Exclusive: Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz and Brad Hoss Share Their L.A.-Themed Wedding Album

This image was taken at The Wolves in Downtown Los Angeles. (Credit: Shauntelle Sposto / Sposto Photography)

Updated Oct 17, 2018

It certainly took a village, their village, to pull off Stephanie Beatriz's wedding to Brad Hoss. The Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress married Hoss in a thoughtfully-planned wedding-turned-homage to Los Angeles at L.A. River Studios on October 6, but to hear her tell it, they were largely able to do so with the help of their friends.

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“Our friends are really, really important to us,” Beatriz, 37, tells The Knot in an exclusive interview. “Life in L.A. can be kind of lonely--not unlike living in a big city like New York. You just sort of have to find your chosen family, and over the years, we’ve done that… We’ve created this amazing extended family because we blended our groups of friends.”

From the moment Hoss, 36, proposed to Beatriz, the couple's friends and family members were present every step of the way. In fact, the marketing consultant popped the question in the comfort of their own home--during a dinner party with their best friends--which culminated at the end of the night with his proposal. While Hoss was nervously anticipating the right moment, Beatriz, on the other hand, was “very chill” without any hint that it was coming.

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In the process of wedding planning, too, Beatriz and Hoss relied heavily on the generosity of their friends, who pitched in to help with different aspects of the ceremony and reception space, from arranging the venue into a circular rotunda to designing their save-the-dates and formal invitations. (Perhaps most adorably, the couple's stationery included a beautiful hand-drawn map, designed by the bride's sister, that pinpointed spots in L.A. that were meaningful to Beatriz and Hoss's love story.)

“There are so many special things about Los Angeles that we wanted to celebrate,” she says. Here, the actress goes into full detail about the ideas that inspired her wedding, one that she dreamt up with her financial adviser--before she even met Hoss. “My advice is to start thinking about your dreams now and how you’re going to execute them," she advises. “Because they’re your dreams. You can make them your reality, but you have to be realistic. So start saving now.”

THE VENUE

One of the couple’s priorities when they began wedding planning was the food—and by virtue of that, venues that would allow them to cater their reception in just the way they wanted. After searching high and low for a spot that would let them bring in their own vendors (read: food trucks), they stumbled upon L.A. River Studios, an event space that provided the flexibility for them to celebrate how they wanted.

“As someone who’s in eating disorder recovery, I can finally have a good relationship with food, and I wanted to celebrate that," she says. "And part of the celebration is enjoying the food and feeling nothing but the enjoyment about it. And Brad has worked in a lot of different industries, but he’s worked really closely with a lot of amazing food people out here in L.A., so he wanted to have food trucks at our wedding for sure.”

L.A. River Studios, a former toy factory converted into an event space with “huge, high ceilings and skylights and multiple rooms," turned out to be an ideal spot. Plus, it included an open parking lot to host the food trucks.

THE DRESS

The story of how Beatriz found her dress is serendipitous enough to give anyone the chills. The actress started eyeing gowns well before she was even engaged--“like many people do,” she notes--but she would constantly return to Grace Loves Lace, the brand behind the most-pinned wedding dress on Pinterest.

“The dresses seemed really easy to me,” she says. “And having worn one, I can tell you that it’s super easy to dance and move around in." For Beatriz, comfort was a primary factor, since her friends had vastly different tales about their wedding dress discomforts in the past.

Then, amid her search, the bride came across a dress with a beautiful lace pattern—and it just so happened that the name of the dress was "the Rosa," like her character on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. That marked the end of her search. “It’s this crazy magical coincidence,” she says.

Beatriz paired her gown with an elaborate matching veil and glittering diamond pieces by jeweler Zameer Kassam. She later swapped into a custom jumpsuit by designer Christian Siriano.

THE CEREMONY

Beatriz and Hoss opted for a mix of “traditional and nontraditional” for their ceremony, but many aspects of their wedding day were unique to their love story. For example, they had two officiants.

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“One of my good friends Erika, along with Brad’s friend Danny co-officiated the wedding. They wrote the vows with us. We wanted it to be funny, easy, welcoming and fast… I think our ceremony clocked in at maybe 10 minutes!”

The newlyweds also received a good piece of advice from Samberg, who told Beatriz that he and his wife, Joanna Newsom, took a moment for themselves between their ceremony and their reception to just soak in the moment themselves. So the pair ducked into an old vintage airstream trailer set up for them just outside the venue and spent 20 minutes reciting their own private vows to each other and sharing a bottle of champagne.

THE ARRANGEMENTS

"I was having trouble finding someone, and [my costar] Chelsea Peretti has such great taste, and she kept sending me these floral designers," Beatriz recalls. "And Sugar Rose Flowers was one of the florists that she sent." The actress, who worked with the company's owner, decided to keep things “very tropical, very lush, very pink.”

The couple even ended up having fresh arrangements adorn their chandelier, which she hung from the ceiling above her ceremony space. “I wanted a lush circular chandelier and these drippy, drippy flowers that could also hang above the reception so that people could look up and see this beautiful thing,” Beatriz explains. The couple also opted for a full flower wall. She muses, “What fun party have you been to in the last five years that hasn't had a flower wall that you want to snap pictures in front of… Right?”

THE WEDDING PARTY

Given their tight-knit, expansive circle of friends, Beatriz and Hoss had a rather sizable wedding party, with the sister of the bride acting as her maid of honor. A number of her best gal pals from L.A. filled out the rest of the wedding party, while Hoss’s host of buddies included one familiar face. Singer Ryan Cabrera, who was one of Hoss’s good friends from when he first moved to L.A., served as a groomsman.

“Ryan is one of the most giving, generous people I know,” she says.

THE FOOD

Since food was always going to be central to the couple’s wedding, it definitely took precedence during the wedding planning. According to Beatriz, the reception kicked off with an array of beverages to toast with, including champagne, kombucha from Better Booch and juice from Little West, followed by a “Game of Thrones-style table of charcuterie” from Kettle Black. There were light bites and snacks by HomeState (Tex-Mex fare) and Mama Musubi (a hand roll rice ball truck).

And rather than having a traditional sit-down dinner, the couple opted to arrange for a whole fleet of food trucks instead. “[Kogi BBQ owner] Roy [Choi] actually made it to the wedding, which was amazing,” she says. “He was the only person at the party that Andy [Samberg] got starstruck by. He was like, ‘Oh, Roy’s here! He’s on the truck and cooking.’”

THE CAKE

The couple opted to shed the wedding cake tradition in favor of an ultra-L.A. food truck by CoolHaus, a women/queer-owned specialty ice cream shop serving up personalized ice cream sandwiches. “People were going nuts for it. Brad’s dad ran to be first in line for the truck!” she says.

THE ENTERTAINMENT

Beatriz and Hoss had plenty of surprises at the ready for their guests once dinner had been devoured and people started to hit the dance floor: two rooms off the main space with goodies for everybody. In one room, painted pink, Menotti’s served up nitro cold brew, nitro hot coffee, nitro matcha and hot matcha in a nod to L.A.’s coffee culture. The second room featured a vending machine that dispensed flats for women in heels to change into.

The couple also provided a photo booth with a unique backdrop: a green and pink-flower backdrop reminiscent of the Kehinde Wiley official portrait of Barack Obama. Guests were also treated to an express manicure station and 60-second portraits by a New York-based artist.

THE TAKEAWAY

“What we really wanted [with our wedding] was more and more discoveries along the way during the event and during the party,” she says. “That’s part of what we both love about L.A. The minute you think you know this town, you learn something new, find a new restaurant, find a new hike, find a new park. It’s a never-ending source of wonder, L.A. And that’s what we wanted to reflect in our party. It was like everything we love about Los Angeles was in that wedding.”