Kait & Alyssa

November 16, 2024 • Los Angeles, CA

Kait & Alyssa

November 16, 2024 • Los Angeles, CA

You're coming to LA!!!

We couldn't be more excited that you're coming to celebrate our wedding with us, and that you'll also be able to experience the city we live in, even if just for a weekend.

If you check out the insert card in your wedding invitation, or the 'Home' page of this website, you'll see that there are activities on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during our wedding weekend. But, that doesn't mean there won't be time to explore the city on your own!


If we were in an alternate reality, where WE were the ones visiting LA for a wedding, here’s how we might spend our time around the city that weekend...


THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14th

Afternoon in Sunset Junction

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Land in LA and settle into your lodging. If you arrive earlier in the day, you could grab lunch at one of the following places in Sunset Junction (a part of the Silverlake neighborhood that Lyss & Kait live in) that are highly vetted by us :)


-Tacos, Burritos, and Chilaquiles at Tacos Delta (Casual, veteran, outdoor taco stand with a great patio)


-Simple smashburgers, fries and milkshakes at The Win~Dow Silver Lake (Casual, walk-up window burger joint with outdoor seating)


After lunch, take a stroll down Sunset Boulevard. There's a lot to see, little shops, and great coffee. We love Alfred Coffee for a latte and pastry, and Pazzo Gelato for a scoop.

EVENING IN LOS FELIZ VILLAGE

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Kick back and relax! You're on vacation 😎 🌴


When you're ready to venture out again, head over to Los Feliz Village. (If you're staying in Silverlake, you can take a nice, one-mile walk over. If you're not, you'll want to take an uber or a bus.) Stop in to some of our favorite places:


-Pop into Skylight Books, a small, indie bookshop on Vermont Ave. where Kait and Lyss like to buy books. Great staff picks for books!


-Have a martini, or a fresh croissant, at Figaro Bistrot, a locally owned, French restaurant with an affordable happy hour and great outdoor seating (if you want to stay for dinner, they have great food, but heads up- it's a little pricey)


-There's an affordable, fun outdoor Taco Shop on Vermont Ave. called Guac Daddy that has delicious tacos, guacamole, and a patio that's good for people watching!


-If you have time, or lots of stamina, you could catch a movie at Los Feliz Theater, a small, historic cinema from 1923 that only has three small theaters but plays current films and has really good popcorn.


-Hungry for something sweet or for comfort food? Head to Fred62, a retro-styled local diner that serves all the usual diner fare, have amazing hand-spun milkshakes, and is open late (they also have a lot of vegan options!).

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH

MORNING IN SILVERLAKE

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TGIF! Start the day with one of our favorite breakfast spots in Silverlake.


-Yeastie Boys is a bagel food truck that bakes their own bagels, and has a fun breakfast bagel sammie that includes a smashed hash brown inside 🤤 The truck parks right on Sunset Blvd. & Sanborn Ave. facing East.


-Make your bagel healthier with a smoothie on the side. Naturewell Vegan Juice & Smoothies is a few shops down and has lots of smoothies and juices. Alyssa's fave smoothie is "Field of Greens".


-If you're not ready to venture into LA-bagel-land, especially to all of our NY/NJ fam coming in 🏆, we recommend eating at HomeState on Hollywood Blvd., which has Kait's favorite handmade tortillas in the neighborhood, and Texas-inspired tacos, queso, and breakfast food.


-After breakfast, head over to Silverlake Reservoir for a 2-mile stroll around the reservoir (This is also a great loop for running to all the runners coming!). There's a great spot to sit and chill in Silverlake Meadows if you wanna take your breakfast to-go and do an impromptu picnic.

AFTERNOON IN DTLA

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'DTLA' stands for Downtown Los Angeles. From Silverlake, you can take scooters, the bus, the metro, or an uber to DTLA. There's so much to do downtown, but here are a few things we love to do in DTLA for an afternoon:


-Check out an art museum! MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art) and The Broad are both really interesting, contemporary art museums that both have free admission if you buy tickets online in advance.


-For lunch, Grand Central Market is a bustling, open-air food market with tons of stalls, from Michoacan-style carnitas, to American Southern, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Salvadoran, Italian, and more. If you like sweets, we also recommend you get a Fresh Peach Donut from The Donut Man in the market. 🍩


-Another option would be to spend the afternoon in Little Tokyo, a large Japanese neighborhood in DTLA. Walk through Japanese Village Plaza, where they have lots of Japanese pastry shops and boba cafes, sushi and ramen spots, and a great supermarket with affordable, tasty Japanese grab-n-go street food. One of our favorite spots in Little Tokyo is called "Takoyaki Tanota" which serves homemade Takoyaki--delicious, fried dough balls with octopus inside, served a dozen ways. 🐙


-Then head on back to your lodging to rest, and get ready for Kait + Alyssa's Welcome Event & Pizza Party that evening! 🍕

EVENING IN SILVERLAKE

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-Head to Pitfire Pizza in Echo Park, for the first wedding event of the weekend! 🎉 Our Welcome Event & Pizza Party is from 6-9:30 pm, where we'll have tons of pizza, other Italian food, and drinks. We're really looking forward to seeing everyone and having some pepperoni-fueled fun (fyi- they have vegan pepperoni too) to kick the weekend off.


-If you aren't bringing young kiddos, and/or have a lot of extra energy, we recommend two nighttime options for a little late-night fun...


1) Akbar is a small, queer bar and dance club that is an iconic institution in Silverlake for the LGBTQIA+ community. Great house, pop, and disco music + really friendly, fun, sweaty vibes. 🕺🏻


2) 33 Taps is a local, queer-owned sports bar in our neighborhood that plays all the sports, has a ton of TVs, a really good beer list, and tasty late night, bar food with indoor and outdoor seating.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16TH (THE BIG DAY)

MORNING/AFTERNOON IN GRIFFITH PARK

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What better way to start the day of the wedding off than with a hike that overlooks the whole city?


-Head over to Fern Dell Nature Trail (searchable in Google Maps!), which is one of our favorite hiking trails in Griffith Park. You can either do the smaller, flatter part of the nature trail, or do the full hike from the Fern Dell trail all the way up to the Griffith Observatory. Griffith Observatory is an amazing, historic space museum on a bluff of Mount Hollywood, with free admission (and is super kid-friendly). From it, you can see sweeping views of LA, Santa Monica, the Hollywood Sign, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the ocean. For people who enjoy hiking/walking uphill, we highly recommend doing this during your trip. You can also take public transit, or an Uber up to the top if you wanna skip the uphill hike, but still spend time at the top or visit the museum.


-Before or after you head up the trail at Fern Dell, grab a quick breakfast and coffee at The Trails Cafe- a woodland cafe with sandwiches, coffee, pastries, and fun snacks, nestled right in the park across the street from Fern Dell trail. Alyssa and Kait both highly recommend you order something called "The Snake Dog". 🐍


**Note: Going up to Griffith Observatory doesn't have to be a super strenuous activity, especially if you drive/bus up instead of hiking to the top. But no matter which way you decide to spend your time in Griffith Park, we'd recommend allocating at least three hours for travel to and fro, and for getting up to the Observatory.


___

-If you don't like hiking, we'd recommend the following activities and places to eat on Saturday morning/afternoon:


-Bowling and lunch at Highland Park Bowl (a Prohibition-era bowling alley with a pizza oven/full food and drink menu)


-Visit the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which has lots of fun, kid-friendly, tourist-y things like a Hollywood wax museum, the Chinese Theatre, a really fun Dave & Buster's, and an old 1950's drive-in diner called Mel's.


-Spend the morning in Frog Town and along the LA River. Start at Rattlesnake Park (Google searchable!) and walk east on the bike/walking path that winds alongside the LA River. In less than a mile (all flat and paved), you can pop into Spoke Bicycle Cafe, which has an entrance right on the river, and have some breakfast/lunch outside. This cafe is locally-owned, doubles as a bike repair/rental shop, and is usually teeming with locals, families, and lots of cute pups.


-If you want to explore another neighborhood and just do lunch before the wedding, we recommend visiting Little Ethiopia, popping into the local Ethiopian market, and eating at Lalibela, a great Ethiopian restaurant on Fairfax Ave.


-If you just want to chill at your place until the wedding, that is also highly encouraged. If you're staying cozy until the evening, we'd recommend using Uber Eats to order Taiwanese food from one of our favorite restaurants in our neighborhood, called Pine & Crane. Lyss and Kait highly recommend getting the Dan Dan Noodles and the Beef Roll. 🤤


-After you finishing enjoying your Saturday morning and afternoon, please get ready, put your best dancin' shoes on, and arrive at Bacari Silverlake for our wedding ceremony-- no later than 4:20 pm PT, please. 🙏

OUR WEDDING IN SILVERLAKE

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WOOHOO! 🎉 You've made it to the main event 🎉 We can't wait to celebrate our wedding with you. As noted, please try to arrive between 4:10-4:20 pm PT. We'll start our ceremony at 4:30 sharp, and then move into drinks, dinner, and dancing! 🕺🏻🪩


Our official wedding celebration/party at Bacari will end at 9 pm PT (with some wiggle room to mosey out, or finish your last drink/dance). After the wedding party officially ends, a lot of folks might be ready to hit the hay, while others might want to hang a little longer.

LATE NIGHT/ POST-WEDDING AFTER PARTY

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It's not an official afterparty/planned event, but we're recommending that people who want to stay out, re-group at The Black Cat after our wedding. The Black Cat is an historic neighborhood bar that is culturally documented as the site of the first LGBT civil rights demonstration in the nation. It's within walking distance from Bacari and a few, short blocks west on Sunset Blvd., and is a fun gastropub with indoor/outdoor seating.


**Disclaimer: Lyss and Kait are not sure how much 'hoorah' they're going to have left in them after the wedding, but if they go anywhere after Bacari, they'll be at Black Cat! 🐈‍⬛

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17TH

SUNDAY MORNING/AFTERNOON

More details on our Sunday event coming soon! This will be a more casual send-off event, since most of our guests will likely be leaving LA on Sunday. The schedule and location is pending, but will likely be some kind of brunch event in the late morning/early afternoon for a few hours.

SUNDAY EVENING IN KOREATOWN

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For people still in town, we recommend spending some time in one of our favorite neighborhoods-- Koreatown (K-Town for short). Koreatown is a diverse neighborhood that is close to Silverlake and Downtown LA, and is accessible by bus, metro, or uber (about 3 miles from Silverlake).


There's a ton to do/explore in K-Town, as it's known for countless kinds of Korean and other ethnic restaurants, 24 hour spas, karaoke bars, nightclubs, and unique malls and Korean grocery stores that have lots of food stalls and little restaurants tucked inside.


Here's a few of Lyss and Kait's favorite places in K-Town:


-Spend a few (or many) hours in a relaxing Korean spa. 💧 Korean spas tend to be really different than other kinds of spas you go to for massages or treatments. Instead of it being a short trip where you pay for a massage and then leave, Korean spas are usually really large, multi-room spas that have pools, multiple hot tubs, steam and sauna rooms, warm jade floors to take naps on, and many have restaurants or cafes inside. There's tons to choose from, with different price points, but most spas charge one price for entry, and then you have unlimited access to them. Think: pay 35-50 dollars and then spend the next 12 hours in the spa if you want to! 🫧

*Note: Because most of the spas don't require/allow bathing suits, they are "men only" and "women only", although some larger spas have mixed gender where folks can wear bathing suits.


-Kait and Lyss's favorite women's spa is called Spa LA. It's fairly affordable, not too crowded, and has 9 different spa/treatment rooms you can travel through.


-Another great spa with separate men's and women's floors is Wi Spa, which might be the largest, most well known spa in K-Town.


-Grab a more casual dinner at a bustling neighborhood favorite with classic Korean Dishes, called BCD Tofu House. Kait recommends getting some Soju and a Fried Seafood Pancake. 🤤


-There are probably a thousand different all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurants in K-Town, and every one we've been to has been delicious. One of our favorites is called ORIGIN Korean BBQ. An even more affordable option is Yerim Korean BBQ.


-Another one of our favorite restaurants for dinner is called Chunju Han-il Kwan. Lyss recommends the Kimchi Casserole / 김치 찌개 or the Soft Tofu Casserole / 순 두부. 🥢


-Want to work off some of the mountain of pork belly you consumed? Head to Aroma Spa & Range where you can check out the spa or head up to the roof and practice your swing on their rooftop driving range. It's super fun and also a great view of the city. 🏌🏿‍♂️

THAT'S IT, FOLKS- TIME TO SLEEP AFTER SUCH A FULL WEEKEND! 😴

BUT IN ALL SERIOUSNESS, WE KNOW THAT EVERYONE COMING HAS DIFFERENT BUDGETS, INTERESTS, AND SCHEDULES, BUT WE REALLY HOPE THAT THIS WAS HELPFUL, AND YOU CAN FIND SOMETHING ON HERE THAT YOU WANT TO TRY!


IT'S A THOROUGH LIST OF RECOMMENDATIONS, BUT WE WANTED TO TAKE SOME EXTRA CARE, AND SHARE WHERE WE TRULY LOVE SPENDING OUR TIME AT SOME OF OUR FAVORITE SPOTS IN LA. 💜


AND IF YOU NEED ANY OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS BECAUSE YOUR TRIP/VACATION IS LONGER THAN THE WEEKEND, PLEASE BE IN TOUCH WITH US!