By Elena Buckley | SDUN Reporter and Lauren Ventura | SDUN Editor
Imagine having your whole wedding bill paid in full. Everything right down to the invitations, entertainment, venue, dress, flowers, food and photography—free. San Diego’s top bridal vendors recently did that by working together to create a free wedding for one local couple to enjoy.
San Diego wedding social network, Bridal Insider, along with local radio station Magic 92.5 FM and its DJs, Jagger and Kristi, made it all become a reality when they produced the Ultimate San Diego Wedding contest. The contest creators asked couples to call in to the radio program this past November, share their love story and vie for the people of San Diego’s votes who ultimately decided which lucky couple would win.
Out of more than 200 entries, Golden Hill residents Matthew O’Donovan and Rachel Stewart’s story won on Nov. 23.
“Matt and I were just going to go down to the San Diego courthouse and get married in January, so when we found out about this contest to win a free wedding we were just so excited.” Stewart said during a recent interview with Uptown. “We’ve been in shock ever since we got the call saying we won.”
O’Donovan and Stewart, who met three years ago at The Stadium Club in Mission Valley, scheduled their new wedding for Jan. 19, which is also Stewart’s birthday, with the assistance of more than 20 vendors at an estimated cost of $60,000. The wedding will take place at the historic El Cortez building in the Don Room located in downtown San Diego.
Lori Foote, founder of Bridal Insider, said that the idea for the free wedding started out as a simple way to showcase San Diego’s bridal industry while also allowing brides to see all of the different aspects of a wedding, “experiencing [them] in their correct element,” she said.
“Then we thought it would be a shame to marry a fake couple through all of this,” Foote said of the decision to find a couple that would get to experience the professional wedding collaboration firsthand.
Stewart and O’Donovan have resided in Golden Hill for the past year with their two young children, Madison and Jacob, and both work for the State of California.
“Matthew and Rachel have been engaged for awhile and one thing that Matthew said during his interview with Jagger and Kristi was that it had always been their dream to start their family out in the more traditional way where you get married first and then have children, but it just didn’t work that way for them,” Foote said.
Foote also said that their story was unique because it was O’Donovan that wrote in, versus the bride-to-be.
“His story was really touching,” she said. “He wanted his fiancée to have the wedding of her dreams, but they knew it was not going to be possible.”
In O’Donovan’s entry letter, he explained that both he and Stewart have been adversely affected by the State of California salary reductions, mandatory furlough Fridays and the cost of daycare.
“I am just the regular guy living a regular life. I don’t have an emotion-filled, heartbreaking story—just love,” he wrote.
To follow Stewart and O’Donovan’s wedding journey, click on the Bridal Insider wedding blog at ultimatesandiegowedding.com.
