Cannabis Wedding Expo Rings Stoners' Bells
With the passage of legal recreational marijuana use in California, the full marijuanization of each aspect of our lives and culture walks further down the aisle each day. Couples who are engaged in regular, daily tokes and smoke-outs now have their own boutique strain of weed-friendly wedding planners and bridal industry vendors, many of whom rolled up to the Westfield San Francisco Centre on Sunday for an I-swear-to-god-I’m-not-making-this-up event called the Cannabis Wedding Expo. More than 50 marijuana-specific wedding vendors and exhibitors packed the Westfield’s Bespoke space to cater to couples who wish to remember their special day with bong rips and pre-rolls, though may not necessarily remember their vows.
"To-be-weds who are engaged realize that it’s a non-negotiable for them, they don’t want to budge on including cannabis in their wedding or reception," said wedding planner Ivy Summer, whose Voulez Events offers marijuana-friendly wedding packages. "They really want it to be part of their day, it’s a huge part of their lives and lifestyle."
Every one of those dresses above is a hemp wedding dress (a silk-hemp blend, actually), designed by Janay of High Vibe Bride, who drove here from all the way from Kansas City with 14 of these hemp wedding dresses in her car. “It’s not heavy, it’s not itchy at all,” said one of the models above Brittany Janae, describing these silk-hemp wedding dresses that go anywhere from $1,500-$5,000.
"Most wedding dresses are made unethically overseas, basically out of plastic,” said High Vibe Bride designer and owner Janay. “Our dresses are made in the U.S., made locally by seamstresses.”
You definitely want to catch the bouquets from Flowers on Flowers, who create floral wedding bouquets with actual marijuana buds in them. “We do real arrangements with real weed or fake arrangements with fake weed,” Flowers in Flowers CEO Leslie Monroy told SFist. (That’s fake weed in the dank floral crowns and earrings seen above.) “The nugs are completely fake, you can travel anywhere in the world with them.” But their ‘real nug bouquets’ feature five different strains of kind bud that have all won a High Times Cannabis Cup award.
“Mother’s Day is huge for us,” Monroy said of the marijuana flower bouquet business. “We also have an ‘I’m sorry’ line. Anyone wouldn’t be upset anymore if they got those flowers.”
We did not see a full-on, marijuana-infused, three-layer wedding cake at these proceedings, though there were bakeries who create high-octane single serve macaroons, petit fours, and other edible treats. Above we see the THC-infused cotton candy of B-Edibles, who make organic, medicated cotton candy for cannabis dinner parties and private events. “I take the machine, the infused sugar, and whatever flavor the event is requiring, and I spin cotton candy onsite,” B-Edibles founder Vanessa Corrales told SFist.
But this was a legit “canna-free” event at the hoity Westfield Mall, so the cotton candy was not medicated and the phat nugs were for display purposes only. The strict ban on consumption was a Westfield requirement, but surely helped legitimize the event. “One of the prouder moments of today for me has been for Bespoke and the Westfield Mall to allow us to have outward-facing signs throughout the mall for a cannabis event,” Cannabis Wedding Expo founder Philip Wolf told SFist. But the quarter-ounce of prevention helped ensure the marijuana-themed wedding event was made of honor.
