The Bride and Groom Both Wore Custom Bode for Their Entire Wedding Weekend at a Tuscan Villa
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In 2019, Lauren Piscione had sworn off men and was planning a one-month “Eat, Pray, Love” trip to Peru. Meanwhile, Travis Garrett was complaining to his hometown friend Holly—who happened to be Lauren’s neighbor—that she never set him up with anyone. Travis shares, “The next day she said, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t think of this, but my neighbor is perfect!’” Just three days before Lauren’s trip, Holly arranged a double date with the pair, who ended up having another one-on-one date the night before her departure. “I found Lauren to be extremely interesting and not like any girl I had dated prior,” says Travis. “I had to manage my expectations, but was pleasantly surprised when she texted me from the deep jungles of Peru that she would like to spend NYE together.” Lauren jokes, “I made Travis in a petri dish with my shamans in Peru. I saw him in my visions as my husband and the father of my children and, well, that didn t seem to scare him away.” The pair texted throughout her entire trip—and they’ve been inseparable ever since her return to Los Angeles.
Since Lauren is an interior designer with a strong sense of style, Travis knew her engagement ring “had to be something special.” He first spoke with some of her friends about what she might like, but ended up with too much feedback that left him even more lost than before. The groom-to-be knew that ultimately Lauren would be happiest designing her own ring. “An idea came to me one night when we were at a group sound-bath ceremony that I should start with the building blocks of what a ring is—gold and a diamond,” Travis says. “I decided to procure the stone and a bar of gold. We would melt down the gold and create something together so that she could be fully a part of the design process.” From there, Lauren worked with Jean Prounis to design her dream ring.
When it came to the proposal, Travis wanted it to be a total surprise. So, he decided to do it on a date night out at the Beverly Hills Hotel that Lauren organized during the holidays. “She would never have expected it on a night that she had planned,” says Travis. Since the couple’s dogs are a huge part of their lives, Travis arranged for photos of their pups to be on the table along with Lauren s favorite drinks when they arrived at the Polo Lounge. “At that point, I think she knew something was up,” he says. “I don’t think the waiter got the memo as he was hanging around the table a bit too long as I was trying to get on a knee and fumble through my pockets. I nearly fell out of the booth onto the floor to get to the proposal. I eventually got there, and she said, ‘Yes.’” The couple celebrated the rest of the evening with friends at Sunset Tower.
Lauren and Travis began planning to host 80 of their nearest and dearest for a weekend filled with celebrations at Villa Cozzano in Tuscany. “The whole point of having our wedding in Italy is to feel like you’re in your nonna’s backyard—to see the beautiful ripe ingredients strewn about the tables, to eat authentic, cozy comfortable Italian meals, to have an abundance of wine, and just savor the rich local ingredients of what’s available nearby,” says Lauren, who also is a former event planner. Travis adds, “I was definitely more supporting cast on the planning aspect. Lauren had a vision and I’ve learned quickly her design palate may be more sophisticated than mine.”
The bride admits that finding local wedding vendors that could fit her target aesthetic proved harder than she expected. “It can be oddly difficult to find partners in the wedding industry that understand the simplicity—that everything did not need to be so perfect,” she says. That’s why she brought on Daniel Soares from Alimentari Flâneur. “Daniel has built an entire business around highlighting the beauty of the undoneness and simplicity of the Italian lifestyle—as he says cucina povera,” explains Lauren. “He is a true artist and completely understood exactly what I wanted without having to say a word. While I did not have a traditional wedding planner, having Daniel as my partner on this project made this process for me so much easier and of course so much more fun.”
Lauren says the in-house staff at Villa Cozzano was also integral to bringing her vision to life. “The entire team at Villa Cozzano was so hands-on and truly understood me,” she says. “I remember the first time I visited the venue and met the team, I was surprised to find a young, incredibly good-looking group of people running this incredible place. Sometimes youth is paired with the idea of inexperience, but they were complete masters in understanding modern hospitality.”
Another major collaborator on the look of the wedding was Emily Adams Bode Aujla, founder of her eponymous fashion brand Bode. The bride and groom’s entire wedding weekend wardrobe was created by the designer. Lauren knew she didn’t want to dress like a traditional bride, but still went to some local ateliers to try on a few silhouettes. “It wasn’t until I was in the Bode store shopping for a dress to wear to a friend’s wedding that the ultimate pipe dream popped into my mind,” says the bride. “As a longtime shopper of the brand, I realized that I always feel my absolute best when I am wearing Bode. Everything about the brand resonates so deeply with me. It’s an unwavering appreciation for old things and how old things were made; it’s storytelling at the forefront of everything; it’s the way something can be so simple but the fabric is so unique; it s the way that it toes the line of masculinity and femininity and the way something sparkly can still feel edgy.”
