The Bride Channeled Audrey Hepburn for Her Los Angeles Backyard Wedding
Samantha Ressler’s best friend Max Winkler and his sister Zoe were waiting in line to get their COVID vaccines when they ran into Jason Borg. Zoe had graduated from the University of Wisconsin with him back in 2002. “It’s possible that they had neither seen nor spoken to one another since then, but they struck up a conversation, and she immediately thought he was really great,” Sam remembers. “Apparently, Jason had just moved to L.A. that afternoon.” During the encounter, Zoe texted Sam to ask if she could set her up. “I told her no,” Sam remembers. “She gave him my number anyway, and he called me that night.” That was in January 2021, and the two were married 13 months later.
On the day they got engaged, Sam—an actress and producer who founded the theater and production company We The Women—vividly remembers she was wearing exercise clothes and socks with sandals. “I was an hour late to our engagement because I stopped to get a coffee and ran into a friend and unknowingly sat with him for an hour not realizing I was late to my own engagement,” she recalls. Jason proposed at the couple’s house, which has always been Sam’s “happy place.” “He went to the flower mart downtown and filled up our house with flowers, and I don’t even remember the rest because I was just shocked and crying the entire time.” They Facetimed their families, then Jason told Sam they were going to swing by her parents’ house for a quick toast before heading to a romantic dinner. “When I walked in, his parents and all of our siblings were there from Michigan, New York, Connecticut, Florida, and North Carolina. I have three siblings, and he has two and they’re our best friends, and I was uncontrollably sobbing like a lunatic,” Sam remembers. “It was the best.”
The wedding was scheduled for February 19th, 2022, and the entire event was planned in just 12 weeks. “We didn’t want a long engagement, and I knew I wanted to get married at my parents’ house,” Sam says. “My sister got married there in September of 2020, and we both worked with event planner Mark Seed. He made everything so easy, fun, and seamless. He’s basically a genius and has the chillest energy. He s also incapable of panic. He can right-size any problem and can put things in perspective. He really gets that this should just be a celebration of love and a fun experience to plan.”
Sam had never really given a lot of thought to what her wedding would look like. “In my parents speeches, they both talked about how I swore I d never get married, and my mom couldn t recall any memories of me even pretending to be a bride,” Sam jokes. “But I ve always been very particular and never had a hard time making decisions, so I knew what I wanted. And because producing live events is such a big part of We The Women, it s something I actually love to do. Mark is so creative, and it was genuinely so much fun coming up with ideas together and his execution of my vision was beyond my wildest expectations.”
Because of the pandemic, Sam and Jason opted for a smaller wedding and asked that everyone be vaccinated and test beforehand. “We also recognized that any gatherings could still be a risk,” Sam says. “So my grandmother Gigi came to see us before we walked down the aisle, but then didn’t stay for the actual wedding.”
When it came to her dress, Sam had more clarity from the start. “Zac Posen is one of my closest friends, and I was lucky enough to have him make my wedding dress,” she explains. “He is as thoughtful as he is talented, and I cannot even begin to express how much time, energy, detail, and love was put into the dress he made me.” After Sam got engaged, she showed Zac the dress that Audrey Hepburn wears in War Peace from 1956. “It wasn t a wedding dress but felt like the exact shape and vibe of what I would want to wear,” she says. “Zac immediately knew it was Fernando Gatinonni and was like an encyclopedia of knowledge on it, which is very him. The next day he had sketched me something based on that inspo. He had replaced the cap sleeves with two removable capes and a train. He hand-picked and placed the embroidery like a magician. The whole experience was something I will never forget, and I feel so lucky.”
Jason wore a Tom Ford tux, and Sam gave him, their dads, and their brothers engraved cufflinks on the wedding day. Mara Roszak did Sam’s hair—incorporating a beautiful pearl string headband made to match the embroidery on her dress—and Pati Dubroff did her makeup.
There wasn’t a wedding party, but family members walked down the aisle with their spouses. Zac made both of Sam’s sister s dresses, each perfectly suited to their different personalities and styles. The mother of the bride wore a vintage James Galanos dress that she found at Happy Isles, a beloved vintage boutique in L.A.
Sam walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand s “Get Happy / Happy Days are Here Again.” “I m a theater geek, and I live for both of them and this song, and I didn t even have to think twice about it,” Sam says. “Jason walked down to ‘Going to California’ by Led Zeppelin because he moved to California to be with me.”
Max Winkler, the bride’s best friend, married the couple. “I can t properly articulate the feeling of having your best friend marry you to your best friend,” the bride says. “But I have never felt so seen or loved in my life, and I laugh-cried through the entire thing. The ceremony was his opus, it was brilliant and hilarious and moving and the greatest piece of live content I ve ever consumed, maybe? Max and his sister Zoe were the reason we were standing there, so it felt right that he marry us…The entire ceremony felt like home. Literally and figuratively. Being at my parents’ house with everyone we love...it was just an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and joy. Jason has a stupid tattoo that literally says ‘Feels good to be home’ and when you ask him why he got it, he doesn t really know... and that sort of became the theme to our love and our wedding and Max s ceremony.”
