This Laurel Canyon Wedding Was a Love Letter to Los Angeles
Emily Jane Fox and Lee Eisenberg’s first date happened as the result of a separate failed attempt. In the fall of 2018, Emily, a national correspondent for Vanity Fair, was in Los Angeles to interview Stormy Daniels’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, at the magazine’s New Establishment Summit. Also attending the conference was entrepreneur Rob Fishman, who became smitten by Emily’s no-nonsense questioning of the controversial figure on stage. When she was done, he gathered his courage, walked up to her, and asked her out.
Emily said…no.
So Rob instead got a drink with his friend Lee, the head writer of The Office and creator of WeCrashed. Wanting to understand who, exactly, Rob was talking about, Lee quickly looked Emily up on the internet. A 30-second scan of the results was enough for Lee to break bro code. He asked a mutual friend, Vanity Fair special correspondent Nick Bilton, to set him up with Emily instead.
Nick sent the following text: “Lee Eisenberg, please meet Emily Jane Fox. Emily, please meet Lee. I’m pretty sure—though I could be wrong—that if you go out for a drink together, you’ll get married, have kids, and name them after me.”
Turns out, he was two for three.
Lee proposed to Emily in the couple’s backyard on June 20, 2020, the longest day of the year. She knew it was coming. Stuck at home due to the pandemic, she noticed he kept taking repeated calls—outside—with friend and jewelry designer Irene Neuwirth. (“I figured they were either working on a ring or running off together,” says Emily. “Both of which I would have understood. Inheriting Irene into my life is one of the reasons why I married Lee.”) The next day, they had their closest friends over for socially distant carnival games and a bounce house in their backyard.
It would be the last celebration for a while.
The couple postponed their wedding not once, not twice, but three times amid the pandemic. After attempt number two, they decided to try for something else entirely. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Should we just have a baby and by the time we do, maybe we could have a wedding?’” Emily recalls. Their daughter, June Rose, was born in June 2021.
As the saying goes, third time’s the charm. On April 1, 2022, the two kicked off their wedding weekend in the City of Angels. “We wanted the weekend to feel quintessentially Los Angeles, so we really leaned into all of the places, influences, sounds, flowers, colors that feel very L.A.,” Emily says.
Friday night, they held their rehearsal dinner at Canter’s. They turned the Fairfax institution into an Old Hollywood supper club, bringing in silver towers of Ruebens, smoked fish, bagels, chicken fingers, and grilled cheeses, all set upon white tablecloths adorned with roses. A martini bar, built from scratch, served liquid courage to Lee’s comedy writer friends who gave loving roasts to the couple throughout the night. (“Lee’s friends are a real murderers row of the funniest people in the world,” Emily says. “So the roasts that evening made us both weep—from laughter and sheer fear for what they would say.”)
The bride wore a poppy-red dress by Patricia Voto of One/Of, accented with turquoise earrings from Irene Neuwirth and silk Manolo Blahnik mules.
On Saturday, the ceremony took place at a private estate in Laurel Canyon. Emily and her wedding planner, Melissa Sullivan from Studio Sully (who Emily calls “the ultimate cool girl meets incredibly competent leader”) decided on an aesthetic that would be Yves Saint Laurent’s Marrakesh home meets the Chateau Marmont lobby. Sullivan sourced hot pink benches, all adorned with Moroccan textiles, to contrast with the blue tiles on the home’s steps. Guests were given one-of-a-kind Moroccan fans while they waited for the ceremony to begin. Meanwhile, Ren of Renko Florals surrounded it all with palm trees—which acted as the couple’s chuppah— as well as Mediterranean flowers and grasses.
The decorative pièce de résistance, however, had to be the 250 feet of bougainvillea and carnation leis, made by a master Hawaiian maker. The florals were strung up above the altar and trailed down into the aisle below.
The bride wore a lace-and-yellow-bow vintage dress from Happy Isles that made her feel like a “’60s Bride Barbie.”
“I’ve long been a vintage collector, so it is the least surprising thing that I wore a vintage gown to our wedding. But it wasn’t what I planned. I was down the road on a custom dress when I saw Happy Isles post a photo of the most special little dress with a yellow bow under the bust with a matching duster on top,” she says. “I had just had our daughter two weeks earlier, so my mom was in Los Angeles. We raced over there, I tried it on, and walked out with it a half hour later.” Emily accented her dress with diamond drop earrings borrowed from her grandmother, and a cocktail ring belonging to Lee’s. In lieu of a veil, she put a petersham ribbon from the 1940s in her hair. Meanwhile, Lee wore a custom white Tom Ford dinner jacket.
A Beach Boys cover band played throughout the ceremony. “We love them and there’s nothing that makes you feel more Southern California than the Beach Boys,” says Emily. Lee’s father carried their daughter—who served as maid of honor—down to the tune of “California Girls.”
“I have to say—and I am sorry to say it to all of the traditionalists—having our daughter at our wedding was hands down the best decision we’ve ever made,” says Emily.
As for the officiant? That would be Rob—the person who accidentally brought them together. “It is a tough audience to perform your own writing in front of. It is a crowd filled with a literal Pulitzer winner and writers fresh off of Oscar wins,” Emily admits. Yet Rob delivered “the funniest, most clever, sweetest ceremony that felt like such an accurate depiction of us as a couple," says Emily. “I’ve never heard laughter like that at a wedding.”
Both writers, the couple always knew they were going to write their own vows. The question was, however, who would do a better job. “Leading up to that day, we were both very concerned that the other person would write better vows,” says Emily. “We’re still arguing about who won.”
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