WEDDINGS & ENGAGEMENTS
PaaWee Rivera and Sera Lee were married Aug. 20, 2021, in Santa Fe. The late-afternoon ceremony on the rooftop patio at La Fonda on the Plaza was officiated by Salvation Army colonels Bobby and Anne Westmoreland.
The groom is the son of sculptor and former Pojoaque Pueblo Gov. George Rivera and stepmother Felicia Rosacker-Rivera. His mother is artist and Los Alamos National Laboratory employee Kyuhee Lee Bussod, and his stepfather is Gilles Bussod.
The bride’s parents are David and Mikyung Lee of Springfield in northern Virginia, pastors of the Salvation Army.
During the ceremony, the bride and groom’s mothers wore Hanboks, traditional Korean dresses, handmade in their native country.
The couple met in 2015 while both worked at the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. Their first date was at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial near Washington’s Tidal Basin, fitting for a couple involved in Democratic Party politics.
The groom, a graduate of Dartmouth College, is director of tribal affairs at the White House. The bride, a graduate of Georgia State University in Atlanta, is deputy director of human resources at the DNC.
Elliott Martin of Nambé served as best man. He works as an engineer at NASA in
Greenbelt, Md. He and the groom first met when they played youth soccer in Pojoaque as 5-year-olds. Both graduated from Santa Fe Preparatory School.
The maid of honor was Joy Lee. She serves as press secretary to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The groom’s sister, PoQueen Rivera of Albuquerque, served as a bridesmaid; she is the government relations director of New Mexico’s Department of Indian Affairs. Other bridesmaids were Jenny Kwon of Atlanta, Emily Ng of Seattle and Clara Jeong of northern Virginia.
The junior bridesmaid was Paloma Rivera, and the flower girl was YsaDora Rivera, both sisters of the groom.
Groomsmen were Santa Fe native Tony
Perez of Washington, Luke Lee of New York City, and Charlie Galbraith and Jeremiah Montgomery Thompson of Washington.
After the ceremony, the Lightning Boy Foundation, named after the Tewa name of the groom’s deceased younger brother, Valentino, performed. One of the dancers was junior bridesmaid Paloma Rivera.
At a later date, the couple plan trips to visit the groom’s maternal grandmother in Hawaii and to Korea to visit the bride’s relatives.