It’s high times for cannabrides at wedding show
Cannabride-to-be Coral Reefer stepped into the sunlight beneath the Westfield San Francisco Centre dome at noon Sunday, modeling a white gown as a violinist played a romantic waltz.
Her wedding is not until October, but the Cannabis Wedding Expo comes only once a year and everything she could need was in this one-day marketplace, from vape bars to five-course cannabis pairing dinners, to the wedding suite at the “bud and breakfast” in Humboldt County, and on to a honeymoon canna tour of the Mendocino coast.
“People think it is such a conservative moment, and here we are holding a bong or a joint just like we’d be doing on our wedding day,” she said, as her groom-to-be, Mio KamstraBrown, nodded approvingly. “At a cannabis wedding, people can really be themselves. They aren’t sneaking behind the building to smoke or having to wait for the after-party.”
The Cannabis Wedding Expo is a traveling trade show run by ponytailed “cannapreneur” Philip Wolf, 33, of Denver. The concept is to bring services that can be hard to source out into the bright daylight, and 50 venhandle dors formed a ring in the rotunda, with shoppers circling round and round.
“I’m not interested in cannabis as a theme at our wedding,” said Reefer, who was shopping for subtle tips, “just having it available to enjoy, served in the way that alcohol is.”
It is the second year that the tour has hit San Francisco, and the second visit by KamstraBrown and Reefer, who are both 30 and live in Santa Cruz. After last year’s expo, KamstraBrown was so inspired that afterward he got down on one knee while looking for sea glass on the beach and proposed, and there were plenty of couples walking the loop looking for similar magic Sunday.
The organizers said 525 tickets were presold at $14 each and 40 more paid $18 as walk-ins from the mall. Wolf expected to clear $25,000 or $30,000, and that’s not including bookings for Cultivating Spirits, the cannabis catering company he also owns.
The full experience could include cannabis bachelor and bachelorette parties, and purveyors of alcohol-free CBD mocktails, which use the medicinal part of the cannabis. Many of the vendors came from Mendocino, including Chelsea Kerwin and Danny Doran, purveyors of gold-plated jewelry, each piece embedded with a marijuana bud at its core.
“It’s a piece of art that breaks down barriers and opens up the conversation,” Doran explained. Kerwin and Doran have been too busy to get married themselves, but it could be any day now.
“Naturally, we are going to have a cannabis wedding,” he said.
Reefer, who makes her living as a glass artist, is expanding into cannabis, hence the name that she uses for business purposes. After her own engagement success after last year’s expo, she contacted promoter Wolf and was given free admission in return for modeling gowns. She was expected to circulate in several different dresses and was hopeful that one would be made of hemp.
Another model was Jessica Gonzalez, who went the route of a “canna elopement” on last year’s New Year’s Eve, at the moment hemp became legal. She has parlayed that into a career as a “cannabis influencer,” she said, with 10,000 followers on Instagram under the “The Mommy Jane.”
Gonzalez, who is 34 and grew up in Novato, said her use of cannabis helped her to lose 100 pounds and conquer the jitters before her surprise wedding at the Fairmont on Nob Hill.
“I was vaping in the hotel room for my nerves,” she said. “At least I was not smoking bowls.”
Stories like this abounded, and one eager listener was Chantel Davila, 30, of San Jose, planning a June wedding she wants to be “cannabis-infused,” she said. “Everything from the theme to the food.”
After a few laps around the circuit, she said she had been impressed by the package offered at Riverbar Pharms, advertised as an “upscale atmosphere to consume and learn about cannabis in a Victorianstyle farmhouse on 20 acres.”
“The Bud & Breakfast is awesome,” she said after picking up a brochure. “I wish there were more like it.”
There were no samples and no aroma in the shopping center air. It was a clean and sober event.