A Celebration: Inside Shannon & Keivan's Brooklyn Reception
Carroll Hall, Brooklyn NYC · Full-Service Planning & Coordination by Priscilla Bella Events
Photos by Callie Ying Photography
Shannon and Keivan got married at a courthouse more than a year before they ever planned to celebrate it. When they came to us wanting a full-service planner, the brief was clear from the very first conversation: they wanted a party, not a traditional wedding. No speeches. No first dance. Nothing that referenced the marriage itself. What they did want was everyone they love, in one room, surrounded by the things and memories that actually make them them.
A Party, Not a Traditional Wedding
Planning a celebration with none of the usual wedding structure meant there was no built-in shorthand to lean on — no ceremony, no toasts, no traditional flow to hang the day on. What she needed first wasn't a floor plan. It was a clear understanding of who Shannon and Keivan were.
So Priscilla asked them what they wanted their guest to experience, and the answer kept coming back to the same idea: anything that reflected the things they loved, and the people who mattered to them. That became the frame for everything.
“It's not a traditional wedding celebration. It's a gathering of their favorite people, and their favorite things.”
That line became the invitation. Once the party had its own identity — Shannon & Keivan's Favorite People and Things — everything else had something to hold on to.
Two Heritages, One Table
Partway through planning, Keivan's parents made one loving suggestion: the celebration should include a Sofreh Aghd, the ceremonial table at the center of Persian weddings. It hadn't been part of the plan, and it was new territory for everyone at the table — this was both Priscilla's and the couple’s first time engaging with the tradition.
Rather than guess, Priscilla began researching — video after video, image after image, story after story — and then did the more important thing: she asked. A Sofreh Aghd carries specific meaning in every item on it, and including only a piece of the tradition risks flattening or misrepresenting it if that piece isn't chosen carefully. Priscilla encouraged Keivan to talk it through directly with his parents — what mattered most to them, what could respectfully be scaled down for a non-ceremony celebration — and built the final table around their answer.
“If you're only including a piece of a tradition, you have to make sure you're doing right by the people and past that it represents.”
The Sofreh Aghd sat alongside favor bags sourced from Taiwan, honoring Shannon's own heritage — two family histories, represented on their own terms, in a room built around neither a ceremony nor a script.
A Sunrise, Remembered
Every design decision starts with the venue, and this one started with a memory. Shannon and Keivan got engaged at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, under cherry blossoms, and Priscilla wanted to give them back some version of that feeling. She found a garden-filled space tucked into Brooklyn — an unlikely oasis, complete with its own floral chandelier — that could hold the feeling without repeating the place.
The couple knew they wanted flowers. They didn't yet know what else. So Priscilla asked a different question: what's a moment from your relationship that's stayed with you? They told her about a sunrise hike early in their relationship, and the color of that particular sunrise. That photo — not a mood board, not a trend — became the first page of the design deck, and the soft, pastel palette that runs through the entire event.
“The palette didn't come from a mood board. It came from a photo of a sunrise on one of their first dates.”
Everyone's Favorite Things
With the concept and the palette set, the day filled in around a series of stations, each one built from something specific to Shannon and Keivan rather than a standard reception checklist.
A flower-press station let guests make a bookmark to take home — a literal piece of the day, pressed and portable.
A wall of memories displayed fifteen years of photos with the people closest to them, with a Polaroid station alongside it so every guest could add themselves to the wall in real time.
A dessert table pulled from roughly five of the couple's favorite dessert vendors — Persian sweets, Taiwanese tofu pudding, cakes from multiple bakers, and fresh fruit — built around the idea of favorite places rather than a single caterer's menu.
The food spanned Persian dishes, Jamaican beef patties, and Taiwanese fried chicken, reflecting both Shannon's Taiwanese heritage and Keivan's own Jamaican, Chinese, and Persian background — not a fusion menu, but an accurate one.
Then, a Surprise
About halfway through the nine-month planning process, Shannon and Keivan shared news that reshaped part of the day: they were expecting. Rather than treat it as a separate event, Priscilla folded it into the existing concept. One station became a collaborative alphabet book — each guest illustrating and signing a letter — displayed alongside photos of Shannon and Keivan as babies themselves.
It read less like an announcement and more like an extension of the same idea that shaped everything else: whatever mattered most to them, at that moment, belonged in the room.
Staying True to the Vision
Many elements of Shannon and Keivan’s celebration did not follow the usual playbook. It's not typical to source dessert from five separate vendors; most events rely on one bakery or caterer. But Shannon and Keivan's dessert table was never meant to come from one place. It was meant to come from their favorite places.
Once Priscilla heard what each one of the desserts they wanted on the table meant to them, the question stopped being whether it was practical and became how to make it work. Every vendor and sweet memory made it to the table the day of their celebration.
“If it's genuinely important to them, I take that to heart and help make it happen.”
What a Planner Catches, So You Never Have To
A week before the event, a vendor informed Priscilla that guaranteeing a delivery window would cost an unplanned fee on top of the agreed price. It was a detail that hadn't been part of any earlier conversation..
Priscilla didn't pass the charge to Shannon and Keivan, and she didn't quietly absorb it either. She went back to the vendor, escalated the conversation, and worked it through until it was resolved — without new cost, and without Shannon or Keivan ever knowing there had been a snag at all.
“A planner can be your advocate and liaison for vendors— She makes sure you are not the one spending the week before your wedding or event stressed out about the logistical details.”
A Celebration Built Around Everyone in the Room
Asked to sum up the day in one sentence, Priscilla didn't quite manage one — there was too much to say. But the throughline was clear: this wasn't only about making Shannon and Keivan feel celebrated. It was about extending that feeling to everyone they invited.
The memory wall gave guests a place to look back. The Polaroid station gave them a way to add themselves to the story. The alphabet book gave them a role in whatever comes next. Nobody in that room was just a guest.
“With Shannon and Keivan, we built a meaningful event that made every guest feel loved.”
Planning something that doesn't look like anything you've seen before? Contact Priscilla Bella Events today!