Our Love Story: Ricci Lopez and Karl Hammargren

They grew up in the same neighborhood, but it took Facebook to bring Ricci Lopez and Karl Hammargren’s Las Vegas love story to life.

“His name popped up and it kept popping up (on Facebook) and I’m from Las Vegas and Karl’s family is quite well known in Las Vegas. If you’re from here, you know the Hammargren family,” Lopez says. “I sent him a message around his birthday and said we should have dinner for your birthday. And that was our first date.”

Hammargren accepted, and the two immediately clicked.

“We talked for hours after dinner. It was so easy. The conversation just kept flowing about our history,” Hammergren says. “We grew up in the same neighborhood about 10 years apart, so we didn’t cross paths but were very familiar with everything.”

Their first date turned into forever.

“We’ve been together ever since,” Lopez says.

A Pop-Up Wedding and Cocktail Party

Lopez and Hammargren originally planned to get married in Paris but then changed course and opted for a Las Vegas wedding instead, a city they both love and live in. They invited 300 of their friends and family to their home.

“It was quite a wedding. It was not a traditional wedding where there was a sit-down dinner for 300 people. That would have been a challenge,” Hammargren says. “It was more like an evening cocktail party with a pop-up wedding in the middle.”

The wedding was both indoor and outdoor, although the couple wanted to hold their ceremony outside by the pool, where flower arrangements and entertainment were also set up. However, it didn’t go quite as smoothly as the first date.

“An hour before the wedding, I looked outside, and it was raining so hard, it was raining sideways,” Lopez says.

But then, amazingly, right around the time they wanted their ceremony to be, the skies parted.

“The sun came out. The birds were singing. We didn’t have time to set anything back up, but we knew it was time to do it,” Hammargren says. “And it was beautiful for about 15 or 20 minutes, and the ceremony took place, and then the storm started again.”

Some Unique Twists

The couple incorporated some unique twists into their special day. One idea from Lopez, who works in the apparel industry, was to have guests sign dinner jackets instead of a book.

“We had two men’s white wedding coats on mannequins and pens next to them,” Hammargren says. “You would sign the wedding coat, put your message on the wedding coats, and now we wear them sometimes, like on our anniversary, and read the messages.”

Another was their outfits. Lopez says he styled them in custom, all-black ensembles from head to toe but with different jackets.

“Karl loves color, so we went with this beautiful Chanel fabric but we made it custom for him,” Lopez says. “And then mine was this beautiful brocade dinner jacket silver in color.”

Watch more Real Las Vegas Love Stories on our YouTube channel.