Meet Sergio & Desirée Vasquez | Wedding Photographer & Decor/Florals

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sergio & Desirée Vasquez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sergio & Desirée, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Over the years, we’ve somehow found ourselves designated as the “go-to” creatives of our friend group when it comes to photography — Sergio being head photographer and me creatively directing and occasionally secondary shooting. Something that started off as a hunger for adventure and a way to document the memory of our experiences, quickly turned into a sort of sporadic side hustle, if you will. Most of these side gigs came about from people Sergio knew who he’d shot events for previously. Slowly word of mouth carried and he found himself shooting more professionally (engagements, weddings, and families.)

As cliché as it is, my husband is my favorite person to spend time with! I know, sometimes, it’s not a good idea to go into business with your partner, but I truly believe we complement each other in style, vision, and ideals, and thankfully for us, it just works! It wasn’t until a few years ago that we thought, “maybe we could do this for real” if we took it seriously enough.

Cue 2021, when the world was just starting to open back up (albeit fairly slowly) post-Covid, we decided to get the ball rolling and start marketing ourselves as a whole. Weddings and events obviously took a hit during that time, so as events were starting to take place again, we thought it was a good time to launch something new. By then, I had my hands in a lot of other parts of the wedding industry that I enjoyed (coordinating, floral arranging, and DIY decor.) Since Sergio already had the photography aspect locked down, we brainstormed how we could become a one-stop shop. There are a lot of people who surprisingly don’t know where to start or what to look for when it comes to planning a wedding — it can easily become extremely overwhelming! Because of this, we realized two things we were passionate about that had to come across our work clearly: 1) All work would be rooted in love and 2) Our services would provide ease and fluidity for all.

When it came time to decide what we wanted to call our business, we just wanted it to be as simple as our goal: to spread and to share LOVE!

Our friends have called us Sergirée for years now, combining both of our first names together, and as funny as it sounds, it’s simple, who we are, and to the point. Thus, our business was formed and we created LOVE by Sergiree (LOVExSergirée.)

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
We are Sergirée — a husband and wife duo with a passion for connecting, capturing, and celebrating L-O-V-E!

Based in Los Angeles, CA, but blessed with a heart for travel and a keen appetite for places and cultures around the world!

What started off as wanting to capture really cool photos of ourselves on trips we’d taken to savor our life experiences, turned into helping document the special moments and pivotal milestones of other people’s lives.

We got married in 2018 where we (mainly Desirée lol) planned and decorated our entire wedding on our own. This sprouted a newfound passion to assist others, during what could easily be an extremely chaotic time, to create a seamless experience for them to enjoy every bit of their special day.

Although we are rooted in weddings and engagements, we also document a lot of families, celebrations, and events! This was our main focus as to what could set us apart from other photographers and brands. Our genre isn’t solely weddings or portraits or travel, but a collection of it all — a collection of love. Love, in all forms and every aspect of that word, whether it be couples, siblings, babies, pets, work, culture etc. we’re here for it and will capture it all!

We’re lucky Sergio has built a good following that grew from a network spread only by word of mouth. It’s definitely increased over the years, which we are so grateful for because we’ve met a lot of new faces along the way! We love getting to work with the same clients year after year and capturing and celebrating different milestones with them — it’s so rewarding!

It’s still kind of weird for us to think of ourselves as professional in our field. When we think about success, I don’t think either of us would say we’ve “made it” (yet!) in the professional sense, but we are always striving to reach the goal, one day, of course. There’s always more to learn and always room for growth!

Something that’s always challenging to navigate, in any field and no matter what you find yourself doing, is a healthy work/life balance. We welcomed a baby boy late last year, so balancing it all has definitely been the most challenging to navigate, especially regarding scheduling, as of late. I’ve definitely taken a back seat from the business to care for our son, but am glad Sergio has been able to continue capturing our client’s stories! The best part of this new chapter in our lives is that we get to witness firsthand what we usually would do for other families and watch it unfold for our very own, which makes all the time and effort spent worth it!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We love food and love a good night out on the town, but also have a soft spot for local mom and pop shops as well. Now that we are new parents, our idea of “going out” looks a little different, but we definitely still try to set aside some time to enjoy being out of the house!

We love our neighborhood on the eastside, so if we were taking the chill route, we would start with breakfast/brunch at Jane (a quaint house turned restaurant, located on York Blvd.) Sergio always orders the chorizo huevos rancheros and I love their pancakes! (Bonus: they serve Korean food for dinner!) They are dog friendly, so we often bring our golden retriever with us too.

We love to hit up LA state historic park to let our dog run and play ball. It’s likely we will stumble upon some fun events, such as the renegade craft fair, as they frequently host local events in the park a lot! We just really love LA state historic park because it’s a huge space and fairly clean, so it provides an easy afternoon of activity! Sometimes if we have time for a picnic, we usually will stop by Jeff’s Table in Highland Park for some sandwiches. It’s located inside a corner liquor store, which we think is so fun! Or we would stop by Arroz & Fun on Broadway. If Sergio and I were a restaurant, this place would be it lol! It combines Chinese and El Salvadorian flavors together in a really unique way! They’re known for their Bo Lo Bao sandwiches and coffee that’s sourced from El Salvador. (Tip: the Bolo Breakfast “Leo Style” sandwich is the best! It consists of spam, bacon, eggs, hash brown, two cheeses, and a spicy mayo, held together by a fluffy and crispy pineapple bun — it’s not on their regular menu!)

If we wanted to go out for a little date night, we would definitely hit up one of three Italian restaurants that are special to us:
1) Michelangelo Ristorante (Silverlake)
2) Farfalla (Los Feliz)
3) Rossoblu (Downtown)

All three options have a plethora of homemade pastas and wine/cocktails to choose from that would get any night started on the right note! Bonus: Rossoblu actually offers homemade pasta making classes, which is something we’ve been wanting to try and sounds like the perfect date night combo!

We would then usually follow up with an ice cream run because there’s always room for dessert! Depending on which restaurant we’re at, the following are in close vicinity (and yes, we’ve hit them all up! Desirée has a HUGE sweet tooth!)
– Magpie’s Softserve
– Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream
– Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream
– Salt & Straw

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I think we’d both have to give a shoutout to our families for supporting us in our endeavors and always encouraging us to follow our passions and dreams. Their support allowed us to pave our individual paths, which then led us to each other, and none of this would have happened had we never met!

I’d also like to highlight the importance of appreciation for each other and recognition for each other’s individual hard work! On one of our first dates, Sergio told me a dream he had of making his photography and desire to travel become his actual job, but then laughed it off because he thought it was silly. I replied in all seriousness that he could do anything he set his mind to if he really wanted to. Over a decade later, here we are, doing just that with something we created entirely on our own! I couldn’t be more proud!

Honestly, I couldn’t feel any different than Des does. These days look different since she’s not physically joining me out there during these events, but she handles everything behind the scenes on top of being the main provider for our baby boy — she makes everything look easy and effortless, which is no easy feat!

Website: https://www.lovexsergiree.com

Instagram: @lovexsergiree

Image Credits
Sergio & Desirée Vasquez