About Laura and Darrin
Laura, daughter of Alvaro and Maria Bustamante, is a publicist at Nancy E. Quinn Associates; a translator; and a reporter for Latin Eyes, an Enlish-language, magazine-style television program with headquarters in San Francisco, which covers stories on all aspects of Latino cutlture.

An accomplished voice actor, Laura starred as the voice of Fievel in the Spanish-language version of An American Tail, and in several other motion pictures such as Casper and Jurassic Park.

Laura was born and raised in Bell Gardens, CA, and went on to receive a BA in Comparative Literature from U.C. Berkeley (where she met Darrin).

Read more about Laura at her website.

 Darrin, son of Karen Kleinman and Emmett Bell, is a nationally-syndicated cartoonist. His comic strips Candorville and Rudy Park appear in newspapers across the US and Canada.

Darrin was born in Los Angeles, CA, and grew up there and in the San Fernando Valley. He attended public schools in the LA area before going on to receive a BA in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley (where he met Laura).

Read more about Darrin at his website.
How They Met
Laura and Darrin met at a Primus concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California in the fall of 1995. Darrin was on the security staff for Cal Performances and Laura was a volunteer usher. In a school with an enrollment of about 30,000 you would think that the odds of these two being in a class together were slim, and you would be correct. Darrin and Laura were only in a class together at UC Berkeley one day in their entire undergraduate career. It was Political Science 3: Empirical Analysis, and Darrin made sure to find another class when he realized it was filled with numbers, equations and statistics.

That still doesn’t answer why these two decided to get married, does it?

How They Became Friends
The story continues. As part of the Cal Performance security team, Darrin clocked most of his time at the Zellerbach stage door. Laura became a House Manager and had to sign out her keys from the stage door security at the beginning of her shifts. Darrin was always amused to see Laura run in the door sporting the biggest smile she could so that Darrin would drop anything he was doing at that time and get her keys right away so that she could get to work on time.

During work hours Darrin and Laura would occasionally find time to talk about the boss, school, family, Darrin’s cartooning, and politics. Eventually, Laura joined the security team and they overlapped during shift changes. One of those overlaps lasted Darrin’s entire 8-hour shift. Laura sat at the stage door computer and, when Darrin had a chance, he’d help her navigate his website to bring her up to speed on all the Lemont Brown comic strip story lines. The friendship grew.

The First Date
After several meals at restaurants and movie rentals, Laura asked Darrin out on a date to a movie theater. Darrin chose the movie: Lethal Weapon IV. Who knows why the two continued to associate with each other after this. Laura isn’t much into action movies and she talks at movie theaters, while Darrin appreciates the art of well crafted action scenes and had already watched Lethal Weapon I-III. Laura has learned a few new movie theater ground rules since then: Arrive to the theater early, sit in the center of the fourth row, and don’t talk, sleep or laugh out loud AT the movie. Needless to say, Darrin doesn’t visit movie theaters as often as he used to.

The Anniversary
Yes, they know the day they became a couple: August 11, 1998.

The Engagement Party
The Saturday after Thanksgiving of 2001. The quote of the night came from Laura’s father, Alvaro: “Let me see the ring. It’s too small.” Who knows how long he’d been waiting to use that line, just because.

The Wedding
This wedding is dedicated to the memory of Alvaro Bustamante.