Our Marketing Manager Marries Santa Barbara Restaurateur

Emily Cosentino took the reins of marketing, promotions, and events at the Santa Barbara Independent in December 2015, not long after she’d met Jerry Lee, the cofounder of Empty Bowl Gourmet Noodle Bar in the Santa Barbara Public Market. They were married in a smaller-than-expected ceremony on August 15, one of many couples moving forward with weddings despite the COVID-19 pandemic. 

How’d you meet?  We met in April 2014 at the soft-opening weekend of the Santa Barbara Public Market, where I was assistant manager. We worked under the same roof for almost a year, and he would often deliver “wrong orders” of steaming hot noodles to my office. His generous noodle bowl deliveries got my attention, but his heart, spunk, and dance moves are what won me over.

What’s a wedding look like now?  Getting married during COVID is both a blessing and a curse. It’s stressful planning a wedding on its own, and even more so when there’s a global pandemic taking place. But it does force you to focus on what really matters, and that is you and the person you love most in the world making a commitment to each other. You very quickly realize that nothing else really matters.

Honeymoon plans?  We will take a honeymoon once the world is a safer place. Our plan is Asia! A stop in Taiwan to see Jerry’s family, then wherever our taste buds lead us — perhaps Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

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