Ali Riley will never forget her wedding day. And the reason has nothing to do with her vows.
Five days before Riley’s wedding in Ventura County, her parents evacuated their childhood home in the Pacific Palisades. Even though she should have double-checked the details with the caterer and florist, she was still monitoring the progress of the monster flames that had moved from the horizon into her former neighborhood half an afternoon later.
Three hours after John Reilly and Bev Rowe left the home they had lived in for more than 40 years, it was gone. The same was true of other houses on Kagawa Street. What was once a neat row of spacious houses is now a place where only memories remain.
“By the time of the wedding, we knew,” Lowe said of the home’s fate.
But much of what the fire took away physically, the wedding brought back emotionally and spiritually.
“When the sad news was coming out, the neighbors were like, ‘Well, at least we’re going to have a wedding,'” Ali Riley added. “I asked my mom if she was going to be too sad, and she said, ‘Oh, that’s necessary.’ There were a lot of people who lost everything because of borrowed clothes and shoes that didn’t fit.”
“Everyone was energized,” John Reilly added. “There were a lot of people there who lost their homes. [But] Everyone was very happy. That was very helpful. It really happened. ”
Ali Riley is one of the world’s most decorated female soccer players, appearing in five World Cups and captaining her father’s native New Zealand national team a record 50 times. She also plays in the NWSL for Angel City, so after all, she has long been resilient.
Still, just thinking about her wedding to former Swedish soccer player Lukas Nilsson in less than a week brings tears of both joy and sadness to her eyes.
“We sent out a save-the-date around May, so we’ve been planning for a while,” she said. “And so many people showed up. It felt like a little oasis in the middle of hell.
“Yes, everything was perfect.”
The night before the fire, Canoga Park resident Ali Riley drove over the hill to have dinner with her parents, then spent part of the night on the roof of her house overlooking the ocean. About 12 hours later, an evacuation order lighted up on my parents’ cell phones.
“We’ve actually done this before and the training is experienced,” Lowe said.
But other times it was just training. The flames never really got close and the couple was able to return quickly. Lowe and her husband expected much the same thing when they packed up this time. The fire was several blocks away and the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. Their streets are covered in concrete and asphalt, with no towering trees or dry brush.
“We went to visit our friends in Manhattan Beach, and by that time you’d see the clouds rolling in,” John Reilly said. “I think Ali and Bev realized right away that it was gone. They felt hopeful for a few days.”
Previously, the evacuations were short-lived, but this time they will never end. A friend who sneaked back into the neighborhood a few days after the fire shared a video showing the Riley family’s former home painted black. But there was no time to wander around.
“I think we were more worried about everyone else. [the wedding] I was going to continue. We were able to focus on something other than ourselves,” Lowe said.
“There’s no point in looking back. The house is gone. What’s unfortunate is the contents. But we were able to remove a lot of very valuable things.”
When asked how she was able to maintain such clarity during such a dark time, Lowe said her wedding helped.
“And we have good insurance,” John Reilly added.
Still, the reception scheduled at the Palisades had to be canceled, new accommodation had to be found for guests from New Zealand who were planning to stay there, and 111 things already scheduled had to be changed. It didn’t happen. Still, the wedding went off without a hitch, even though some guests wore blue jeans and bedroom slippers instead of suits and dress shoes.
The bride and groom then returned to Ali Riley’s apartment in Canoga Park, where they nervously watched the smoke from the Palisades Fire, which had reached the top of the Santa Monica Mountains and began threatening the San Fernando Valley.
“We feel very lucky,” said Ali Riley, who was forced to evacuate the team hotel due to a fire during the last Women’s World Cup in New Zealand. “We want to be able to have a purpose, to help the community, to have a positive impact, to connect with the community, to be able to give love. Logistically it’s been quite challenging, it’s been a little challenging, but it’s all… It’s really, really great that it worked out.”
“Our wedding was litigated by fire and we survived,” she added. “So I think our marriage will last a long time.”
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