Not long ago, Angeli Caffe was closed for a private party. The back employee-parking lot had been scrubbed, tented and festooned with magenta paper flowers and amber carnival lights. On the green tile floor in the front room, right near the window, someone had painted the words “The Magic Spot.” That was where, three years ago, Jasmine Roberts, a server at Angeli, first met the restaurant’s pasta cook, Marco Awad. Now they were getting married.

Because the tiny neighborhood restaurant was filled with family and friends, there didn’t seem to be a soul in attendance who wasn’t familiar with the details of their initial encounter: It was 2006 and Jasmine, who’d just been laid off from her researcher job at Law & Order: Criminal Intent, showed up at Angeli to interview for a server position with Evan Kleiman, the restaurant’s owner-chef. Other than Marco, though, the place was empty. Kleiman had forgotten about the appointment. This, Marco considered a stroke of unbelievably good luck.

“I thought Jasmine was really beautiful,” he said. “So I had a good half-hour in which to charm her.”

After seating her at a table in the front room, he called Kleiman and apprised her of the situation. Then, as they waited for the chef to speed over, he began a flirtation built on a stream of light jokes and a bit of nurturing.

“I kept trying to push food on her. ‘Do you want some pasta?’ ‘Do you want some soup?’ And she was, like, ‘No, no, no, no.’ She wanted water and a straw because she was wearing all white and didn’t want to get dirty,” Marco laughed. “But I’ll always have that image of her, just sitting there, waiting.”

If there are threads that run through every relationship, waiting might be one of Jasmine and Marco’s. Her arriving at Angeli the very next day to wait tables. Him waiting for her to go out with him (two weeks of asking while she went out on a string of bad blind dates before they finally went for drinks after work at Birds up on Franklin).

“That’s it. I can’t wait anymore. Let me kiss you,” is how Marco made his first move.

So it only made sense that they had to wait an hour for their wedding to begin. Jasmine, dressed in a long, white-satin wedding gown, stood on the sidewalk out on Melrose Avenue, drinking a glass of white wine as Angeli’s head chef, Kathy Ternay, raced to the scene. She had gotten a flat tire in the Valley, and the couple didn’t want to tie the knot without her.

Angeli is almost 25 years old, and Kleiman has hosted almost every kind of event there — wine tastings, family-style dinners, birthday parties. But never a wedding. Why this one, then?

“They were going to get married at a relative’s house but there were two deaths in the family,” said Kleiman, standing in a side kitchen, arranging plates of delicious antipasti misti — garlicky mushrooms, perfectly marinated baby peppers, braised fennel. “So they asked if they could get married here and I said, ‘Sure.’”

While they waited, the restaurant’s employees, some in work clothes, some dressed up, milled around, trading compliments and mild insults. There’s a tribal quality about Angeli. Few of the staff ever seem to leave and the kitchen is so narrow that they’re all forced to rub up against each other. No wonder Jasmine and Marco are just the latest in a long line of Angeli workers to meet, court and marry. Marco isn’t even the first Awad to find true love here. His older sister, Nadia, met her husband, Tony, at Kleiman’s now-defunct Westside adjunct, Trattoria Angeli. Kleiman shrugged. “We’re a lazy family, I guess,” she said, throwing her head back and laughing. “We meet our mates where we work.”

Wine was poured. Trays of pizza were passed. Ternay arrived and 90 guests cheered loudly. Just before Jasmine walked up an aisle of scattered yellow, red and orange rose petals, she gazed at crisply suited Marco in front of a makeshift altar of eucalyptus sprays. Then, as if her excitement had settled into her feet, she started jumping up and down.

Every wedding, in ways big and small, is a reflection of the couple getting married. In Marco and Jasmine’s case, it wasn’t difficult to figure out they were both loyal Deadheads: Their officiate, Barry Smolin, is host of the KPFK radio show The Music Never Stops, devoted to the Jerry Garcia–led combo, and the band they hired is L.A.’s premiere Grateful Dead tribute group, Cubensis. After exchanging vows, the newlyweds put their heads together and swayed alone to the moving Dead classic “They Love Each Other.”

As for the toasts, they all began with merciless teasing — tales of Marco circling Jasmine almost immediately, of Jasmine “strong-arming” a reluctant Marco into making things official.

“This isn’t fair!” Jasmine protested weakly. “It’s how it is,” replied Angeli manager Jason Marx, who then shared a few more squirm-inducing stories.

Then the Grateful Dead came to the married couple’s rescue: Jason recited lyrics from “Attics of My Life” that remind him of how Marco and Jasmine came together. Suddenly, Marx’s face crumpled. “When I had no wings to fly,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “you flew to me.”

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.