The cost of oil heiress Ivy Love Getty's glitzy San Francisco City Hall wedding last week was readily apparent to former Mayor Willie Brown when he visited the building in the ceremony's aftermath.
"When I walked in there, I thought I was in a Harry Potter castle someplace in the UK," Brown told KCBS Radio's Phil Matier, Holly Quan and Dan Mitchinson on Friday morning. "It was just that dramatic. It had carpet everywhere, wall to wall. It had drapery, it had curtains, it had chairs that had been specially selected and designed to match the carpet in one fashion or another. It was unbelievable."
Brown said he assumed the total cost of Getty, great-granddaughter of Getty Oil founder tycoon J. Paul Getty, tying the knot with photographer Tobias Engel cost millions of dollars, noting that the City Hall ceremony was but one over the cost of four days. The City of San Francisco reportedly took home a small chunk of that.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Thursday, citing public records, that event planner Stanlee Gatti was billed $102,546 for rental fees, security and engineering services.
Renting City Hall and the South and North Light Halls for Friday's rehearsal and Saturday's ceremony cost $53,250, according to the documents the paper obtained. The San Francisco County Sheriff's Office was paid $42,314.
"Full fees were paid for all rentals with no discounts," Samantha Carroll, director of City Hall events, told the Chronicle.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officiated the wedding, while Mayor London Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom attended. The latter, who has repeatedly spoken of the importance in addressing climate change, was in the audience in the midst of a public absence that coincided with him not attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
Newsom said he skipped the event to celebrate Halloween with his family, and his planned trip to Glasgow (Nov. 1-3) wouldn't have overlapped with Getty's wedding. His attendance didn't surprise Brown, considering Newsom's close relationships with the Gettys.
William Newsom, the governor's father, was the administrator of the J. Paul Getty trust and the wealth manager for Gordon Getty. Newsom grew up with William Getty, and the pair started restaurants and wine shops with one another in San Francisco. The Getty family, who amassed most of their fortune in the oil industry and Forbes estimated to be worth $5.4 billion in 2015, has consistently donated to Newsom's political campaigns.
"As a matter of fact, they owned a home together when I first met the two of them when I was running for mayor," Brown recalled Friday. "And the two of them, literally, became my travel companions after campaigning door to door on evenings, and we would do bar-hopping all over San Francisco. I didn't realize that they owned many of the establishments. They knew everybody at their age level in those establishments, and they were just close friends."
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