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Tuesday February 11th 2025

American Wedding (aka American Pie 3: The Wedding) | 2003

American Wedding film location: Ritz-Carlton, 1 Miramontes Point Road, Half Moon Bay, California
American Wedding location: The wedding celebration: Ritz-Carlton, 1 Miramontes Point Road, Half Moon Bay, California | Ritz-Carlton

American Wedding has less Long Beach (though Jim still lives at 4153 Cedar Drive) and he’s taught to dance by Stifler in the gym of St Anthony High School, 620 Olive Avenue).

This time, there’s more of Orange, southeast of Los Angeles, where you’ll find the flower shop, ‘East Great Falls Hospital’, which was the lobby of Chapman University, 1 University Drive, downtown Orange. There are walking tours but, Piesters, remember, this is a Christian institution. The university was also seen in Surviving Christmas, with Ben Affleck and Christina Applegate.

American Wedding location: Country Club Drive, Long Beach, Los Angeles
American Wedding location: Jim’s house is still Country Club Drive in Long Beach, Los Angeles

The airport, where Finch and Michelle greet Michelle’s sister, Cadence (January Jones), is Ontario Airport, not in Canada but in California, on I-10 east of Los Angeles. The bar is Clancy's Crab Broiler, 219 North Central Avenue, Glendale (tel: 818.242.2722), a Boston-style seafood house, and with live jazz at weekends.

If you want to relive the full American Wedding experience: ‘Zyskowski Flowers’, where Stifler gets the wedding blooms, is Radio Shack, 101 South Glassell Street on the SE corner of the Circle, Orange (OK, you can’t really get flowers here); the ‘Chicago’ wedding dress shop is Cantu and Castillo, 7415 Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles.

The seaside hotel where the wedding is finally celebrated is the wonderful Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, 1 Miramontes Point Road, Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles south of San Francisco.

Well, almost. Although the exterior wedding site scenes were indeed at the striking sea-front Ritz-Carlton, the actual wedding and the reception took place in the Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science of the Huntington Library and Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, east of Pasadena.

The glass and steel building was still under construction at the time of filming, so it was possible to completely dress the Conservatory as a luxury indoor wedding spot.  The dance floor was constructed over what is now a fish pond with tropical plants.

The house and grounds have been seen in plenty of other movies, including Coming To America, The Wedding Singer, A Cinderella Story, Starsky & Hutch (2004), Indecent Proposal, The Nutty Professor (1996), Memoirs of a Geisha and Serenity.