Todd Bridges Has a Wedding! Inside the Beverly Hills Wedding of ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ Star
Todd Bridges married designer Bettijo B. Hirschi in front of 70 friends and family at the Greystone Mansion & Gardens in Beverly Hills, California, PEOPLE confirms
The wedding was followed by a reception at the nearby Italian restaurant Il Cielo, which included a first dance to Etta James’ “At Last.” Hirschi describes the song as “important” to the couple since “we both went through a lot before discovering one other.”
“We had both given up on finding anything this fantastic, and we were really surprised to be able to have it kind of given to us,” she continues. “We consider ourselves really fortunate.”
Bridges, who divorced his first wife Dori in 2012, met his new wife in March through a mutual acquaintance. (Bridges has two children with Dori: Spencir, 24, and Bo, 25, and will now be a stepfather to Hirschi’s four children.)
“We met through a long-time friend of mine named Mandy,” Bridges explains. “I was intended to match her up with someone else, but that didn’t work out. When I first met her, I thought to myself, ‘I’m not going to hook her up with anyone else.’ ‘I want her all to myself.'”
When it came time to propose, Bridges tells PEOPLE that he decided the perfect place to pop the question was by the ocean.
“I’d just all of a sudden decided that I wanted to get married to her and I proposed to her. It was a really nice day, it was really good weather, and she loved going to the beach,” he shares. “So we were on the beach and I decided to propose to her. I got down on one knee and did what I was supposed to do.”
The newlyweds are now returning to the beach for their honeymoon, as they plan to vacation together in Hawaii.