St. Leon Armenian Cathedral

This church is so beautiful. Me and my fiancé decided we are going to get married here. My husband is American and saw a couple of different churches and said i will not want to get married anywhere else, besides here. It is newly built and the bricks are so beautiful. He absolutely thought this church was beautiful and so do I. We couldn’t wait till our ceremony to take place in this beautiful cathedral, its just stunning. His family was blown away with this church. The priests and the ministers were so sweet, friendly and positive that it really added to a magical experience to everything, as well, and made our ceremony into something so sweet, memorable and wonderful, It felt great to get married at st.Leon. I can’t wait till my photos come out in this nice scenery! I’m so happy to be a part of this church, and will be attending at times. We are super excited that we will have some gorgeous photos as well, the inside is as nice as the outside.

Its a fairly new church, my cousin got married in it.
I like the quiet surroundings and ease of parking.
Its a nicely built and decorated church; the ballroom is also very nice for events.

For the last few years, I have passed this beautiful church when driving along I-​5 and decided to do a little research about it. I discovered that it was the Mother Church of the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of North America and was the culmination of a dream that went back to the diocese’s establishment in 1927. The dream was finally made a reality when construction of the cathedral began in 2007 and ended with the cathedral’s consecration in 2010 by the Church’s Pontiff from Armenia. The building of this cathedral centralized the operations of the diocese, which has churches throughout the Western United States and Canada, as well as establishing a spiritual center for the Los Angeles area’s thriving Armenian community.
As you can probably see by now, I’m a bit of a culture nerd, especially when it comes to religious sites. I’ve been to hundreds of churches, temples, and other places of worship, but had never been in an Armenian church yet. Yesterday, on the way home to NorCal after a SoCal weekend trip, I decided to stop by St Leon Cathedral to check it out. The brick building still looks brand new and polished, inside and out. As I arrived, there was still a service going on, so I politely snuck in and stood against the back wall with some other latecomers to observe.
People seemed to be milling around, coming and going as they pleased. The priest stood at the front in an elaborate outfit and head-​dress, giving a lecture in Armenian. (Evidently, he had been talking for awhile because it was almost 12:30 at the time and the services supposedly started at 10:30. When I left, he showed no signs of being finished anytime soon.) I wish I could’ve understand what he was discussing, but nonetheless, it still sounded beautiful… A cloud of fragrant incense hung over the room and added to the sacred feeling of the interior. Small family groups would come in late and find a seat in the back and begin listening like they had been there the whole time. Others would seemingly tire of the long lecture and sneak out at random times. Overall, the requirement of attendance seemed pretty relaxed.
My only complaint was the «welcome committee.» There were two ladies at either side of the entrance, sitting behind booths laden with information about the church and community activities. Despite looking around at both booths for a few minutes, neither of them spoke to me or offered to help me. As such a beautiful cathedral, they should work more on information for visitors. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe they have this at other times or they’re still working on it…
Overall, this is a very beautiful church and I recommend checking it out for its cultural and artistic value.