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Photographed by Daviel Taveras/Vlok Studio

That initial meeting segued into dating and two years later, Bonfiglio proposed. “It was the most sincere moment of my life,” explains Gonzalez-Bunster. “We went to Paris for the weekend and stayed at our favorite hotel, Le Bristol. The morning after we arrived, we woke up late, had breakfast in bed, and Stefano began playing our song. He asked me if I’d noticed the rose in the bathroom. I told him that I had because it was absolutely perfect—in full bloom and standing on its own. He told me to look again. I didn’t understand what he was getting at, so I went back into the bathroom, looked at the rose closely and realized there was a ring in the center of the petals. I almost fell to the ground in complete surprise and disbelief.”

When it came time to plan the wedding, the couple quickly decided on Casa Pacifica, Carolina’s family’s home at Casa de Campo resort, in La Romana, Dominican Republic. “My parents met and got married in the Dominican Republic,” she says. “I have grown up going there, we have family there and a house on the water, so I knew I wanted to get married at home and get ready in my own room.” Because the Dominican Republic was a destination for most of their guests, they organized four days of activities and events around the April 12th wedding, so family and friends could make a vacation out of it. They hosted beach days, a jungle-themed dinner on Thursday, and a white party on Friday night.

The decision-making process wasn’t as easy, however, when it came to the wedding dress. “After weeks of searching for a dress and trying on almost everything under the sun, I was completely discouraged by the predictability and monotony out there,” explains Gonzalez-Bunster. “When a friend asked me who was going to make my dress, I told her I had no idea and hadn’t liked anything I’d seen. She then asked me who my favorite designers were, and I immediately said Mary Katrantzou, whose clothes I absolutely adore. My friend knew her, put us in touch, and on a whim, I asked Mary if she would consider making my wedding dress. To my total surprise, the queen of print agreed to create a print-less wedding dress for the first time ever.” Gonzalez-Bunster and Katrantzou worked on the dress together in her studio for months and the designer actually ended up attending the wedding.

The Catholic ceremony took place in front of the ocean at sunset. Bonfiglio has four boys from a prior marriage, and they were his “best men.” There were eighteen flower girls and pageboys, and the bride’s sister served as the maid of honor. After the ceremony, guests migrated to dinner—where three long tables accommodated 125 people. After dinner, the couple had their first dance to Eros Ramazzotti’s “Più Bella Cosa”—ultimately, the female guests kicked off their heels to change into flip-flops and the dancing and festivities continued late into the night.

See Vogue Social Editor Chloe Malle’s engagement party in Brooklyn.

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Photographed by Heather Kincaid

“Randomly, all my friends were talking about how they knew I was going to get married soon,” she says. “I told them they were dreaming. When I came home later that afternoon, Asher relayed that my friend Samantha had texted him telling him to pop the question soon so she could prove me wrong. Little did she know he already had a ring. He then looked at me and said, ‘I was going to wait until your birthday—but why wait?,’ opened a drawer, and pulled out a box—I just about died!”

Molly had worked on lots of photo shoots at the Paramour Mansion in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles over the years and always felt very connected to the space, so once they set a date of June 7, 2014, picking the venue was somewhat easy. “I knew that, when the day came for me to get married, it would only feel right to do it there,” she says.

Molly grew up with Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen. “They are very close friends of mine and have been for the last 15 years,” Molly explains. “The minute I got engaged, they said they would love to design my wedding dress. I was thrilled—their taste is impeccable, and I really trust them. Their team was so incredible and patient with me. They were always so calming and made the process incredibly enjoyable. I will never forget what they did for me.”

On the big day, the couple’s friend Jenna Caine sang Joni Mitchell’s song “Case of You” as Molly walked down the aisle, and Cantor Nate Lam led Molly and Asher through an outdoor reformed Jewish ceremony under a chuppah of flowers created by florist Richard Long. “I cried all the way down the aisle because I was so overwhelmed with all the love around me,” says Fishkin. “It was so personal. We wrote our own vows and both cried while exchanging them. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

After the ceremony, 130 guests sat down at long wooden tables for an alfresco family-style dinner of slow-cooked salmon, flank steak, veggies, and broccolini with white beans. “I wanted the reception to feel easy and casual with a chic European edge, and my wedding planner, Sharlene Griffith, really stayed true to that vision. Whoa Nelly did an amazing job with the food, and the wine from Hess vineyards superseded my expectations,” explains Fishkin. “I didn’t want any part of the evening to be uptight. The goal was for people to feel like they could kick off their shoes and run through the grass if they wanted to.”

During the meal, Molly’s godmother, Stevie Nicks, gave a toast and then a surprise performance of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” After dinner, guests moved inside for cake and dancing to music spun by DJ Kelly Cole. “We danced our legs off for a few hours, and then we all decided to change into comfortable clothes to close down the party,” says Fishkin. “Secretly, I was ready to go back to my hotel and have a cheeseburger!” After the wedding weekend wrapped up, the bride and groom took off for the Rosewood Mayakoba in the Mexican Riviera. “It was perfect—beautiful and quiet,” says Fishkin. “We just loafed around and ate good food!”

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“Growing up, I wasn’t sure if I was the marrying kind, but the more I fell in love with Colin, the more I wanted to make the commitment feel more real and permanent,” says Ry. “He began showing me rings online to get a sense of what I liked, and it became clear that I would need to be involved in the decision since I was going to wear it on my finger for the rest of my life.” One Sunday, Ry suggested that they go look at rings at Doyle & Doyle, a vintage jewelry store in the West Village that her friend had recommended, and they bought one that same day.

“Even though we purchased the ring together, Colin wanted to surprise me with the proposal. My film, Nobody Walks, was playing at the Stockholm Film Festival, and we went there together for it,” says Ry. “On our last day there, we didn’t have any plans, so we went for a walk to an island in the middle of the city, an out-of-the way place that overlooked the harbor beneath an old castle. I couldn’t understand why he was dragging me to this remote location in the cold, but then he pulled out the ring and proposed on the promenade. It was first thing in the morning, so we had all day to enjoy it.”

The couple looked at venues in Kentucky, near Colin’s family, and on Long Island for their June wedding, but nothing felt quite right, and they all came with limitations and restrictions. They ultimately decided on Colin’s distillery in Brooklyn. “It felt personal and reflects the fact that Colin is a Southern man in the Big Apple,” says Ry. “And, I’m from New York City, so having a wedding in my hometown seemed more fitting than anything.” For the ceremony, Ry and Colin wanted a place that had gravitas and history. They ultimately chose Plymouth Church, which was built in the 1840s and close to where Ry went to high school. “Colin’s father is a retired Presbyterian minister, and I’m Jewish. My parents are lesbians and didn’t want there to be religious overtones or even undertones, but we still wanted something traditional and somewhat formal,” explains Ry. “The church allowed us to put up a chuppah, which afforded us both the chance to have our own traditions. The language in the marriage ceremony is timeless and so well written we didn’t want to change anything so we kept the basic ceremony and changed a few minor aspects of the language to avoid religion and sexism. We added readings from Our Town and Dylan Thomas and the best part was having the assembled guests sing ’You Are My Sunshine,’ while my friend Clara played the banjo, which might sound ridiculous, but it was really sweet.”

Colin had been working with Tinsel & Twine at the distillery, so they did the reception flowers and décor. “We were lucky in some ways because neither of our families seemed to have any expectations and they had very few demands about how our reception should be,” says Colin. “As a result, Ry and I really created the day from scratch based upon our own creative tastes.”

Deciding on a dress wasn’t as easy however. “I found it by process of elimination,” says Ry. “Initially, I thought I wanted something vintage, but I never found anything that didn’t need major tailoring. Overall, I knew what I didn’t want: I’ve always felt uncomfortable and silly in strapless, so that was out, and I didn’t want something with a ton of details. I wanted it to be sleek and minimal, yet romantic. The gown by Vera Wang that Alice helped me find looked perfect—not over the top and very classic. For dancing, I changed into an amazing Rag & Bone dress that had a little layer of a tulle-like fabric under the skirt, so it was especially well-suited for spinning.”

“Colin and I both think wedding dancing can sometimes feel formulaic, so we spent time researching different styles of formal group dancing, mostly contra dancing (a formal line dance with roots in English and French folk traditions) and square dancing, which is more of an American interpretation,” says Colin. They ultimately decided on square dancing and had an old-time band, the Remedies, play the music. Their first dance was choreographed and was complete with do-si-dos and an allemands. Then they danced the Horah. “It was a funny mix of our backgrounds and traditions that felt like ours alone,” says Ry.

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Photographed by Elizabeth Ray

For their May 30 wedding, the couple decided on González Byass, a well-known sherry bodega in Jerez, Spain, that has been in Schwartz’s family for 175 years, as the venue. “Gordon and I are obsessed with Jerez. We wanted to share it with everyone we love, embrace my Spanish family, and stash the memory of our wedding there so that we can return to it forever,” explains Schwartz.

Choosing a dress wasn’t as straightforward. Schwartz struggled to find something minimal, effortless, comfortable, yet glamorous and particular to the occasion. “I finally stopped into Saks in L.A. one afternoon en route to dinner, tried this Alaïa dress on, and that was that—box ticked,” says Schwartz. “I liked that it looked and felt like a wetsuit.”

The ceremony was held in a round building on the González Byass property known as La Concha, which was designed by Gustave Eiffel. Bubbles were provided on the seats and gently blown by guests throughout the night as a sign of support. The bride made her entrance to “Lit From Underneath”—a song by Andrew Bird, performed in classical Flamenco style. Hull’s father led the ceremony and introduced the concept of “Marriage Godparents”—close friends of the bride and the groom’s who will serve as mentors of marriage to them.

After the ceremony, guests moved to La Constancia, one of the oldest bodegas on the property, for the reception. The floors are dirt, the arabesque windows are covered in woven straw curtains, and wooden barrels of sherry line the walls. “We left it pretty much raw, with tables along one end and a dance party area along the other,” says Schwartz. “We served oxtail for dinner, and for dessert we had a trio of ice cream flavors from the oldest ice cream shop in Jerez, called Soler. Gordon and my father—and subsequently all of our visiting friends and family—have an acute addiction to Soler. It’s become a family obsession.”

“After dinner, drinks flowed, glasses were smashed, and clothes were literally ripped off. There was dancing, laughter, and wild carrying on until the break of dawn, when some people had to actually scale a wall to break out of González Byass—we stayed so long they locked us in!”
​

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Photographed by Greg Mionske

Four weeks later, they took a trip to Miami as a last hurrah before Kris was set to return to Paris yet again. They flew separately, and when Laura landed, she got a call from Kris saying his plane had an emergency landing, and he was stuck in Charlotte. “I was devastated,” says Laura. “Right after I got the news, my driver pulled into a gas station, and told me we had a flat tire. I should have suspected something was up when he disappeared. Next thing I knew, Kris was in the seat next to me, and before I could process what was happening, he was down on one knee. There, in the car, at a random gas station in Miami, he proposed. And then, we went straight into celebrating. We met both of our parents for dinner at the restaurant, Casa Tua. Kris planned the most magical night for the six of us.”

The couple got married at Laura’s family’s summer home in Newport Beach. The house was originally designed by Walt Disney’s personal architect, and her parents bought it in 2012 with a plan to restore it. “I owe so much of my personal aesthetic to my mom, Caroline Vassar, and I knew there was no better person to entrust with my most important day,” says Laura. “Our house was the ideal backdrop for a family wedding on the water—it felt very personal walking out from my parents’ home and out into our yard, overlooking the Newport Bay.”

Laura always knew she would design her own wedding dress. “I kept the dress a complete secret from Kris! One night, I was draping in our studio below our apartment until 2:00 a.m.—he had no idea what was going on down there! I then took my design to my favorite dressmaker in the city, Geri Gerard. After numerous late-night fittings, I ended up with my dream wedding dress. I chose a classic French Chantilly lace and organdy as my base, and the inner bustier was constructed to achieve the perfect fit. I wanted it to be shorter in the front, and longer in the back to make it more casual for our backyard setting. The scallops on the hem were applied by hand. I designed my veil with fine silk tulle and a delicate lace scallop to make the look more modern. My favorite detail on the dress was the hand-stitched tag with my initials in blue. . . this was my ‘something blue.’”

The ceremony was a complete surprise to the 180 guests, who attended as the invitation they received was for an engagement party. Everyone arrived at 5:00 p.m. and gathered on the dock for cocktails. At 6:00 p.m., the wedding party lined up on the side of the house in preparation for the ceremony. Bob Dylan’s “Main Title Theme (Billy)” played as the bride and her father walked down the aisle lined with foxgloves. The couple was married by Laura’s uncle, Jon Wright, at the front of the home under a simple laurel garland. “He is a true cowboy and wore his cowboy hat and wranglers,” jokes Laura.

For the reception, small white lights were strung from high in the trees, creating a tent-like atmosphere above oval tables on the lawn. The tables were covered with a natural linen overlay and set with personal antique service pieces and white hem-stitch napkins. Copper containers held the floral arrangements of garden roses, peonies, Queen Anne’s lace, and scabiosa put together lovingly by family friend, Dana Anderson. “We served a classic surf-and-turf dinner, and during dessert, we announced that I was expecting a baby boy, due in December,” says Laura. “Everyone was thrilled by the news and danced the night away on the dance floor, which looked like it was floating on the high tide of the bay.”

The post Laura Vassar and Kris Brock’s Wedding in Newport Beach appeared first on Vogue.

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Photo: Aria Isadora

Let us first consider the setting. Fabiola wanted the celebrations to be a “memorable, magical sort of vacation” for her intimate posse of beloved friends and family—something “flowery and cultural with both sun and sea.” Fabiola’s native Venezuela was, of course, too politically incendiary to be a possibility. Instead, she and Jason decided on Dubrovnik, rightly dubbed the “pearl of the Adriatic”—a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979 and a place they already loved exploring together. Dubrovnik is a stage-set medieval fortified city (familiar to Game of Thrones aficionados as King’s Landing, fictional capital of the Seven Kingdoms in the show’s second season) with gleaming marble paving slabs linking pale stone churches and palaces that reveal its trading history with Venice; its impregnable walls and fortress towers, meanwhile, bear witness to its belligerent past. For Fabiola, the city was “a lovely representation of what we want our union to be—it has history and longevity, it’s cared-for and loved, and it’s been through wars and come out the other end!”

Working closely with Mayor Andro Vlahušić, a friend of the couple’s, Fabiola chose a variety of venues that showcased the city. On Friday, this meant the sixteenth-century Sponza Palace for the morning ceremony itself, its arcaded courtyard framing a celestial view above; the equally storied Rector’s Palace for the lunch; and the enchanting nineteenth-century Marin Držić Theatre for the “Baroque fantasy” dinner and after-party. The picturesque island of Lokrum—a nature reserve with flocks of peacocks beautifying its monastery grounds—served as the setting for a picnic lunch and swimming party on the following day, while the imposing Fort Lovrijenac was a dramatic backdrop for that evening’s black-tie gala.

Fabiola’s initial injunction to Tisci, who created her wedding ensemble, was challenging; she asked for something “beautiful, modest, sober, and yet ornate all at the same time.” The resulting dress required, by Fabiola’s account, some nine fittings and 1,600 hours of impeccable workmanship in the Givenchy haute couture ateliers. A body of point d’esprit net with integral gloves (trimmed with cutout lace flowers that Tisci painstakingly placed himself to create the elegant rococo scrolls) was anchored with a corselet embellished with lace flowers specially treated to suggest three-dimensional porcelain roses. “Riccardo really understands the history of fashion and dress,” says Fabiola, “and you need to know the rules before you can break them.” The fragile cathedral-length silk tulle veil was secured by a subtle halo of pearls—a tiara made by Garrard in 1905. “When you work from love and respect,” says Riccardo, “it always comes out the best.”

Fabiola worked with the Belgian flower genius Thierry Boutemy (who had decorated the Kimye festivities just three weeks earlier in Florence) on floral fantasies that would lighten the austere drama of the stone-built city. For the ceremony at the Sponza Palace, he had garlanded the chuppah and filled the arches of the open courtyard with dripping foliage and off-white peonies, jasmine, and tuberose. In the heat of a glorious Croatian midday sun, the scent was as heady as they had planned.

Fans fluttered, and in the middle of the service guests instinctively waved away what seemed to be a particularly loud and persistent hornet but turned out, upon further inspection, to be a fluttering drone: Apparently the local newspapers, clearly bedazzled by the elaborate arrangements, had headlined stories that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were renewing their vows with a flotilla of movie-land celebrities in attendance. Sometimes there are no words. Croatian dancers escorted the happily wedded couple to the nearby Rector’s Palace, where bay trees were hung with gourds. Happy Menocal’s delightful menu cards, meanwhile, incorporated a bee motif (in homage to the couple’s family names, both of which start with B), while the food itself was focused on Croatian specialties.

At the enchanting little chocolate-box theater later that day, a dance floor had been built over the orchestra pit, and intimate tables were set in many of the boxes. Fabiola matched the decor to her playful 1987 ball gown from Christian Lacroix’s last collection for Patou—she had a “coup de coeur” when she discovered it at Lily et Cie in Los Angeles—with Boutemy concocting organic, scrolling candle stands covered in pink and red blooms to match the gown’s hand-painted motifs.

After the dinner she changed into Gianni Versace’s 1991 pouf minidress in a vibrant stained glass–color print—all the better to dance to Snoop Dogg, the soiree’s surprise performer. (The couple have worked with Snoop on his sports league for underprivileged children, and with Wyclef Jean—Saturday’s surprise entertainer—on his Haiti charity.)

As guests climbed the fortress’s endless steps on the following night, they were distracted by crinolined dancers swaying on towering poles. Inside, seventeenth-century Dutch paintings inspired silver and gold serving dishes, some of which once dressed the set of Visconti’s The Leopard. Flame throwers and a laser light show ignited the darkness, and after a performance by Jean, Mark Ronson spun discs until dawn broke over the citadel. Detail-oriented to the end, Fabiola had even had bee-patterned espadrilles made for the happy revelers’ weary journey home.

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Photographed by Lucy Brown Armstrong

The 9:00 p.m. ceremony unfolded beneath a giant stone pine tree on the grounds of a family friend’s villa. Aby Rosen and Samantha Boardman’s children, Baker and Vivian, walked down the aisle ahead of the bride, taking their duties as ring-bearer and flower girl seriously. “I’m a professional,” eight-year-old Baker assured the bride, who wore custom Emilio Pucci.

“I don’t consider myself to be an extremely traditional person,” Brawn says, “but the one thing I really wanted was this traditional wedding-dress silhouette, with sleeves and a train. [Emilio Pucci creative director] Peter Dundas managed to be totally timeless and romantic but also kind of sexy, which is, I think, what he does best.” A long veil dotted with lace flowers, pearl-and-diamond drop earrings from her mother-in-law, Brooke Garber Neidich’s, jewelry company Sidney Garber, and Gianvito Rossi sandals finished Brawn’s first look (she later changed into a short, shimmering Emilio Pucci dress and Converse high-tops).

The couple’s 400 guests, each of them dressed in la dolce vita attire, sat underneath hundreds of string lights at two long dinner tables before fireworks got the crowd on its feet to be led by a local band to the dance floor, where the newlyweds swayed to James Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves.” Around 2:30 a.m., merrymakers were led to a second site, where event planner Bronson van Wyck and his team helped coordinate a spectacle replete with fire twirlers, contortionists, and a mermaid. As the sun came up, the truly tireless received sunglasses and sweatshirts. “I jumped in the pool around 8:00 a.m.,” Brawn remembers. “At that point I sort of said, ‘OK, now I’m freezing.’ ”

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Photo: Andrew Zuckerman

It was very much a family affair. “There was no event planner—just my mom and me,” Clemente says. “You realize later on that an extra person could have been helpful!” Her mother, Alba, designed the table settings, with paper boats, starfish, coral-reef candles, and locally made ceramic fish—seaside-inspired decor that also played off the brightly colored flowers on Clemente’s Alberta Ferretti dress. “I stuck to the tradition of not having Tyler see my dress ahead of time,” she recalls. “But when we went to look for a suit together, he picked this emerald green Prada number and a vintage floral tie. I couldn’t give it away at the time, but it was so in sync with my dress. I thought it was such a visual symbol of us.”

One hundred guests gathered as members of the wedding party (including Clemente and Thompson’s infant daughter, Alice Rose, who was carried by her godfather) walked down the aisle to the accompaniment of local mandolin players performing “Ceremony,” by New Order—though the bride confesses that “I was very emotional, so I have no memory of the music. Luckily, someone recorded it on their phone.” Later, the couple’s first dance played out to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” and while Clemente was happy enough just to celebrate her growing family, she also rejoiced at finally bringing her friends to Amalfi. “Everyone wants to come back next summer to visit us,” she says, “which was, of course, our plan all along.”

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Photographed by Daphne Youree

Hello! I want to introduce the two of you since you’re both avid skiers, travelers, and NYC faves of mine. I thought you might enjoy a night on the town together because I always have the BEST time with each of you individually. Anyway, have drinks, chat, whatever . . . Marion xxx

As it turns out, Sophie was at the Sundance Film Festival when her friend wrote the email, and Eric left for Sundance the day she got back, so it wasn’t until a week later when they were able to meet for their first date at Bar Jamón on Irving Place. (They now go to Sundance together every year.) The couple dated for a little over a year and a half before Eric proposed in October of 2013.

“Eric came over to visit me in Paris after I’d just finished a long trip shooting fashion month for Teen Vogue in New York, London, Milan, and Paris,” says Sophie. “We spent several days in Bourgogne, France, biking through the vineyards. And, on our final night there, we went to a nice dinner at Le Bénaton in Beaune where Eric surprised me and proposed over dessert. Without hesitation, I said yes! Apparently, before we went on the trip, Eric asked my dad [photographer Arthur Elgort] for his blessing and if he thought I would say yes. My dad said that he did and kept the secret from everyone including my mom until we called them to share the news.”

Sophie always knew she would get married at her parents’ house in Southampton. “My parents’ ceremony was on the deck about 30 years ago and growing up we spent summers and weekends out there,” she says. “My family still does that as often as possible.”

The bride tried to keep every element of the day, down to what she wore, very personal. “My wedding dress was designed by my friend, Hanako Maeda, the designer of ADEAM,” says Sophie. “Hanako has become a close friend over the past few years through working together and family ties. I love her aesthetic and wear ADEAM all the time, so I knew I would feel comfortable. I wanted an A-line floor length dress in a shade of white. I didn’t want strapless, but I wanted a cathedral-length veil, so I made a Pinterest board with inspirational images.” Hanako came up with the idea of hand-embroidering the dress with two thousand silk organza flowers in eight different sizes. They were embroidered on Italian hexagon tulle to give it a light, ethereal feel. “It was an incredible experience to see the making of a dress from scratch,” says Sophie. “Hanako and her team were so patient with me, and the result was absolutely stunning.” The bride’s jewelry was her “something borrowed”—she wore her aunt Kristin’s Mikimoto double-strand pearl necklace and the earrings that her husband gave her on their wedding day.

Sophie wanted her hair and makeup to be simple and classic and was inspired by photos of Grace Kelly. “My close family friend, makeup artist Fulvia Farolfi, came with her assistant and did my makeup as well as my mom’s and bridesmaids’,” says Sophie. “My friend, hairstylist Matt Fugate, who I work with often, pulled my hair back in a bun. I knew I wanted my hair up, but other than that, I gave almost no direction to either Fulvia or Matt since I trust them completely.”

When it came to attire for the bridal party, Sophie didn’t want the bridesmaids and the groomsmen to match exactly. “I chose the bridesmaids’ looks from designer and friend Timo Weiland’s ready-to-wear collections. I set aside the ones I thought would go well with the setting and then each bridesmaid picked the one she liked best. Down the aisle, half wore floral crowns and the other half carried bouquets,” explains Sophie. “The groom wore a custom blue suit from Billy Reid with a cream-colored silk bow tie. Our friend, stylist John Tan (who is also Ansel’s stylist), helped us with all of the men’s outfits including my dad’s Jil Sander suit. My mom wore a raspberry floor-length dress by Azzedine Alaïa, an old friend of my dad.”

Early on in the planning process, Sophie and Eric realized the deck couldn’t hold all their guests at one time, so they decided to have the ceremony at St. Andrew’s Dune Church. It was built in 1851 as a life-saving station and then later converted to a church. “It’s just down the street from our house. And, my mom says it looks like the church where I was baptized in Norway—my  mom’s side of the family is Norwegian,” adds Sophie. After the ceremony, all of the guests were invited back to the house for cocktails, dinner, and dancing. “My parents always casually entertain friends for dinner with a home-cooked meal, a nice tablecloth, candlelight, local flowers, and jazz music. We wanted to keep that aesthetic, even though there were more guests than usual, and make people feel like they were coming to a dinner party at our home,” explains Sophie. “My mom has always said to us that her job when hosting these parties is to create an environment where people feel comfortable and can enjoy themselves—it’s the people that make these parties special.”

They opened their home completely, and the reception went from cocktails on the deck overlooking Shinnecock Bay to dinner in a tent connected to the house to an after-party in the living room. After guests sat down at their tables to eat, Sophie’s dad gave a welcome toast to kick off the meal. The tables were covered with the family’s tablecloths from Hildreth’s, the historic department store in Southampton, and were decorated with an assortment of local flowers arranged by Claire Bean in different vessels borrowed from close family friends. The menu for each guest doubled as a place card, and were hand-painted by Shannon Kirsten, an artist Sophie found on Etsy. A locally sourced three-course meal starting with a Satur Farms mesclun salad, followed by sea bass, and then filet mignon was served. During dinner, family and friends gave speeches—many of which were musical in nature. “My mom wowed us with her version of Fiddler on the Roof’s ‘Sunrise, Sunset,’ and had the whole room singing the chorus which she reworded ‘Sophie, Eric, Elgort, Von Stroh,'” says Sophie. “My brother Ansel concluded dinner by singing ‘Make Someone Happy.’ After Eric and I did our first dance to Frank Sinatra’s ‘It Had to be You’ and my father and I danced to [Louis Armstrong’s] ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street,’ the band, Groove Society, sped up the pace and everyone danced for hours.” Midway through, they cut the cakes—a naked cake made by Sag Harbor Baking Company, a small gluten-free chocolate cake from Ms. Michelle’s, and seven kransekake (traditional Norwegian wreath cakes) that Sophie’s mom organized and that were the hit of the night. Artisanal and local cheese plates as well as Tate’s cookies were set out late night for guests to snack on.

After the band stopped, DJ Louie XIV started playing in the living room. “There was a full-on dance party in the house until the early morning and outside on the patio others hung out around the fire pit,” says Sophie. “We finally snuck out just before 3:00 a.m. and it was still going strong.”

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When an engagement is as spectacular as that of Nell Diamond to her longtime boyfriend Teddy Wasserman—picture lamp-lit Piazza San Marco in the thralls of Carnevale—it’s only expected that the nuptials be at least as dazzling. But leave it to Diamond, a real-life Rossetti heroine dressed in Dior, to outdo Venice in the springtime. Her October wedding in Cap d’Antibes was an Instagram sensation (#nellandteddy), but for those of us in attendance it was more like an extravagant summer camp, with the inclusion of fireworks. “Truly the happiest place I can remember being,” is how Prabal Gurung describes it.

Consider first the setting: the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, that enclave of both civility and luxury which for more than a century has welcomed royalty (of both the legitimate and Hollywood varieties), Chanel resort shows, and, now, a sizable band of former Princeton lacrosse players. The Tuesday before the wedding weekend, a storm engulfed the Cap d’Antibes with hail that actually cut off the power supply to the hotel, so it seemed like a miracle when on Wednesday morning there were clear skies and calm seas in time for arrivals from London (where Diamond was raised), New York (where she and Wasserman live now), and Paris (from where her dress was shipped in a container truck, but more on that later).

Fait Accompli, the same team employed to plan the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s royal union in 2011, organized activities for guests that indulged an array of interests: wine tasting on the nearby Île Sainte-Marguerite, a tennis tournament on the court’s immaculate clay courts, and pétanque games refereed by local champions. Others chose to utilize the du Cap’s iconic diving board, ropes course, and swimming pool, depicted in so many Slim Aarons pictures. Strolls through the hotel’s enchanted English gardens were punctuated with the discovery of a stocked and attended bar in the middle of the woods.

Evenings were even better. An informal welcome dinner at the Eden-Roc Grill saw the bride-to-be serenaded by The Gypsy Queens while wearing Rosie Assoulin. Friday night’s rehearsal dinner was followed by a party DJ’d by tag team Chelsea Leyland and Mia Moretti (Diamond wore Dolce & Gabbana before dancing in a Valentino frock).

Now to the dress. It’s no easy trick for a gown to match the backdrop of the Côte d’Azur, but Olivier Theyskens was more than up to that task. “Nellie invited me for tea to ask me to make her dress,” the designer remembers. “And I went straight into making its shape as soon as I was back in Paris in mid-June.” The first dress Theyskens made since departing Theory earlier this year, it was produced at his private studio in Paris over the course of three fittings and is labeled with his own name. Victorian silhouettes loosely inspired the more-than-ten-foot train, which at the tail is about twelve feet wide. Underneath the Clerici Tessuto silk taffeta satin (“In a particular shade of chalky ivory that I love,” Theyskens adds) are several layers of jupons stiffened by endless rows of crinol ribbons, all of which were assembled with the corset in one single piece. All along the surface were examples of extraordinary embroidery made from hand-cut silk threads and sequins devised by Parisian couture atelier Montex; Theysken’s designs were inspired by imperial palms and nautical shapes. The result is so delicate that the embroidery is hardly done justice by any photographs. (No surprise that the dress occupied its own hotel room that weekend.)

And when at the last minute the zipper of the dress corset failed, Theyskens’s couture background came in handy as he himself sewed Diamond into her dress for the walk down the hotel’s broad gravel boulevard at dusk.

Never without a sense of humor, Diamond forewent maids of honor so that best friends Kyle Hotchkiss Carone and Danny Shea could serve as honor attendants and chose to process to Handel’s “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba,” performed by a string quartet. Friend of the family Prabal Gurung designed dresses for the bridesmaids and Diamond’s mother, in addition to the swishing Grecian column which the bride wore throughout her reception. Gurung was a fitting choice, given that Diamond has been collecting his designs since he launched his line in 2009.

The evening’s apogee was inarguably the father of the bride’s pitch perfect toast to Nell and Teddy. Not two seconds after he proclaimed his love for them both ensued a fireworks show that could rival any other for both length and epic accompaniment (Avicii, meet the Carmina Burana). Post-dinner dancing then continued at various points across the property until the early morning hours.

Reflecting on the weekend, Claire Distenfeld put it best: “While everything at Nell’s wedding was very real—the love, the friendships, and the warmth—there was a hint of fairy dust in every swim, bite, gulp, shimmy, and hug.” For those of us guests who might be married one day in the future, our own weddings might very well be the second happiest days of our lives.

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Photo: Fred Marigaux

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Photo: Rebecca Walker & Angi Welsch for Ira Lippke Studios

In other ways, the nuptials were as traditional as could be. Inadvertently, theirs included something old (Seth’s grandfather’s pen, used to sign the marriage license), something new (a Saint Laurent bow tie that Altuzarra purchased that very morning after misplacing his own), something borrowed (Seth’s father’s studs and cuff links), and something blue (Seth’s midnight Tom Ford tuxedo). Even without a bride to speak of, there was still a critical dress moment. “We got ready at Joseph’s parents’ house in Tribeca,” Traina Snow remembers (Altuzarra says that his mother—and board chairman—served “chicken salad, so nobody fainted during the ceremony later”), “and Mélanie, Joseph, and I squirreled away into the bathroom so he could zip us up. Coming out together, it felt like the big dress reveal, and it felt like family.”

Perhaps the most classic component of the wedding, however, was its spectacular Manhattan setting: the newly reopened Rainbow Room, atop Rockefeller Center. “It felt both romantic and festive, very Frank Sinatra, very New York,” Altuzarra says, emphasizing that it’s the city where he and Weissman met nine years ago. “And we wanted to find a place that wasn’t too feminine.” As for the famed spinning dance floor, Altuzarra confirms that “there was plenty of revolving.”

But were there any Rainbow Room puns? Altuzarra’s brother, Charles, was the first to point out how aptly named the location was. A physicist who works on quantum photonics, Charles noted that rainbows are made by the deflection of sunlight through rain. “Alone, light is white and rain is just water,” Altuzarra explains. “But together they create a myriad of colors.” That’s a metaphor that knows no gender.

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Menswear designers and 2014 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalists Samantha Florence Orley and Matthew Orley met as kids while attending summer camp at Camp Tamakwa in Algonquin Park, Ontario (which is also where Matthew’s maternal grandparents met in 1949), and started dating years later in 2004 when both happened to go back to work there as staff members.

Eight and a half years later, the couple got engaged. “The proposal was really simple and sweet,” says Samantha. “We had a work event that night and got home late. Matt had actually picked a fight with me earlier that evening, and I kind of stormed into the apartment and was surprised to find he had filled the place with flowers earlier in the day. He got down on both knees, and I was completely shocked. The next morning we flew to the Dominican Republic where my grandparents live to spend the weekend with them. They are in their 90s (and just celebrated their 66th anniversary!), and it was really special to be able to share that moment with them.”

Samantha and Matt always knew they wanted to get married outdoors. “We’ve been together for a long time, so our family and friends are really intertwined,” explains Samantha. “As a result, we loved the idea of a destination wedding where everyone could spend time together for an entire weekend. Aspen has become such a special place to us, and it was important to us that the wedding embrace as much of the natural beauty of the surrounding area as possible.”

As for the dress: “I was looking for something that felt true to my style, and so I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to wear–the hardest part was finding it! I ended up working with New York designer Elizabeth Fillmore to create something completely custom.” Meanwhile, Matthew opted for a suit of his own design with the bride’s name embroidered on the cuff of his left sleeve.

On the big day, the bride and groom were determined to have the ceremony outdoors despite the touch-and-go weather. “We weren’t sure if we were going to get through it and stay dry, but as soon as there was a break in the skies, we started the music and just went for it,” says Samantha. “As we walked down the aisle, there were whistles and cheers from the rowdy crowd.”

The couple’s grandparents, parents, and siblings proceeded down the aisle to the original versions of Nina Simone’s “To Love Somebody” and Otis Redding’s “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” while Samantha walked to Aretha Franklin’s “You’re All I Need to Get By,” a personal favorite of hers.

The couple stood under a simple chuppah of Aspen trees together with their parents and had their siblings at their sides. “Although it was a little cold and a little rainy—the ceremony was punctuated by the popping sounds of umbrellas opening and closing—our guests stayed in great spirits,” says Samantha. “It ended up being beautiful with the incredible view of the gray clouds against the mountains.”

After the ceremony, they kicked off the reception with their first dance (Sam Cooke’s “It’s All Right / For Sentimental Reasons”) and the dancing didn’t stop after that. Guests enjoyed a family-style dinner that was served while Matt’s brothers, Alex Orley and Jason Orley, gave their speeches. After dinner, the band, Fifty Amp Fuse, a Detroit-based cover band, really brought the house down. “We’re fairly certain that every one of our guests was on stage at the mic at some point in the evening,” says Samantha. “At one point, I was carried across the dance floor standing atop of a drinks platter and that has come to sum up the entire night.

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Journalist Gemma Soames and commodities trader Andrew Ferguson met four years ago at a mutual friend’s wedding outside of Aix-en-Provence. They were seated next to each other during dinner and hit it off immediately. At the time, Gemma was living in London, and Andrew was in Hong Kong though—so two weeks later, they met in the middle, and each flew to Dubai for their first date. “He asked me to keep the weekend free and just sent a ticket,” says Gemma. “It was really quite romantic.” From then on, the couple took turns visiting each other, meeting up in Thailand and Vietnam—and then six months later, Gemma flew to Hong Kong for good, and the two have been there ever since.

After dating for a little more than a year, the jet-setters boarded a plane to Sydney to celebrate Christmas 2012, and Andrew proposed after lunch at one of his favorite restaurants, Catalina in Rose Bay, on Christmas Day. Post-proposal, they went to stay with friends on the West Coast of Australia to properly toast their engagement in wine country. Once they returned from the trip, they found out Gemma was pregnant with a baby boy and decided to delay their wedding date until 2014.

While the wedding date was a bit of a moving target, the location was always set. “There was only one place we were ever going to get married,” says Gemma. “And that was at my family home in the deepest darkest Norfolk. There is a tiny Norman church there that my great-grandparents restored with a gate that leads directly into our garden. And even though the church normally only houses a congregation of around ten people and ours was going to be around 270, we were always determined to make it work.”

The ceremony was very traditional. “It was a family affair,” says Gemma. “But we had to remove all the pews to fit everyone in, hanging most of the flowers from the ceiling to save room. Our sisters gave readings, and our son was right there too, stealing the show.”

Given the tiny church, Gemma knew her dress needed to be light, but still wanted a romantic look that was sure to make an impact. “Alice Temperley is a good friend, and when she offered to make my dress, I was thrilled,” says Gemma. “I always knew the silhouette I wanted, and Alice created a beautiful off-the-shoulder design in a soft Chantilly lace for six months, with me flying back to London from Hong Kong for fittings.”

Guests walked across the lawn from the church to the reception at Gemma’s parents’ house following the ceremony. “We had canapés, drinks, and speeches there before moving to another tent for dinner and dancing,” explains Gemma of the evening’s timeline. The Soul Jets—the house band from the Dover Street Arts Club—performed, and then they were followed by a DJ. “The next day, we had family and the guests who had flown in from all over the world back for lunch,” says Gemma.

After the wedding weekend, the newlyweds took off for the Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily for a honeymoon sans baby, staying first on Salina and then at the Hotel Raya in Panarea.

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Photo: Holly Falconer

Stuart Vevers, the executive creative director of Coach, and Benjamin Seidler, a designer and illustrator who’s worked with brands like Prada, Smythson, and Acne Studios, to name a few, met in 2008. Benjamin had just graduated with an architecture degree from Cambridge University and was hired by Suzy Menkes to assist her and create illustrations at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. During his first month on the job, there was a big party for Suzy at the Palais Galliera, celebrating her 20-year tenure at the paper, that fell within the whirlwind of Paris Fashion Week. Benjamin worked the door that night and was invited to join the celebration afterward. Stuart had just been named the creative director of Loewe and made an appearance at the party. The two struck up a conversation and set up a date at Benjamin’s local café in the Marais, where they stayed drinking red wine until 1:00 a.m.

While Stuart worked in Madrid for Loewe, Benjamin pursued jobs in France, Italy, and England—so the couple was forced to date long-distance. After six years of shuttling across Europe to see each other, they both started at new posts in New York and moved in together. They got engaged just two months later.

“It was more of a discussion than a proposal,” explains Benjamin. “Stuart took me out for my birthday, and during the meal, I said that I wanted to get married before I turned 30, but that I’d be willing to just go down to City Hall. Stuart agreed to tying the knot within those two years, but also suggested a larger New Year’s Eve celebration.”

The two ultimately got married on December 5 at City Hall in New York with two witnesses. “The intimacy of that ceremony contrasted beautifully with the reception we ultimately threw for 80 friends at the Arts and Crafts house we’ve spent years restoring,” says Benjamin. “It’s called Daweswood and it’s nestled in a forest in the Lake District near the English-Scottish border. We really wanted to show it to all our friends as it had previously been more of a private hideaway.”

The reception’s floral scheme was Christmas-y and festive, with berries and ivy strewn across tables. English Christmas crackers were added to every place setting to give guests an icebreaker when they sat down. Green was a key color, but the couple was specific. They even went so far as to give the baker a Pantone swatch for the green wedding cake frosting. The script on all of the menus and place cards, as well as the floral arrangements, was inspired by Arts and Crafts and Pre–Raphaelite artwork. Thirzie Hull and Samina Raza of Jeeves and Jemima helped them source local flowers and resources as much as possible, including serving all local food.

“We thought our wedding was the best opportunity to have suits custom-made, so we did, and we had our names and the date embroidered into the interior pocket,” says Benjamin. For the wedding bands, they chose 2mm gold bands (yellow for Stuart, rose for Benjamin) from Tiffany & Co. “We got engaged in New York, so we wanted our rings to come from the quintessential New York jeweler,” says Benjamin. They also wore Coach shoes and belts that Stuart designed. Their navy ties were Prada, where Benjamin had his first proper design job, and the boutonnieres were sprigs of holly with red berries. “Benjamin also wore a gold watch given to him by his father and his family signet ring, but mostly it was kept clean, classic, and minimal,” says Stuart. “Lots of our girlfriends went all out and wore white and red, and daring cuts, but that was fine since there was no bride to upstage.”

The reception started at the house at 7:00 p.m., and guests were driven there in chauffeured Land Rovers from the various hotels and bed and breakfasts they were staying at in nearby villages. Tables were set up in the dining room and the sitting room with a lot of hors d’oeuvres, made to look like a banqueting feast, and mulled wine was served in enamel mugs. Fireplaces were lit in every room, and people mingled around the house and explored.

At 8:30 p.m., guests walked through a rainy forest with a lantern-lit path straight out of a Victorian fairy tale, to the three interconnected teepees—one with a bar and an open fire in the middle featuring hay bales strewn with Persian rugs and elk skins for lounging; another one with dining tables surrounding a second open fire pit; and the third for dancing. Cumberland sausages and mash in enamel dishes were served for dinner with plenty of red wine gravy to go around. Dessert was sticky toffee pudding (which is said to have been invented at a hotel on the Ullswater, the lake next to their house) with Lakeland cream.

After dinner, Neil Amin-Smith from the band Clean Bandit helmed the turntables, and everyone piled onto the dance floor. At midnight, the music stopped momentarily for a New Year’s Eve countdown. And then, warm bacon rolls were served, and the couple cut their wedding cake. “Guests were driven back to their hotels at 3:00 a.m., but a few diehards made their way back to the house and fell asleep in various places,” says Benjamin. “We found three girls in the bathtub—together! So festivities continued long into the night, and we had a few surprise house guests for breakfast the next morning, which was mostly leftover meat pies and mince pies and lots of wedding cake with tea.”

The post Coach Creative Director Stuart Vevers and Designer Benjamin Seidler’s Winter Wedding in Cumbria, U.K. appeared first on Vogue.

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Photo: Isaias Miciu and Sergio Sandona

Sofía Sanchez Barrenechea and Alexandre de Betak ring in the New Year with the wedding of the season.

It was hard enough for the Metropolitan Museum and Vogue to get men into white tie and tails for last year’s Costume Institute gala, arguably fashion’s biggest night of the year. Imagine, then, the eyebrow arching that ensued when the same dress code was requested for Sofía Sanchez Barrenechea and Alexandre de Betak’s December wedding, which took place at noon, on a deserted beach, in far-flung Patagonia. Then again, during the entirety of the three-day affair, sandwiched between Christmas and New Year’s, white and black tie were the easiest dictates of a quartet of dress codes that included Gaucho and Tango Smart.

“We struggled for eight months with people complaining,” explained the art director from her honeymoon in Fernando de Noronha, Brazil. “But Alex was very insistent on white tie. It was a very beautiful kind of absurd that he wanted, sort of the most opposite thing from what would be expected—like Darth Vader.” The Star Wars villain played an unexpected role of wedding mascot—Alex, a master events producer, is a longtime robot collector and space lover—as greeters wearing Darth Vader helmets handed out Maison Michel flower crowns to guests arriving via ferryboat to the dockless beach, and Argentine alpargatas printed with Darth Vader’s silhouette on the vamp were provided for those unwilling to ruin their white-tie footwear walking across the volcanic beach.

For the groom, whose Bureau Betak typically organizes events not in the wilds of Argentina but in the jungles of New York and Paris Fashion Weeks, the setting of the wedding was about highlighting the juxtaposition between unfettered nature and the high civility of floor-length frocks and white tie and tails (in his case, custom Berluti). The arrival of the bride, meanwhile, who emerged on the bow of the wooden speedboat like a living figurehead, veil whipping in the wind, was mirage-like for even the most jaded fashion folk in attendance. Her Valentino couture dress, which required 1,800 hours’ worth of bas-relief pearl and crystal embroidery, forsook the traditional bridal white for pale chalcedony tulle that blended seamlessly into the soft gray of the beach and the murky green of the Machete River beyond.

Preceded by a fleet of flower girls and boys—the girls in crisp silk organdy by Delphine Manivet, the boys in tiny, white traditional gaucho jackets and pants—Sofía approached the driftwood altar via a path in the sand leading from river’s edge to a close of towering coihue trees, under which sat the near 300 guests (including 41 children and one King Charles spaniel). “It was an amazing replacement for a cathedral,” she marveled.

“I never imagined myself getting married in a city,” explained Sofía, who grew up in Buenos Aires but spent vacations visiting family in Patagonia’s lake district. And so the bride and groom, who have homes in New York and Paris, selected a series of venues that represented Sofía’s own history in the region and revealed the most pristine and epic vistas of untouched nature, from the foothills of the Andes to desolate lakeside beaches.

On the first day this meant a gaucho-themed picnic. Between navigating volcanic ash and barely passable dirt roads, the event was not for the faint of heart—or footwear. Creative gaucho solutions included Anja Rubik’s embroidered poncho from her native Poland, and fellow model Constance Jablonski’s fringed and bead-embellished suede Pucci rodeo pants borrowed from a shoot a week earlier.

Argentine chef Francis Mallmann and his staff of 240 somehow managed to prepare feasts for three days in the middle of fields or forests without so much as the benefit of a kitchen. On day one this meant curanto-style fish and vegetables—a technique in which the food is buried underground to cook on fire-heated stones for six hours. For the wedding lunch the next day, sixteen whole lambs were cooked on weeping willow–branch crosses. Day two, back on the windswept shores of the Machete River, featured a post-ceremony luncheon served under the cover of a cluster of evergreens at the mouth of the forest, with each wooden table tented individually. “We were at the fish market in Venice a year ago, and Alex took photographs of the long tented tables and used those as inspiration,” the bride explained.

For that evening’s cumbia dance party, which took place in an erstwhile working barn in the lakeside town of Villa La Angostura, Rodarte’s Kate Mulleavy and Laura Mulleavy designed two dresses for the bride to revel in. “There’s definitely the princessy part of me and the dreamy, fairy part of me, and right away they got the dreamy part,” said Sofía of working with the sisters on the floor-skimming silk, tulle, and lace dress with diaphanous winglike sleeves and silver-and-cream embroidered flowers. Around 2:00 a.m., as Argentina’s most famous cumbia band, Ráfaga, took the stage, the bride changed into a short feather-embroidered white lace–and–iridescent sequin frock—a kind of disco version of her earlier dress.

The bride and groom returned to their house with the band and 30 or so friends and family at 8:30 a.m. to continue the festivities, which made that morning’s tango brunch slightly more challenging. However, despite a severe lack of sleep and a cumbia-induced sprained ankle, the bride looked perfectly the part in a slinky Anthony Vaccarello halter-neck dress and a large silk red rose in her chignon. The newlyweds’ months of tango lessons paid off, and together they moved forward in a perfectly synchronized embrace. ¡Adelante!

The post Sofía Sanchez Barrenechea and Alexandre de Betak’s Patagonia Wedding appeared first on Vogue.

Victoria Tang and Christopher Owen were married this past December in Beijing. The couple met through their mutual friend, Ivan Pun, but it wasn’t until he hosted a group of friends to his home country of Burma over New Year’s Eve five years ago that the couple hit it off. “We ended up sharing a midnight kiss that night on a beautiful beach in Ngapali, Burma,” remembers Tang.

After dating for three years in London, Tang, a photographer, graphic designer, and artistic consultant, moved back to Hong Kong to eventually serve as creative director for Tang Tang Tang Tang, a lifestyle brand she started with her father, Sir David Tang, the famed entrepreneur and founder of luxury label Shanghai Tang. Owen, a lawyer, moved shortly thereafter and booked a surprise trip to Kyoto for Tang’s birthday in early December.

“I spent a few years during high school living in Japan and have very fond memories of the country,” Tang says. “Christopher had written in advance to arrange for us to visit the temple and gardens at Saiho-ji, which is a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

The setting was stunning and Owen popped the question in a boathouse overlooking the lake. “I said yes and started crying before his knee hit the ground!” Tang recalls.

The bride and groom decided to get married in Beijing, the same city where Tang’s parents married more than 30 years ago and where Tang’s father transformed a sixteenth-century courtyard palace into the member’s only club and boutique hotel, the China Club. For a cocktail reception party the night before the wedding, Tang wore an ostrich-feathered gown made by Budi Adji, her first friend at Central Saint Martins and now a couture designer based in Hong Kong.

“I feel a strong connection to my Chinese heritage,” says Tang, whose parents are both from Hong Kong, “so it was important for us to have a wedding which reflected both our Chinese and Western backgrounds.” On the morning of the wedding, Owen and his groomsmen went to the China Club to jie xin liang, or perform a ritual that requires the groom and his groomsmen undergo various tasks to demonstrate the groom is worthy of taking the bride away from her bridesmaids and family.

Later in the day, 170 friends and family gathered in black tie at St. Michael’s Church, a beautiful, gothic church in central Beijing. The bride wore a custom Giambattista Valli dress. “It was such a great experience to travel to Paris and have a fitting with the designer and his team,” Tang says. “They were all incredible.” Her husband wore a bespoke wedding suit made by their good friend Kim Jones, the menswear director at Louis Vuitton.

Back at the China Club, guests witnessed the newlyweds take part in the traditional Chinese tea ceremony, during which the couple pays respects to their families and elders. Tang worked with designer Huishan Zhang to design her Gua, the traditional red Chinese wedding outfit, heavily embroidered only in silver and gold thread. “It is very rare that the Gua is custom-made. It is usually done with a dragon and phoenix design, but that did not appeal to me, so we worked together to create this unique piece.”

After the tea ceremony, friends toasted the couple at a champagne reception in the red lantern-lit courtyard. During the traditional Chinese banquet dinner, featuring a whole roast suckling pig, Sichuan beef, and other Chinese dishes, the father of the bride, groom, and best man toasted the couple. Tang changed into yet another Giambattista Valli gown, and the pair hit the dance floor to “All My Loving,” played by the Beijing Beatles.

“Drinks and dancing went on until 4:00 a.m.,” said Tang. “The bar was well-stocked and the kitchens brought out snacks of noodles and soup to keep the guests warm and well-fueled.” Though the fun didn’t end there. “Guests carried on the party at the New World Beijing Hotel until silly o’clock Sunday morning!”

The post Victoria Tang and Christopher Owen’s Wedding at the China Club in Beijing appeared first on Vogue.

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Photo: Jake Rosenberg

Lila McKean Warburton grew up going to St. Barth’s during the winter holidays. “Both my maternal and paternal grandparents started going down in the sixties,” she explains. “My first trip there was at three months old—in a straw bassinet, as my mom likes to say!—so it’s only fitting that I met my future husband there.”

Daniele Benatoff was on the island celebrating New Year’s Eve 2013 with a group of friends from London when a mutual friend introduced him to Lila. “Sparks flew immediately,” she says. “We spent the rest of the night chatting intensely in the corner. The next ten days were a mix of paddle boarding, tennis games, and furiously zipping through family meals to meet up with Daniele and his friends. I would have been classified as ‘overly eager’ to say we fell in love in ten days, but as I said in my vows, I was genuinely hopeful that it would be more than a short-lived vacation romance. That said, I boarded my flight back to New York City, as Daniele departed for London the next day, convinced there wasn’t any chance I would see him again.”

Daniele didn’t make it back to London, though. He had a connection in New York, and as fate would have it, the weather forced him to miss his flight to Heathrow. “He pretended to get on the plane and switched his phone off, but instead he came to my apartment and casually buzzed the intercom to tell me that he was downstairs,” Lila remembers. “It was the best surprise of my life!”

Over the next year, the couple dated long distance. “It was a love affair between us and British Airways,” Lila jokes. “I lost track of the number of times I took the red-eye to London on a Friday night after work, only to return home on Sunday evening. It was the most exciting, spontaneous, and adventurous year of our lives. I fell in love with London and began looking for jobs in private equity over there.” She finally made the move in March 2014. “It was important to me that I relocate on my own accord, and that my move be justified by an exciting professional opportunity,” she says.

That following July, Daniele surprised Lila with a trip to Greece. “My friends were convinced that he was going to propose, but I was sure there was no chance,” says Lila. “On our second night there, he told me that he wanted us to attend a hotel-sponsored drinks reception at the beach club. I should have suspected something was up when he asked me a handful of times if I was sure I wanted to wear ‘that outfit—you know, your skirt has a stain on it.’ I responded coolly, ‘No, I’m saving my good dress for tomorrow. Tonight is just a silly hotel cocktail party.’ Despite his urging that I change, off we went down to the beach. We arrived at the club at sunset, and I was of course expecting to see other hotel guests. But Daniele had rented out the entire beach, had it lit with tiki torches, and printed out photos of us and scattered them over the bar. It was only after he got down on one knee that I realized I probably should have worn the good outfit! We had an incredible traditional Greek dinner cooked for us at a candlelit table under the stars, with no one else in sight—except for the wonderful waiter-turned-photographer.”

The decision to get married in St. Barth’s was an easy one. “It means so much to me and my family, and it is such a special place for me and Daniele,” says Lila. The couple wanted the wedding to feel very intimate, with just their families and a close-knit group of their best friends in attendance. “We wanted it to seem as if we were all just on one big vacation together,” says Lila.

In order to achieve that relaxed family atmosphere, it was important to Lila and Daniele that everyone stay in the same place, so they essentially took over Flamands Beach, with guests staying in villas and hotels right there. “It was fun to run into friends strolling the beach the next morning, rehashing adventures from the night before,” Lila remembers.

With many guests flying in from London, Milan, and even as far away as Bombay, the couple decided to make an extended celebration of it. On Wednesday they had a barefoot dinner in the sand at Eden Rock Hotel. On Thursday most of the guests met at Bonito, overlooking Gustavia Harbour, for lychee martinis and Venezuelan fare. And then, on Friday morning, Lila’s parents hosted an informal breakfast at their villa before the group set off for a hike to Colombier Beach.
On her wedding day, the bride opted for minimal hair and makeup and wore a dress by Oscar de la Renta with a clean, linear silhouette and intricate beading and lacework. “It was one of the first ones I tried on, and I just knew it was the one,” says Lila. “I was looking for a dress that was timeless, fit for a wedding on a Caribbean island, but also evocative of the quintessential, effortless elegance of a bygone era.”

Lila walked down the aisle, escorted by her father, to an instrumental version of Andrea Bocelli’s “Con Te Partirò.” After Lila and Daniele exchanged vows they’d written themselves, Daniele broke the glass and the couple kissed before exiting to “This Must Be the Place” by the Talking Heads. Then guests moved to Hotel Taïwana for cocktails and dinner. After toasts, DJ Nick Cohen got everyone on their feet, before the group relocated to the beach for cake and more late-night dancing.

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“It was a no-brainer,” Vogue Communications and Marketing Manager Elizabeth Fisch said of the American Museum of Natural History, the venue she and groom Michael Dishi chose for their wedding ceremony and reception. “It is grand enough for a black-tie event, but still really fun, and since we were having our wedding in Manhattan, we wanted to go the extra step to make it memorable.” The Upper West Side institution is particularly meaningful for the bride, whose parents live just across the street. “Growing up, I went to the museum often with my sisters. Michael and I absolutely love it there.”

The high school sweethearts met on holiday for Passover in Miami and began dating immediately upon their return to New York. After seven years spent together, the couple was engaged nine months prior to the big day. The proposal came at the culmination of a whirlwind, surprise getaway weekend at the Paws Up ranch in Montana, orchestrated entirely by Michael.

The traditional Jewish ceremony was held in a room that was fully transformed into an enchanted forest for the occasion. Taking cues from the museum’s famed panoramas, the wedding followed a naturalistic theme. Ivory wisteria and hanging green Amaranthus suspended from the chuppah created an intimate canopy for the couple to stand beneath. Above the seated guests, wispy vines crept across a trellised ceiling of greenery that included hanging Spanish moss, white Dendrobium orchids, and lemon leaf garlands.

The bride walked down the aisle to a Hebrew rendition of “Con Te Partirò” in a custom Valentino dress. “After poring over several images of bridal gowns searching for inspiration without success, I thought back to the last time I wore a dress I truly loved, and it was Valentino.” The result was an ivory long-sleeved, high-collared gown with exquisite beadwork evoking a trompe l’oeil lace effect that only revealed itself as impressive handiwork up close. “I wanted to offset the high neck and covered arms with an open back,” said Elizabeth. “Plus, I was happy it made the dress that much lighter!”

In the Hall of Ocean Life beneath the iconic blue whale, succulent-filled terrariums and urns of peonies and anemones were placed alongside silver candelabras, the long-stemmed ivory candles aglow in the mirrored tabletops set for 550 guests. A nod to the early days of museum collecting, bell jars held additional foliage and curiosities to marvel at. For an added treat, the centerpieces offered up ripe kumquats, blackberries, and champagne grapes, which guests happily nibbled on in anticipation of the unfrosted five-tiered wedding cake, adorned with clusters of grapes and berries dusted with confectioner’s sugar. Dancing commenced before the first course was set and continued long into the night, only pausing for speeches delivered by the bride’s sisters, Abigail and Margaret (both in ethereal gowns of midnight blue and lavender), the father of the bride, Mark Fisch, and the best man, Rani Dishi.

Throughout the evening, guests were allowed the opportunity to roam amongst the herds of elk and families of gorillas on display. A quick scroll through the night’s hashtag #OffischallyDishi reveals the playful Instagram trickery the wedding-goers partook in, posting photos of themselves in their black-tie best while fully immersed in the wildlife of the Sahara. Perhaps a preview of the honeymoon to come, the newlyweds will celebrate their nuptials with a real-life African safari.

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Vogue Style Editor at Large Elisabeth TNT takes a Roman holiday for the sumptuous wedding of Sabine Ghanem and Joseph Getty.

When in Rome . . . . If ever there were a familiar expression to describe letting loose, that would be it. No surprise, then, that my friends jewelry designer Sabine Ghanem and financier Joseph Getty chose the city for their wedding extravaganza. Well, there was also the fact that Joseph’s mother, Domitilla, was raised in Italy—and is sufficiently Italian that she even has a pope stuck somewhere in her family tree (N.B.: the ultimate chic Roman reference). At their disposal for the party was the beautiful Castello Odescalchi in Palo Laziale on the seaside just outside the city. The approach to the fairy-tale castle was along an encircling stone wall where you could see, smell, and breathe in the ocean. Up a few stairs you passed into the wedding Spiegeltent—a 1920s Dutch concept, only much bigger and the ultrachic circus-meets-cabaret. Yes, I have been to a party or two (in June alone I made it to three consecutive weddings), but #joebine, as it became known on Instagram, was a trip to multiple fantastical kingdoms.

Schiaparelli Haute Couture and Maison Lesage were busy right up to the big day making both Sabine’s wedding gown and her party dress. She wanted something dramatic—what bride doesn’t?—and told me that the seamstresses were fighting over working on the pair. At the service—held, sweetly, in the very same Romanesque basilica where Joseph’s parents had wed 33 years earlier—Sabine walked down the aisle past an ocean of pastel-colored flowers, wearing a figure-hugging, long-sleeved duchesse-silk dress embroidered with giant gold suns and complete with an endless hooded cape. It, too, had a sprawling gold sun made out of 500,000 hand-embroidered sequins glistening in the light. The cape came with its own seamstress, tailor, and car.

After luncheon at the stunning Circolo della Caccia, one of Rome’s oldest members’ clubs, it was on to the party. The bride wore her other Schiaparelli creation: beaded and ostrich-feathered and inspired by Cher’s legendary Bob Mackie look worn to the Met ball in 1974. “The ultimate party dress,” Sabine told me.

All spectacular—but even the night before, we had been taken on a wild trip, with a Liaisons Dangereuses costume party at Palazzo Taverna. The room’s gold stucco and elaborate tapestries were the perfect backdrop to powdered faces, enormous wigs, tight corsets, and exaggerated skirts. For my own costume, I had dived into my wardrobe and luckily found an old Meadham Kirchhoff corset and a puffy Simone Rocha skirt. I was quite proud of my Gothic-modern spin on the theme! Sabine was a vision in her custom pale-pink extravaganza, with extended hips, duchesse silk, and a beautiful corset covered in bows, lace, and bead trimmings. Oh, and her coiffure was so high, it made you wonder how many beehives were hiding underneath.

A touching moment came when the groom’s father, Mark Getty, gave his speech. Over and over again he emphasized his deep affection and love for Sabine. “We didn’t lose a son today; we won a daughter.” Indeed!

In the slideshow above, the bride—my friend Sabine Ghanem—describes her wedding weekend.

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