The Dress That Wouldn’t Hold Still It was the second week of August in a small studio above a fabric district in downtown Los Angeles, and a sample gown was refusing to behave. The problem wasn’t the cut or the fit — it was the fabric itself, a heavy textured linen that buckled under the…
The Last of the Glass Pins: One Artisan, One Canal, One Window of Time Murano has a rhythm that most visitors never quite catch. The vaporetto from Venice deposits them at Fondamenta dei Vetrai, the main canal street, and they fan out into the big showrooms — the ones with English-speaking staff, credit card terminals,…
Elena’s Arms Were Fine. The Dress Was Another Story. The appointment was for 10 a.m. on a Thursday. That was the first problem, though nobody realized it until later. Elena had booked her bridal spray tan at a place called Bronze & Beyond in a strip mall off the 110 freeway in Los Angeles, three…
The Year the Bridesmaids Wore Whatever They Wanted, and One Bride Almost Lost It It started with a Pinterest board and ended with a group text that nobody wanted to respond to. By the time Lauren Choi finally picked a date for her bridesmaids to go dress shopping together, three of the six women lived…
What We Didn’t Know About Eloping in the Midnight Sun The plan was simple enough on paper. Fly into Bodø, catch a small plane to Leknes, then drive north along the E10 through the Lofoten群岛 until the road stopped. Somewhere between Reine and Å, there would be a spot to stand and say vows while…
The Afternoon the Silk Stopped Cooperating The fitting room at Bridal Atelier on West 28th Street had the particular kind of fluorescent light that makes everyone look slightly unwell. It was early May, two days before a Saturday wedding, and the bride—let’s call her the client, since that’s how the shop referred to her—stood on…
She wore a cropped veil with a jumpsuit. I needed to understand how. The woman ordering coffee next to me at the Brooklyn Roasting Company in FiDi was wearing what I can only describe as a wedding outfit that had clearly finished its job for the day — and looked better for having done so….
My grandmother’s ragù recipe nearly derailed my wedding week I had this whole plan. It felt like the kind of thing that would make the wedding truly ours — instead of hiring some caterer who’d serve us the same truffle risotto every other couple gets in a Tuscan villa, we’d bring my Nonna’s recipes. The…
The Summer Suit Shake-Up Nobody Saw Coming It started with a groom named Marcus who emailed me last February, six months out from his July wedding in Charleston. He’d sent me the mood board — clean, coastal, a little bit undone. The bridal party in seersucker, he said. Groomsmen in classic navy suits. Silk ties….
I Tried to Negotiate a Sunset Photoshoot on a Working Organic Farm in the Catskills — Here’s What Actually Happened I’ll start by saying I’m not usually the person who tries to negotiate with farmers. I’m the person who pays the listed price for a CSA box and says “thank you” when they hand it…