If you had asked any of Jackie Alemany s friends what color wedding dress she was going to wear, under no circumstances would they have said white. “I’m a little bit contrarian by nature,” explains Alemany, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post.
So when Alemany and her soon-to-be husband Jake Levine, a special assistant to President Joe Biden, set out to plan their summer Montauk wedding they had just one thought in mind: “How joyful and whimsical can we make the weekend?” For Alemany, the wedding dress was a key element in achieving that vision. “Making sure I didn’t stray from choosing a colorful dress kind of became a little bit of an anchor for this transportive kaleidoscope of color that we wanted to create,” Alemany explains.
Although, after trying on a few classic white dresses to appease her grandmother, Alemany felt a small pang of temptation for a more traditional bridal look. “I was like, ‘I see how people get so caught up in this and go with something that doesn’t really feel like them,’” Alemany says. Yet she stayed true to her gut and continued the search for her perfect, playful gown. At one point, a friend recalled a blue wedding dress that had caught both of their eyes a few years prior: “It was a totally different dress, but it planted the seed that we were narrowing it down to blue,” Alemany explains.
After multiple fruitless trips to New York bridal stores and experimenting with different shades of dusty blue and pink tulle, Alemany saw the wedding of Alexa Buckley (a friend and former classmate) on Vogue and was reminded of Mark Ingram’s designs. “I had been a fan of Mark Ingram, but I actually hadn’t squeezed him into my NYC trips. I went back to New York and asked if he could do something in blue for me—and he said yes!” Alemany recalls. “It felt serendipitous. They were extremely gung ho about it in a way that my other conversations with designers hadn’t been.”
Alemany and Ingram worked hand in hand to select the correct fabric and perfect shade of blue before flying in samples from their manufacturers in Italy. Throughout the design process, Alemany had a handful of references that she kept front of mind: Fellini’s dreamlike 1956 epic Juliet of the Spirits and the Disney classic Alice in Wonderland. “Once I got the dress, it felt like it fit perfectly,” Alemany recalls. “I felt like a fairytale princess.”
The wedding turned out to be a runaway success: blue dress and all. “The weekend was full of permission slips so people got the idea that this was not going to be a self-serious wedding,” Alemany says. “We wanted people to let loose and enjoy themselves.” The couple set a carefree tone for the wedding weekend early on as the groom’s childhood friend, and rockstar, Geordie Kieffer performed on the first night. “People came in thinking that it was going a normal rehearsal dinner, but it was actually an event open to the whole wedding,” Alemany says, laughing. “And Geordie came out in assless chaps.”
Alemany embodied her fanciful vision from the second she stepped out onto the aisle, barefoot in a sky-blue tiered strapless dress with a small veil embroidered with sequin hydrangeas pinned to the back of her hair. She even threw in a few classic bridal elements with her mother’s diamond earrings and a pair of Khaite sunglasses. (The sunglasses, it turns out, were white.)
As the night progressed, Alemany also swapped out her beloved blue gown for a classic white sequined number. “We did a recreation of Dirty Dancing, so I needed to wear a dress that he could lift me in,” Alemany explains. Her only regret? “I wish I had worn the blue dress for longer… How often do brides say that to you?”
