Beanie Feldstein and Bonnie-Chance Roberts Wore Gucci to Their Summer Camp-Themed Wedding
On a brisk January night in 2018, actress Beanie Feldstein and producer Bonnie-Chance Roberts first met—in person, at least—at Dean Street Townhouse in London. “Actually, we first met on Skype,” Beanie laughs. “Bon had been developing Caitlin Moran’s book How to Build a Girl into a movie for over five years when they finally started the casting process for Caitlin’s fictional proxy, Johanna, a 16-year-old girl from Wolverhampton, England. With a dash of luck and a push from the universe, they ended up being open to meeting a Jewish girl from Los Angeles.”
It turns out the couple’s initial meeting over Skype wasn’t as auspicious as you might expect. “In classic Bon fashion, she hadn’t actually introduced herself, she just launched into it all,” Beanie remembers. “At the end of the call, I wrote in my notes: ‘the producer… Brooke?’”
Not long afterwards, Beanie finally figured out the correct name, and the film’s creative team—including Bonnie—decided to fly Beanie out to London to do a weekend-long audition test. “It was a series of walks through East London, discussions of the character over meals, and of course, scene after scene of auditioning,” Beanie says. “Two weeks later, on Valentine’s Day actually, I found out I had the part.”
The two clicked from the very beginning—first as friends, and then, as the relationship evolved, into love. They spent the summer of 2018 making How to Build a Girl while also taking walks through Hampstead Heath, eating dinners at Osteria Basilico in Notting Hill, and falling for each other. “From the moment we first kissed, we both knew we would get married and months after that, Bon had announced that when the time came, she wanted to be the one to propose to me,” Beanie recalls. “Because of the pandemic, we were not able to see each other in person for 13 months.”
Bonnie was in Liverpool with her family, and Beanie was in Los Angeles—first with her parents, and then filming Ryan Murphy’s Impeachment: American Crime Story. “I had spent the time apart designing Beanie’s engagement ring with the infinitely talented Michelle Oh,” Bonnie says. “The dream was for the ring to look as if a shard of magic was frozen in time and I think she absolutely achieved that!”
Bonnie wanted the proposal to be just as magical as the ring. “After so long apart, I felt like Beanie deserved a perfect moment that would feel out of time or space,” she says. “We’ve always marveled at the fact that we come from two very different places and that, despite the odds, we found each other. It never felt more palpable than during our 13 months spent separated in Liverpool and L.A. And so the proposal was a celebration of the long roads we had taken to find each other and to get to the moment of committing to marriage.”
With a lot of help from their friends, Bonnie decorated the backyard of Beanie’s childhood home with 600 mason jars and fairy lights, along with hundreds of photos on long pieces of string that spanned their childhoods all the way up to their relationship. There were quotes that spoke to their journey as a couple, as well as wooden signs painted to look like the road signs of all of their significant places. Most importantly, every friend that was in L.A. at the time was invited to witness and celebrate the occasion. “After so long apart from each other and from them, it felt like heaven to all be back together,” Bonnie says.
Almost two years later, the wedding was held on the weekend of May 19, 2023, at Cedar Lakes Estate in the Hudson Valley. “It is our happy place together,” Beanie says. “I grew up going to summer camp for ten years, and my parents and both sets of my grandparents met at summer camp, so camp is a lineage of love through the generations of my family. Even though we met in London and fell in love on a film set, to get married at a camp was a truly beautiful emotional homecoming.”
All of the vendors who worked on the wedding were women, including the planners, Amanda (and her right hand Natalie Sanderson) of Amanda Savory Events. Cedar Lakes is also owned and run by two sisters, Stephanie and Lisa. “Our genius designers, Little Sister Creative—well, it’s all in the name—they are sisters too,” the couple says. “It was very special for us as two creative women to work with such esteemed and talented women.”
To kick things off on Friday night, fashion was the focus. Bonnie has always loved the brand Bode, so she ended up wearing a custom tuxedo featuring night sky embroidery with the couple’s wedding crest featured, hanging in a hot air balloon among the stars. On the sleeve, they embroidered Bonnie’s favorite A.A. Milne quote about love and friendship, encapsulating how she feels about her and Beanie’s love: “And together they touched the sky.” Bonnie topped it off with earrings from The 10, a jewelry line founded by Beanie’s sister Dana, as well as a stunning antique diamond and heart and arrow brooch from Briony Raymond.
As a fan (and front-row favorite) of the Rodarte sisters, Beanie decided to go with a rehearsal dinner dress silhouette inspired by the leopard dress that she wore to their New York Fashion Week show in February, but in a floral applique fabric featured in their fall collection. Beanie has always been a headband girl, so she asked Sylvio, the tailor she was working with, if he could use the extra Rodarte fabric to create a custom headband using a Jennifer Behr white headband as the base. For jewels, she wore her mom’s diamond studs, and her platforms were by Christian Louboutin.
Creating the exact aesthetic Beanie and Bonnie wanted for Friday night—and the entire wedding weekend—was the most challenging part of the planning process, they explain, but the couple notes they felt confident in Julie Guinta of Little Sister Creative’s capable hands. “On Friday night, we wanted to take our guests on a true camp experience with bandana tablecloths and s’mores for dessert, with pennant banners and friendship bracelets: a true ‘We’re at summer camp’ feeling,” Beanie says. “Then, we really wanted to surprise guests when they entered the barn for the reception. We wanted it to feel unexpectedly elevated and romantic and like nothing they had seen.”
When Julie suggested personal embroidery on the tablecloths and on choice decorations across the weekend, things really started coming together. The theme of the wedding, they explain, was a “love note” to guests. “We embroidered song lyrics, personal items such as our favorite childhood toys, road signs of significant places, a cake from an anniversary, items found in our apartment, and funny quotes or jokes that only our friends would understand,” Beanie says of the intricate details, brought to life by designer Megan Mussari. Across the tables, there were friendship bracelets with personal sayings and places on them, personalized wooden oars, little row boats, and even birdhouses made to look like the cabins at Cedar Lakes.
