Inside Ben Platt and Noah Galvin’s “Dress to Dance” Summer Wedding in New York City
Even though fans like to think that actors Ben Platt and Noah Galvin’s meet cute happened when the latter succeeded the former as the lead in the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen—which would make for the ultimate rom-com storyline—in reality, they met over a decade before, in the fall of 2014. Noah was creating a web series with mutual friends and asked Ben to play a guest role. “Our first meeting was shooting with a tiny crew in his mom’s old apartment doing improv together,” Ben remembers. “I was playing his weird roommate who loved cacti and cried over his distant cousin Josh Groban. Noah was medium into it.”
The two started dating in January 2020, and in November 2022, Ben proposed to Noah. “It was a couple of days before Thanksgiving and both our families got to be there after the ask,” Noah remembers. “What I thought was going to be a pre-drag show dinner at Laser Wolf—one of our favorite, usually very bustling restaurants—ended up being a deeply intimate, gorgeous candle-lit dinner, à la ABC’s The Bachelorette. It was a dream come true and came replete with one of my favorite singers singing one of my favorite songs, ‘God Bless the Telephone’ by Labi Siffre, accompanied by my favorite guitarist. And then my favorite culinary mind, Claire Saffitz, showed up, fed me a cake, and I blacked out. When I woke up, I had a gorgeous Grace Lee signet-style engagement ring on my left hand. I proposed back to Ben, with his own Grace Lee ring, a few months later with a failed scavenger hunt.”
Their wedding was held this past Labor Day weekend across Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. The festivities began on Friday night with a Shabbat welcome dinner at the Angel Orensanz Foundation on the Lower East Side. “Since some of Ben’s family are observant Jews, we couldn’t get married until Sunday when Shabbat was over, so to keep the party going we had a bar hang with some games and Lombardi’s pizza on Saturday night at Cellar Dog in the West Village,” Noah explains. “Finally, on Sunday, we had the wedding proper at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Noah was sad that nobody used the IKEA ferry to get there…” For the after-party, they headed a few blocks away to Sunny’s bar to enjoy some Shake Shack and a Marie’s Crisis Café-inspired musical theatre singalong.
To plan it all, the couple worked with event planner Mindy Weiss. “We were in the very capable hands of Mindy, Meg Ryan, and their incredible team,” Noah says. “Along with our moms, over the course of about 18 months, and about 30 Pinterest boards later—Japanese Florals for Friday, Joseph Albers Invitation Inspo, Is it Crazy to Have Calder-esque Mobiles on the Table?—we all worked together to settle on a vision that upheld some of the honored traditions of Ben’s family and celebrated the artistic prowess of mine. Then we wrapped it all up in a colorful—but chic—gay bow. And, dancing was our priority at every turn!”
When it came to their wardrobe, Ben and Noah wanted their wedding looks to celebrate their personal aesthetics and uniqueness. “Upon doing our initial gay wedding research, we discovered that it is, upsettingly, common practice to match on your wedding day,” Ben says. “[In addition to both wanting to look different,] we also did not want to look like cater waiters, so we opted for coordination as opposed to straight-up matching.”
For their dressiest moment on Friday, they chose to wear head-to-toe navy Thom Browne tailoring. Noah chose a cropped suit jacket and pants, while Ben chose to lean a little bridal and opted for a kilt with a matching blazer. On Saturday, while the grooms told their guests that the event would be as “casual as can be,” Noah wore full Issey Miyake. “He showed everyone up,” Ben jokes. Meanwhile, Ben wore a vintage button-down and capris, which were thrift store finds from American Rag Cie in Los Angeles.
The wedding ceremony took place on Sunday, and after an extended cocktail hour in the garden of Pioneer Works, everyone was invited inside to gather around the chuppah. “We wanted everyone standing and crowded around informally, like a big hug,” Ben says. The chuppah was made of marigold fabric, and the dance floor the couple stood upon—and then later danced upon—was a giant rendering of an abstract painting created by Noah’s father, Austin Galvin, who passed last year. Ben’s parents and Noah’s mom escorted them through the crowd of friends and family, while their combined siblings sang a beautiful rendition of the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody.”
Ben’s longtime Rabbi, David Wolpe, officiated the ceremony. In the Jewish tradition, there are seven blessings that signify marriage, and the couple was honored by different friends and family with the Hebrew blessings, as well as English interpretations of each. The ceremony ended with a surprise for the couple: Their moms sang a beautiful duet of a classic Jewish wedding song. “And then, we both stepped on glasses,” Noah says. “And they broke, thank god!”
“We were overwhelmed with love, sweaty, and sobbing most of the time,” Ben admits. “We took our coats off halfway through—we were emotionally overheated.”
For their wedding day looks, the couple followed the guidance of their friend and stylist, Jared Ellner, and he served as their north star throughout the process. Jared has dressed both Ben and Noah for events and the Met Gala, and he has always worked as the liaison between the two actors and the designer they’ve worn. “When it came to the wedding, we wanted to give Jared full rein,” Ben says. Based on silhouettes chosen by the grooms, Jared designed the looks from the ground up. Noah went for a cream set inspired by 1950s French workwear, while Ben opted for a 1970s-inspired cream suit. The looks were tied together by bridal-inspired lace short-sleeved button-downs. Both looks were crafted by the Arel Studio.
For their wedding bands, they once again turned to Grace Lee. “We went back to our girl,” Noah says. “They each have a diamond and each other’s birthstone embedded in a simple gold band with rounded edges.” Ben also wore an ornate gold ring that used to belong to his great-uncle Gary Platt, his first queer role model.
