Caroline Vreeland Wore Giambattista Valli for Her Wedding Ceremony Overlooking New York City
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vogue’s goal in our coverage is to celebrate responsible wedding planning, showcase a love story, and shed light on the questions that engaged couples are asking themselves now.
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Singer, actor, and model Caroline Vreeland—the granddaughter of the legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland—met Nicolas Rico, the co-founder of Mural Festival and LNDMRK Agency, last year during Art Basel. “I was at a party with friend Violet Chachki, and we both agreed Nico was the best looking man in the room,” Caroline remembers. “We beckoned him over with a series of come hither glances, and the moment he walked across the dance floor I felt at peace.”
Since then, Caroline and Nico haven’t gone a day without speaking. Even though it was early on in their relationship, she decided to take a leap of faith and go to Montreal on March 12th to visit Nico. This trip inevitably led to their spending six months of quarantine together in Nico’s hometown. “We definitely felt a little bit of guilt for having such a beautiful time in quarantine,” Caroline reveals. “We kept pinching ourselves thinking how lucky we were to have all of this quality time to get to know one another. I’ve spent the last decade traveling for work, so this was the first time I could enjoy being at home—cooking, gardening, and falling in love.”
Eventually, Nico proposed a few days after Caroline’s 33rd birthday on their rooftop in Brooklyn, both wearing what has become the de facto uniform during the pandemic: sweatpants. “It was perfect,” Caroline remembers. “Before he got down on one knee, he read a letter he had written, which was a declaration of his love, and I knew I was looking into the future of my forever with this man.”
The two still have hopes for a grand Tuscan wedding or vow renewal in the summer of 2022, but they also knew that they wanted to officially get married sooner rather than later. “The world is so uncertain [right now], and we are from two different countries as Nico is Canadian,” Caroline says. “What we do in Italy will be an opportunity for our families and friends to meet, dance, and celebrate together—but the wedding in New York was just for us.”
After everything that had happened throughout 2020, Caroline and Nico knew without a shadow of a doubt that they simply wanted to be together. “That was the most important thing,” she says. “So we threw together an intimate ceremony within a matter of a few weeks so we didn’t have to face the potential challenge of being separated.”
At first, they assumed they would say “I do” at a courthouse, but all government agencies were closed. “I, of course, had to set aside my flair for the dramatic—because if I had my druthers I’d be swinging from the chandeliers at Versailles!—to reflect the severity of the times we’re living in,” Caroline explains.
They ended up having the ceremony on December 7th in the penthouse of the Ludlow Hotel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with just 10 friends in attendance, with a small dinner afterwards. “We chose this date because it was the day we met the year prior,” Caroline says. “We did all of the planning ourselves and with the help of our friends. One of my favorite moments of the day was seeing my friends arranging flowers, lighting the candles, pouring the champagne, playing records, and undertaking the daunting task of steaming my dress! The fact that I didn’t have to worry about these details made me feel very cared for in that moment.”
