This Antique Jewelry Dealer Bride Wore an Art Deco Tiara as a Headband for Her New York City Wedding
Christine Cheng and Alex Inman have a long history. The antique jewelry dealer and lawyer first met in fifth grade as students at a suburban Chicago elementary school. By senior year of high school, they were dating. However, when they both went to college—the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford, respectively—the distance proved too difficult to manage. As so many high school sweethearts do, they broke up.
But they never fell out of touch: throughout the years, Christine and Alex occasionally got drinks and texted, even as both of them moved abroad. And, in 2022—when they finally both found themselves in New York City—they decided to give it another go. For good this time: two years later, Alex proposed to Christine in Japan with a Victorian engagement ring. “My Victorian-era diamond cluster engagement ring is particularly unique and romantic with its crowned heart shape and had caught my eye on Instagram years earlier,” Christine says. “When it came across my desk for sale, it felt like it was meant to be.” (Adds Alex: “We had already discussed marriage, and I’m observant enough to recognize that when your girlfriend tells you exactly which engagement ring she wants without prompting, you should take that and run with it.”)
The two wed on March 14, 2025, at New York’s City Hall. The date was a symbolic one for a couple—while they were dating in high school, Christine stole a T-shirt Alex made to celebrate Pi Day and kept it throughout the years. “Yes, we are nerds,” says Christine, laughing. “We also liked the symbolism of Pi representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, with circles/rings representing eternity.” The night before, Christine, a first generation Chinese American, held a traditional Chinese hairbrushing ceremony, which Vogue photographed for our “The Makeup of a Marriage” series.
Christine wore a $125 vintage dress, originally made by Dynasty Hong Kong, a fashion brand that used to sell their clothes out of the Peninsula Hong Kong, for her civil ceremony. Other than some light readjusting of the buttons by Chinatown tailor Noble Madam, she kept the garment as is. She accessorized with a ladylike Cartier watch and almond blossom earrings by JAR Paris. Alex, meanwhile, wore a suit and an Aimé Leon Dore for Drake’s tie.
Afterwards, they held a 10-course Chinese banquet at the Golden Unicorn in Chinatown. The bride changed into a crimson quipao, which she found at Jinza Oriental in Los Angeles. She paired it with antique kingfisher blue and carnelian hair ornaments that date back to China’s Qing Dynasty. As a final touch, she wrapped herself in an antique silk Canton floral shawl.
The bride jokingly calls the whole affair—which included a performance by Columbia University’s Lion Dance team—“my big fat Chinese wedding.” The banquet began with servers parading in with whole roast suckling pigs for each table. “I probably should’ve followed my intuition to seat all the vegetarians at their own table to spare them the sight of so many animals served whole, but they insisted the experience was amusing,” Christine says. “As with so many Chinese traditions, there are layers of meaning and symbolism for each dish: whole suckling pig symbolizes the bride s virtue intact, whole duck symbolizes complete fidelity, whole fish symbolizes abundance, to name a few,” she explains.
On Sunday, they held a Western-style wedding at the restaurant Manhatta in the Financial District. The bride admits she dressed “from the jewels down". She sourced antique Art Deco Pagoda earrings as well as an antique Art Deco tiara. Instead of wearing it placed upon her head, she chose to style it as a headband. (This choice was a popular one for aristocratic women during that time period.) “I wore my hair down, to contrast with the previous evening’s updo and have a more romantic look. This provided the perfect canvas for the tiara worn as a headband, which felt less formal,” she says. To match his wife, the groom put on a pair of Art Deco cufflinks.
Alex actually found Christine’s dress for her. She knew she wanted a minimal design—however, bogged down by the logistics that come with planning a wedding in just three months, Christine didn’t actually have time to find it. So Alex scoured the internet on her behalf. He finally tracked down the perfect classic Vivienne Westwood corset dress. “The fact that we were able to find a stock sized Vivienne Westwood gown in the style that Christine wanted felt like a small miracle, but I had to order it from Germany via Mytheresa and it only arrived three days before the event,” he says. Alex, meanwhile, donned a midnight blue tuxedo (that he found well ahead of time).
The dress code for the evening was “black tie (and jewels) requested,” and guests returned in kind, wearing a colorful array of earrings, bracelets, brooches, and accessories.
“I didn’t think married life would feel so different, considering we’ve known each other for so long and had already moved in together. I was wrong. Marriage unlocked a new level of trust, love, everything,” Christine says of their wedding. ‘There’s a famous French jewelry motif featuring the +/- signs inspired by the 1889 poem by Rosemonde Gérard, ‘Les Vieux.’ Gérard declared “chaque jour je t’aime davantage, aujourd’hui plus qu’hier et bien moins que demain” meaning “I love you more (+) than yesterday, less (-) than tomorrow. This is a sentiment I understand, and feel, now.”
Photo: Nela Kekic1/41Alex and I post-marriage ceremony on the steps of the Federal Courthouse, where Alex otherwise sometimes goes for work. This 1950s silk dress from Hong Kong perfectly mixes Chinese and Western elements and is one of those incredible vintage finds I’ll be bragging about forever.
Photo: Nela Kekic2/41My antique diamond cluster engagement ring and vintage Cartier watch.
