This Model Bride and Groom Wanted Their North Carolina Wedding to Be a “Total Surprise”
Models Claire De Lozier-Hill and Chase Hill were separately attending a Fashion Week after-party hosted by Lebron James in 2017 when Chase caught Claire’s eye. “I saw Chase walk down the staircase, gasped, and then immediately grabbed my friend’s arm and said, ‘Holy cow, I’m going to marry that guy!’” Claire remembers. “I had no idea who he was, but he was—and is—the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. I just knew God had a place for him in my life.”
Claire’s friend knew Chase and introduced them, but it didn’t go exactly as she’d hoped. “He head nodded, said ‘sup,’ and kept walking,” she admits. “It stung, but honestly, it made my crush worse. Later, I would find out that he, like me, was incredibly shy.” They didn’t talk the rest of the night, but the next day, Chase found Claire on Instagram and they started following each other.
Seven months later, Claire was living in L.A. and headed to Coachella. “It’s something I never thought I would attend and a place I will likely never return to,” she jokes. “I was playing ‘mom’ to all of my friends. As a crowd rushed through, I lost sight of my friends and my phone died. I was being swarmed by thousands of people who seemed to really enjoy stepping on me.” All of sudden, she looked up and Chase was standing 10 feet away. “He literally rescued me,” she remembers. “I stayed with him and his family the rest of the weekend. My crush turned to love very quickly—I’m a Scorpio, so of course—and I knew for certain now that I had found my person.”
After their intense festival encounter, they headed back to L.A. together for a day, before Chase left to return to New York and Claire started preparing to move to Australia. “He asked me to be his girlfriend the night before he left,” Claire remembers. “We knew we could take the distance even after only being together for one weekend.”
When the summer ended, Claire moved to New York City, and Chase took her out on their first date: a picnic in Central Park. “We sat under this beautiful tree and designated it as ‘our spot’ by carving our initials into the trunk’s bark,” she says. “We visit this tree every year on our anniversary!”
Eventually, they got engaged on Mother’s Day. Chase wanted it to be a surprise and suggested they walk through the park to visit the Museum of Modern Art with his family. “To be honest, I have no idea where ‘our tree’ is in the park, because it’s literally one tree among millions. I just know the area surrounding it when I see it,” Claire says, laughing. “Chase, on the other hand, knows exactly where it is. As we were walking, the landscape became more and more familiar, and Chase wanted to show his family our initials. We were looking around the trunk of the tree for them when I turned around and found him down on one knee crying. I truly blacked out from joy overtaking my body and have no idea what he said. Then my mom, sister, stepdad, and uncle all popped out from behind the tree! I couldn’t believe it. They got to witness the entire thing.” Afterward, they all headed to the Central Park Boathouse, where Chase’s parents had organized a private engagement dinner for the entire group.
The wedding was planned for August 12, 2023, in Highlands, North Carolina. Claire is originally from Nashville, and Chase is from Colorado, so North Carolina felt like the perfect middle ground for everyone. “We toured six different venues, but Old Edwards Inn was the one that stole our hearts,” Claire says. “The staff is outstandingly kind and incredibly accommodating, and the Blue Ridge Mountains are breathtaking. Highlands is also in close proximity to the place where Chase’s mom grew up, which is such a sweet happenstance.”
In what is decidedly a departure from the norm, the entire wedding weekend was a complete surprise for both the bride and groom. “Because of this, the wedding-planning process was a breeze for me,” Claire says. “I did the bare minimum required and left the rest to my mom, who is an interior designer, and our amazing wedding planner, Molly McKinley. The only part of planning I did was choose the guy, design the dresses—mine and the bridesmaids’—and have creative input on the invites, which are something I’m passionate about.”
It’s not that Claire didn’t care about the wedding—she just cared more about actually getting married and wanted to keep that as the main focus at all times. “Planning a destination wedding and being an international runway model are two things that do not go well together,” Claire explains. “With everything I have going on, I knew it would create an unhealthy level of stress that I didn’t want to walk into my marriage with.”
To that end, the bride created a mood board and handed it off to her mother and McKinley to execute. “We talked briefly about a few things along the way, but, for the most part, I stayed out of it,” Claire says. “It made it so much easier for Chase and me to enjoy not only our wedding day fully, but also the one-and-a-half years we spent engaged. We weren’t worried or stressed about anything. We are so happy we chose to do it that way. Molly is one of the hardest-working women I’ve ever met. She deeply cares about every single detail being meaningful to the couple. I gave her a vision and a vibe that she took and turned into a masterpiece.”
And while McKinley and Claire’s mother handled the event aesthetics and production, curating the fashion for the weekend was Claire’s favorite part of prepping for the wedding. She ended up with four dresses on her actual wedding day. “This was originally discouraged due to the time I would spend changing outfits,” she remembers. “But I have been training for those quick changes over my past 10 years modeling. I wish someone would have timed me. I guarantee each change took less than five minutes!”
For the ceremony, Claire wore a Pnina Tornai dress, Chanel shoes, and vintage pear-shaped diamond drop earrings. “Finding my ceremony dress was not an easy process,” she says. “I don’t know if it was the fact that I had already worn the best-of-the-best runway pieces or the fact that I tend to be more selective about important pieces, but it took two separate trips to all the biggest bridal ateliers in New York for me to find my dress.”
