Erin Foster Wore a Danielle Frankel Dress With a Statement Sleeve at Her New Year’s Eve Wedding in Nashville
“We met at the gym! Not a sentence I ever thought I’d say,” jokes writer, performer, and all-around funny girl Erin Foster of how she and Simon Tikhman, the CEO and co-founder of The Core Entertainment, a partner of Live Nation, first got to know each other. “We were on the same schedule, and after seeing him every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 8 a.m., I decided to slide into his DMs like the old-fashioned romantic that I am.”
With her sister Sara Foster, Erin created the TV series Barely Famous, a mockumentary of reality TV that first aired back in 2015 and became a VH1 cult classic. Now, the two are the creative heads of Bumble and collaborate on the clothing brand Sub Urban Riot. (Erin, Sara, and their stylist sister Jordan are all daughters of record producer David Foster and model Rebecca Foster. David is now married to Katharine McPhee.)
Erin and Simon had been dating for a year when he proposed. “It was so well executed and thought out,” Erin recalls. “He told me we were going to his friend’s vow renewal in Napa. A detailed invitation for it actually came in the mail to our house. When we checked into the hotel, the front desk gave us an envelope from the bride and groom with directions to the ceremony. I had no clue!” Erin and Simon walked into the Napa Valley Reserve, and there were signs for the renewal everywhere. “He had even staged a conversation with a woman who greeted us, so she explained that everyone just went on a wine tour. Then we walked to an area to wait, and he got down on his knee,” Erin says. “My first reaction was that we were at someone else’s wedding! But then he explained that it had all been a decoy, and there was no wedding. After I said ‘yes,’ both of our families came walking out to us. I was blown away!”
After Erin had a chance to fully process the surprise proposal, she started to focus on wedding plans. The couple decided to have a quick engagement, planning their wedding for four months away. “We were trying to pack all the stress into a shorter time frame,” Erin says. “Simon thought New Year’s Eve would be fun, and we randomly picked Nashville because it’s fun and different, and easy to get to.”
Erin’s friend Marc Rose was in the process of opening the new Graduate Hotel in Nashville, and they devised a plan to open it early for the wedding so they could take over the whole hotel, turning it into a full-on summer camp with everyone’s name on their door, community wellness stations, bands playing in the lobby, and kids running around freely. “It solidified us picking Nashville,” Erin says. “Also, Nashville is surrounded by farmland, and I’ve always wanted to get married in a rustic setting.” Simon took a trip down South to scout places, and Saddle Woods Farm was exactly what they were looking for. He booked it without Erin ever even seeing it in person. “Simon is better at details and planning than I am,” she notes.
In light of this, they decided the best thing to do was to get a local planner in Nashville who knew the city inside and out. “I asked everyone I knew who lived there—Reese Witherspoon, Lily Aldridge, Simon’s business partner Chief Zaruk—and they all said Hugh Howser of H Three Events was who we had to hire,” Erin says. “They were right.”
Erin worked with her sister and stylist Jordan on all aspects of her wedding wardrobe. “Erin decided to plan her wedding in only four months, so from the get-go, we knew we had to act fast,” Jordan says. “Initially, she had zero idea what she wanted to wear, so I made her go to a bridal salon and try on literally 50 dresses, so she could point out things she liked and disliked from each one.” From there, Erin and Jordan started to create the ideal dress. They were originally going to have it custom-made. “But by the time her final fitting came around, she just didn’t feel like it was right for her,” Jordan remembers. “She slept on the thought and woke me up early the next day to tell me she had decided overnight to go in a new direction, that she had changed her flight, and that we needed to find a new dress that day. Luckily, she had fallen in love with a wedding dress she had tried on during her reception dress fitting with Danielle Frankel.”
“Danielle is young and fresh and making a name for herself since being a finalist in the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund,” Erin explains. “I walked into her showroom, and it felt so romantic and special. I tried on her samples and found two amazing wedding dresses that were perfect.” One, she wore to the ceremony, and the other was cut shorter and turned into the reception dress. Erin complemented the dress with Martin Katz jewelry—“He made my engagement ring that I am still in shock over and wake up every day staring at,” she admits—and ivory Saint Laurent heels.
Simon wore a Todd Snyder tux. He worked with his friend Jason Rembert on his entire wedding day look, and together they opted for an ivory jacket, Tom Ford bow-tie, and Lanvin shoes.
On New Year’s Eve, the bride walked down an aisle illuminated by candlelight, escorted by her father. “I always wanted to get married at night inside a barn. A beach wedding would never have been my vibe,” she says. “But because it was cold we couldn’t have the ceremony and the reception inside the barn, and had to build a tent for the ceremony. I was worried it wouldn’t have that intimate feeling I wanted, but Hugh made the tent feel like a barn with wooden floors and candles everywhere.” Erin chose to get married in the round so that no one felt too far away or like they had a bad seat. “I converted to Judaism after Simon and I got engaged, so we had a reformed Jewish ceremony,” she explains. “The rabbi who converted me, Rabbi Shapiro, is so cool and made the ceremony feel so personal and relatable instead of being generic. We laughed and cried through our personal vows.” At the end of the ceremony, Simon stepped on the glass, and a local gospel choir sang “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.”
