The Bride Wore a Pearl-Embroidered Danielle Frankel Dress to Marry at the Foot of the Elk Mountains
Trial attorney Eve Levin and professional baseball player Matthew Bowman met in college in 2013 and have been together ever since, ultimately becoming engaged at home at the beginning of 2021. “We got engaged just after the vaccines were authorized, but before they were widely available, and decided to plan the wedding for nine months later, not realizing—now, it seems, naively—that the pandemic was far from over,” Eve says, noting that while they took many precautions, they still limited the guest list to a smaller circle of friends and family than they might have otherwise.
Their intimate wedding finally took place in the fall of 2021 in Crested Butte, Colorado. “My family’s roots in Crested Butte extend back to the ’70s, and it’s very dear to me and Matt,” Eve explains. “It wasn’t an easy decision, though—the things that make Crested Butte Crested Butte also make it a challenging place to plan a wedding. But we knew that if anyone could handle those challenges, it was Stef.”
The couple worked with wedding planner Stefanie Cove to orchestrate their perfect wedding weekend. “Choosing Stef was the first and best choice that we made,” Eve claims. “The three of us are kindred spirits. She made the planning process not just a tolerable means to an end but a special experience in itself. It doesn’t hurt that Stef also happens to have impeccable taste and is the best at what she does, but that was just gilding the lily.”
Eve was just as discerning when it came to her wedding-weekend wardrobe and worked to choose looks that felt like an outward expression of who she is, without giving too much thought to whether or not it was bridal or timeless. “I also tried to choose things that I could wear again or repurpose and that I had fun sourcing and wearing, because the other point of a wedding is to have fun,” she explains. Searching for vintage—mostly online—was the first thing she did. “A lot of what I wore was pre-loved,” the bride says.
Eve found a corseted Alaïa button-down and a pair of J. Mendel shorts on The RealReal that she wore to sign the wedding license at the courthouse in Gunnison, Colorado. To the rehearsal dinner, she wore a vintage Dolce Gabbana blouse-and-pant set from One of a Kind Archive, with a tarot-card minaudière from Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first collection for Dior that she also found on The RealReal. And at the welcome party, she was in an old Céline sweater she found on eBay, with an Alaïa raffia-trim skirt and her grandmother’s squash-blossom necklace.
The Friday-night party was at a tequila bar and restaurant in Crested Butte called Bonez. The vibe was both campy and macabre: Eve and Matt love Halloween and love a theme, so they made the dress code Till Death Do Us Party. “We kept it open-ended, and lots of guests wore dark suits and witchy dresses, but some wore straight-up costumes,” Eve remembers. “I wore an archival McQueen gown that stylist Carrie Goldberg helped me find and an antique late-19th-century necklace from Stephen Russell. Crested Butte is a historic mining town, and Bonez is in an 1889 building that once housed the town’s electric plant. It has a dark, antique, almost decaying feel. The gown mirrored that. From afar, it looks like any black lace, off-the-shoulder gown, but up close it’s actually an outer layer falling apart—decaying—to reveal an underlayer, like something you’d find in an attic.”
The morning after the party, Eve and Matt invited their guests on a hiking excursion along the Slate River that ended with a picnic lunch. “We thought that at best maybe 20 or 30 of our guests would join because the night before had gone quite late and not all our guests were hikers,” Eve says. “But almost the entire wedding came. That was so special to us because above all what makes Crested Butte so incredible is the unparalleled landscape and access to the outdoors. The mental image of 80 of our closest family and friends walking in a single-file line through the mountains and fall foliage is something I’ll cherish forever.”
The ceremony was held at the foot of the Elk Mountains. The wedding dress itself—which was a custom design by Danielle Frankel—was a complete labor of love for the bride. “A close friend planted the idea in my head of a pearl-embroidered gown when she sent me a photo of the look Lila Moss wore in Kim Jones’s first couture show for Fendi,” Eve explains. “I showed it to Stef, who was the one who had had the idea to connect me with stylist Carrie Goldberg of CLG Creative and her partner in crime and principal stylist, Lex Alexandris.”
They, in turn, connected her with designer Danielle Hirsch of Danielle Frankel. Eve worked closely with Goldberg, Alexandris, and Frankel over the next seven months to bring the vision of a baroque-pearl-embroidered gown to life. As they didn’t work from an existing design, every aspect of the silhouette, construction, and embroidery was a decision that had to be worked through for the first time. “Danielle and her team are meticulous,” Eve says. “At one of the last fittings we had before the wedding, Danielle reviewed every pearl to make sure they looked right. A few got the axe because they were too big or small.”
After this experience, Eve will be the first to tell you that custom is not for the faint of heart. “Because the embroidery had to be done from scratch, the initial time I saw—let alone tried on—the outer pearl layer of the dress was two weeks before I left for the wedding!” Eve says. “It was all worth it, though, not only for the end result but also for the process itself. I love being a litigator, and I feel extremely privileged to do what I do for a living, but it doesn’t always leave much room in my day-to-day life for artistic creativity or sartorial expression.” Working on the dress was a creative outlet for Eve, she explains. “And I was able to share that experience with my loved ones, which made it even more special,” she says. “For example, my dear friend Colin Macgregor—who is, among other things, the design director at La Ligne—and I exchanged dozens of makeshift mock-ups each time we thought about changing any detail.”
In the lead-up to the wedding weekend, Matt added some new items to his wardrobe that felt special to him but also made use of items he already owned. “Generally, his style is relaxed and understated,” Eve explains. On the first night, he wore a Ralph Lauren Purple Label cashmere hoodie with other things he already owned. To the Till Death Do Us Party, he wore a dark maroon suit that a former teammate gifted him during his first Major League season in 2016. And finally he wore a black shawl-collar tuxedo by Tom Ford to the ceremony and reception.
