This Artist Couple Wore Custom Ann Demeulemeester and Rick Owens to Their Wedding at a Gothic Paris Church

Seven years ago, writer and performance artist Ingvild Gillet and Rick Owens industrial designer Connor Hickey briefly crossed paths in London. “I clearly remember her delicate, fascinating words and wide-eyed stare,” says Connor.
A few years later, when Connor moved to Paris, the New Zealand–born designer reached out to Ingvild again. “It’d been such a brief and distant interaction, but out of all the people I’d met in my previous trips to Paris, Ingvild kept emerging in my mind,” he says. When the French-Norwegian writer invited him over to her home, Connor was surprised to find Ingvild in a white nightgown in a room filled with candlelight. “That first night Connor came over, it was how I would have welcomed anyone…then I fell in love,” she remembers. “On that night, I saw someone who celebrated life. I was in awe of his ideas, projects, sketches, designs—all that was yet to be built.”
Despite jumping into life as a couple, they weren’t sure at first if marriage was for them. “After four years together, I saw Ingvild as the love of my life and the person I’d like to share this world with, but it took some consideration to see the beauty in marriage,” admits Connor. “Eventually, we decided to, in the most legitimate means given to us, inscribe our love and this relationship we’d built.” Ingvild echoes that deciding whether to get married took time. “The engagement itself stretched into a kind of season, a year spent realizing what it truly means to dedicate one’s life to another,” she explains. “In a way, that quiet, demanding, extraordinary year meant far more to us than the wedding day.” The two officially considered themselves engaged in September 2024. Ingvild shares, “We were secretly thrilled to introduce each other as ‘fiancé.’”
The creative couple spent nearly a year planning their wedding, which they hosted on July 5, 2025. The celebration began in Paris with a ceremony at Église Saint-Eustache, followed by a reception at Ingvild’s parents’ home in Blaru. The groom describes the planning process, which they undertook themselves, as a lot of work but notes that it brought them even closer to each other and their families. “My parents spent the whole year gardening and planting hundreds of cosmos at their countryside house,” says the bride.
Many creative partners also helped craft the celebration. The couple worked with Alix O’Byrne from Les Diners Perchés to curate their tablescape and even sourced tablecloths, silk for banners, customized serviettes, and bronze vases from Rick Owens and his team. One special project the couple undertook was creating a custom scent for their wedding. “We created a perfume with Sophie Wismann of Lethe reminiscent of cathedral incense and, with the help of friends from New Zealand, poured 200 candles infused with this scent for each guest to bring home,” says Ingvild.
It was no surprise that Connor would wear Rick Owens to head down the aisle. The industrial designer wore a custom suit design, “taking from Rick’s old tailoring, with a few crops here and there,” notes the groom. “The shirt was slim-sleeved with a spearpoint collar—a nod to Chester Cordite.” Rather than choose a white shirt design, Connor decided to have it as a “dinge color” based on a quote from Owens: “If you make the T‑shirt dirtier than your teeth, then your teeth look whiter. That is my little beauty tip.” He paired the top with jet black wool pants and a blazer, with tailoring help from Wil Barber.
For her wedding day attire, Ingvild was drawn to the “wistful romanticism” of Ann Demeulemeester. “The dress itself, designed by Stefano Gallici with the help of his team—Amelia, Andrea, Gabriele, Matteo, and many others—was the most beautiful dress I could have imagined,” says Ingvild of the custom design. “Their kindness, elegance, and dedication made the experience of creating the dress from scratch—drawings, iterations, choices of fabric, pattern making, and retouching—feel deeply aligned with the realization of our engagement.” The gown featured a laced-up back, a gauze vest with raw-metal details, and a five-meter-long train made from two types of silk. Ingvild traveled to Milan three times for her fittings. “The last fitting was deeply emotional,” says the bride. “I stood in the atelier, watching myself in the mirror wearing this delicate, magical garment they had shaped directly on my body. I felt as if Stefano was sharing this intensely intimate moment with me, acting almost like a guardian…preparing me to present myself as Ingvild.” Stefano also helped the bride get ready with her wedding party on her wedding day, and surprised her with a tiara he crafted for her to wear to the ceremony. “The room was in complete chaos, but everything came together at the last possible moment—exactly as it was meant to be.”
To accompany her on the wedding day, Ingvild had custom dresses by Noa Pearce made for her bridesmaids in pearl white, while the groomsmen wore a mix of Rick Owens tailoring, Scottish wedding attire, and Agnes B. Ahead of the wedding, both Ingvild and Connor each held bachelor and bachelorette events for their respective wedding parties. “Mine was wonderfully organized by my bridesmaid, Georgia Polks,” says Ingvild. “Ten of my dearest friends spent the weekend in the countryside, dressed in white and wandering in the forest—very Virgin Suicides—collecting wild flowers, paintings on tiny canvas, and drinking white wine. Connor’s one sounded hectic. His friends rented a van and drove him from party to party, finally ending up by a lake outside of Paris, where they water-skied with no sleep at all.”
The day before the wedding, the couple was legally married in a small ceremony in Blaru with close family members and friends. The bride and groom—along with their witnesses—had to run in order to catch their train from Paris. “We had all stayed out a little too late the night before,” Ingvild recalls. “I wore my Norwegian grandmother’s wedding dress, and when we stepped out of the church, my sisters threw rose petals they had collected in the garden moments earlier. We walked 20 minutes back from the town hall to the countryside house, cars beeping as they passed, congratulating us.”
The wedding day arrived, and the guests gathered at Église Saint-Eustache. “It meant a great deal to be married by Père Gérard Bénéteau, as he had also baptized me,” shares Ingvild. “He was moved as well, as it was the first time he celebrated the wedding of someone he had baptized.” Père François Baumann, the bride’s father’s cousin and a priest in Taiwan, co-officiated the ceremony. The bride adds, “He is completely bilingual, so we had a mix of French and English throughout, which made everyone happy!”
