“Queering the Country Club” Was the Theme for This Rainy Day Wedding in Connecticut
An app may have connected writer Katherine Bernard and model and sculptor Lily Olsen in 2019, but it was fashion that sealed the deal. “Our first sparks flew via phone while KB was in London at her friends Nicholas Aburn and Jake Wiseman’s wedding,” Katherine (who goes by “KB”) remembers of sending Olsen photos of herself wearing a white Tom Ford harness. Lily then shared the image with a group chat of queer friends who urged Lily to “lock it down—or they would!” Half a decade later, many of those friends would share a dance floor with Lily wearing the same harness as her second wedding look.
KB and Lily’s summer engagement took place while the couple visited friends at Martha’s Vineyard on August 2, 2022. “Lily proposed on the beach at Lambert’s Cove, with the engagement ring her late father designed for her mother,” says KB. “I almost made us late for dinner because I insisted on collecting a few beach stones as tokens of the memory. But this was not a dinner to be late for!” Lily had secured a reservation for the celebration at L’Etoile in Edgartown with the help of culinary historian and author Jessica Harris. KB returned the proposal in November at Oddly Enough bar in Brooklyn, surprising Lily with a ring in front of friends and family. “I worked with Spur Jewelry to make Lily’s ring using the white gold from her late father’s wedding ring, as well as a diamond he found on the ground in Grand Central during his daily commute from Connecticut,” says KB of designing the rings to be “beautiful counterparts.”
With a date of September 23, 2023, locked in for a wedding celebration at Lily’s childhood friend’s parents’ house in Greenwich, Connecticut, the planning process began. “We knew we wanted to lean into the Connecticut of it all,” says KB. “There was a potential for delicious tension in staging a very queer party in the most manicured and buttoned-up tax haven in the US.” Their high-spirited hosts, whom KB refers to as “pillars of kindness in the town,” made the seemingly impossible possible by offering their basement as storage for a year’s worth of wedding-related paraphernalia (their closets were brimming with tablecloths and taper candles) as well as a gorgeous home filled with handmade woodwork—a “special place” to stage a fantasy. “We did not have a large wedding budget,” KB shares. “But we had a deeply creative community, and the privilege of proximity to vast resources.”
KB and Lily credit “a lot of fortuitous moments” within that year as well. While coming home from a job, Philadelphia-based floral artist Kit Erdy spotted the couple on a roadside walk. “They pulled over in a white van (“Who the heck is this?”) with dirt on their face, a handsome garden angel, and called for Lily,” says KB, adding that Lily and Kit dated long distance in high school after meeting on Facebook. “It wouldn’t be a gay wedding without a beloved ex in the mix,” she jokes. “We hired them on the side of the road and they created an entire world for us.” A wedding theme of “queering the country club” came to be thanks to Erdy’s “spectacular vision of decor that felt like Martha Stewart threw a party, and then we held our party in her mussed aftermath.” The Palisades Library also offered plenty of algorithm-free inspiration. “We had an extremely fun day pretending we were registering for gifts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s open storage,” KB says. “At an institution like the Met, you realize that if an object is associated with a wedding, future generations feel an obligation to document, preserve, and keep it.”
Aside from toile rolling papers, they weren’t interested in buying new. “KB is a voracious thrifter and antiquer,” Lily explains, and “there is gorgeous craft everywhere to be found in the bloated detritus of American consumption.” They spent a day on their host’s back patio polishing KB’s collection of estate sale silver with Lily’s drill extension hack, and many more making the most of their magpie instincts. “One of KB’s hobbies is mud larking, which is essentially looking for tiny tokens of civilization on the banks of a river, and through this practice, she found 100 pieces of waterworn ceramics to use as the place cards for our tables—she even hand painted the names,” says Lily. “Those plates were tumbling at the bottom of the Hudson and never thought they would be at a beautiful table again!” For the table numbers, “we decided to risk it all and use our most valuable artwork: Catherine Opie’s Dyke Deck,” she shares. “It’s a deck of playing cards from 1996 that Opie created for the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles that features portraits of Opie’s queer community in humorous roleplay. We took all the numbered cards and displayed them on the tables. Our table was the Queen’s table, of course.” (They were grateful that the full set ultimately made it home safely.)
“Have the Occasion” was the dress code directive sent to guests as “a glamorous way to say, ‘You better use this opportunity!’” says KB. “We created a mood board that included poet Gertrude Stein with her poodle, Basket, at Pierre Balmain’s 1945 couture debut; disco legend Sylvester–“You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”—blowing smoke in a floral off-the-shoulder gown; and a group photo from Le Monocle, a Parisian lesbian club open during the 1920s and ’30s.” Rather than a traditional wedding planner, they brought on an experiential producer, C. O’Neil Productions, to handle all the details—such as enlisting Libby Willis as the chef, and soliciting the help of friends and chosen family within KB and Lily’s community as vendors. The artist Sophia Narrett, who was planning her own wedding at the same time, was always available via text as a “sister bride in shared delusion” for going over inventory and thrifted finds—even from Narrett’s own mother, who surprised the couple with a full set of silver Champagne coupes that held Erdy’s flower arrangements throughout the space.
The couple planned to have silver everywhere, though the custom jewelry pieces were the newest in the mix. “Lily is a metal sculptor, and she made me a thin silver band crown with three pearls from a broken necklace that belonged to my grandmother,” says KB. “She gave it to me on my birthday! And then she made her own wedding band with the same silver punch pattern as my crown.” There were also some heirloom “Ls” floating around. “My grandmothers were Elizabeth ‘Liz’ and Leanora, and Lily’s paternal grandmother was Lydia,” says KB. “I was named after a Great Aunt Katherine, and my mother held onto her wedding band. So, we worked with Spur Jewelry again to make mine from hers.” A single Lily was an obvious choice for KB’s bouquet, which she says was inspired by Chloë Sevigny’s ribbon-streamed Calla lily wedding flowers. “Kit used an antique red velvet ribbon that matched my coral and pearl earrings that Giedre Kose of Anchovy jewelry made for me in silver,” she says. And the library trips paid off here as well. “One of the books Lily and I read together was a history of Wedgwood,” says KB. “I found a vintage diamond-shaped Wedgwood ring with a small emblem of Diana the Huntress. In the mythologies of virginal women living with each other in the woods free from men, one really can assume…”
