The Bride Wore Galia Lahav—And the Groom a Thom Browne Skirt—At This Coachella Valley Wedding
Actress Nesta Cooper and producer Peter Van Auker’s love story is, in many ways, a classic Old Hollywood love story. The couple met on the set of 2017’s RealityHigh, a Netflix movie that Cooper starred in and Van Auker produced. Cooper was living in Vancouver at the time working on Netflix’s TV series Travelers and hoping to land a job that would allow her to make the big move to L.A. “RealityHigh was the first film I ever shot in the U.S.” Cooper remembers. “It was that movie for me.”
It was also the most fun she’d ever had making a movie, she said. The team filmed all over L.A.—from Bob’s Big Boy to Malibu. “We didn’t have anyone who was insured to drive Nesta around, so I had to pick her up and drop her off every day for the first couple of weeks,” Van Auker remembers. “You really get to know someone during those rides home after long hours on set.”
The two made dear friends in the cast, writers, and producers during their time working together—and “on top of that I met the dearest love of my life in Pete,” Cooper notes. They wrapped the movie in the fall of 2016, and she and Pete kept in touch when she went back home to Canada. By the following spring, Cooper had made the move to L.A. “I think [by that point] we both knew we were falling in love with each other,” she says.
When Cooper was filming season two of See in Toronto, she flew home to L.A. to visit for the weekend. “Pete had been planting this seed in my head for weeks,” Cooper remembers. “On calls or over text he would be like, ‘Oh shoot, I have to go to this work event on Saturday. It’s at an art gallery downtown.’ And I grunted and grumbled because I wanted to spend that afternoon by the beach.”
When an unsuspecting Cooper walked into the gallery, a violinist started playing. She had no idea what was about to happen and figured it was part of an immersive art experience. “Then I realized every single piece of the wall was either a photo of me and Pete, or artwork of us that he had commissioned,” she explains. “Once he proposed, all of my closest friends and family rushed into the room, and I was an absolute puddle. It was beautiful!”
“I actually had her unveil a Renaissance-inspired painting of us where I was proposing to her,” Van Auker says.
After the engagement, the wedding was set for September 2022. They two rented an estate in California’s Coachella Valley for the weekend. “We’d just bought a ranch in the desert and love spending time there,” says Van Auker.
The planning process took some time by design—two years to be exact—because the couple didn’t want to feel like they were rushing anything. “We were pretty solid on wanting to get married in the desert, and I knew what I wanted to wear, and that was basically it,” Cooper says.
They decided early on that they wanted all their vendor’s companies to be BIPOC-owned. “Before working with every vendor, my planner Elana Walker of Elana Walker Events and I looked into each company to see who owned it—not just managed or worked there. It took a bit of digging. Some companies we worked with hadn’t done a wedding this size, or this style. Some of them didn’t want to. Sometimes we couldn’t find any companies in SoCal at all that were available, or within our budget.It all proved to be more difficult than I imagined, but was completely worth it in the end..”
“Nesta was the leader of all of this, and we had an incredible planner in Elana,” Van Auker adds. “We actually hired Elana during the pandemic and planned to have a much smaller wedding simply because we didn’t know when it was going to end. It proved to be just as difficult waiting. So we picked it back up in late 2021. It was an incredibly fun and bonding experience.”
Years before she got engaged, Cooper knew she wanted to wear a Galia Lahav dress. “They have an ethereal quality that I’m very attracted to,” she says. She also knew that she wanted sleeves and for her dress to be more champagne than white. The Tally dress had the romance she was after. “The airiness of the dress and fabric made it feel dreamy, and the A-line cut is timeless,” Cooper says. “It was the perfect mix of whimsy and classic.” The bride’s platforms were by Miu Miu. “You can’t spell romance without Miu Miu,” Cooper jokes.
She kept jewelry simple and borrowed everything, wearing diamond studs from her best friend and MOH, Maya, and a sapphire blue ring that belonged to her agent Jamie’s grandmother. “Jamie has been my agent since I was 17, and is family to me,” Cooper says. “Finally, my aunt gave me a locket with a photo of my late mum in it to put in my bouquet.” Makeup was done by the bride’s friend and make-up artist Emily Cheng. “We had so much fun doing glam—just giggling from Saturday to Monday,” she says.
The bride’s six sisters were all bridesmaids along with her two best friends for a total of eight. “I told them the theme was soft pastel colors, but beyond that to pick any dress they liked,” Cooper explains. “This was the best thing I could have done because everyone felt comfortable and confident in their dresses. A few chose Reformation Bridal dresses, and I also wore Reformation while getting ready.”
The groom struggled more with his wedding wardrobe. “I wanted it to be comfortable for the desert and have a little flair to it but not too much,” Van Auker admits. “It took months of wavering before we got in touch with Thom Browne, through a relationship of Nesta’s, and they had us in for a fitting. They had so many outstanding options that really fit my personality. It made it even harder to choose, but I eventually decided on the pink engineered 4-Bar stripe classic suit.” He paired the suit with a Gucci watch and brown leather Armani shoes.
