Nécessaire Co-founder Nick Axelrod and Casey Welk’s Wedding at a Rustic Canyon Home in Santa Monica
All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Almost ten years ago, Nick Axelrod met the man he would later marry. He—the co-founder of the personal care line Nécessaire and the beauty behemoth Into The Gloss—and Casey Welk, a nurse practitioner at Men’s Health Foundation and clinician at GoodSkin Clinics, specializing in aesthetic dermatology, were introduced at a birthday party for a mutual friend in New York, but they were both in other relationships at the time. Fast forward to several years later, and they reconnected, this time both newly single. “Our first date was at The Rusty Knot,” Nick says. “About halfway through our drinks, Casey mentioned that he read books to at-risk children a few times a week on the Lower East Side. This, in addition to working part-time and going to nursing school. I was like, ‘This guy reads to kids and goes to nursing school???’ He really buried the lede!”
The two dated for three years in New York. When Nick moved to Los Angeles for a job opportunity, they dated long-distance for another year and a half. “It was a lot of Friday night red eye flights,” he says. “But worth it, obviously.”
Casey moved to L.A. once he found the right job, and a month or two into living together, they were having dinner at Wa Sushi in West Hollywood when they started talking about getting married. “I—jokingly, but not jokingly—got on one knee and asked him to marry me,” Nick remembers. “He said yes!”
Soon after, they started scouting possible wedding venues. “We knew we didn’t want to celebrate in a traditional way,” Nick says. “And most venues only offer one way of doing things. We absolutely didn’t want a cookie-cutter wedding.”
Max Sloan, one of Nick’s closest friends, kept volunteering his mom and stepdad’s house in Rustic Canyon, Santa Monica. “At first we assumed he was just being nice, but when we actually thought about it, we realized a cozy backyard wedding was exactly what we wanted,” Nick says.
The Mediterranean-style home, with its blue accents, served as the perfect aesthetic jumping-off point, and the couple worked with event planner Sara Simmonds to achieve the vibe they were going for. The house sits just a block from the beach, and the lush backyard boasts birds of paradise plants, bamboo, and lots of tropical greenery. “The setting informed everything from the event design to the invitations, designed by Hudson Shively and even the colors of our suits,” Casey explains.
Once they’d decided on the venue, Nick and Casey turned to their wardrobe, spending a few weekends trying on suits at what felt like every store in Beverly Hills. “Ultimately, Prada worked best for us,” Nick says. “We didn’t want to look like bankers. Prada suiting feels modern—youthful but still elegant. And their colors are slightly ‘off’ in the best way possible.” They found two suits in shades of blue—playing off the blue at their venue—and the team at the Prada Beverly Hills store tailored them over the course of three fittings.
Nick also worked out religiously for three months leading up to the wedding. He and trainer Alex Fine met at 6 a.m. almost every day. “I knew I wasn’t going to be shirtless—obviously!—but I wanted to look and feel my best for the big day!” he says. A few days before the wedding, they also did a proper full-body exfoliation with The Body Exfoliator, and got organic spray tans. “We are both scared of getting actually tan but wanted to look a little sun-kissed for the day,” Nick explains.
Designing custom wedding rings was a highlight of the planning process. The couple worked with XIV Karats in Beverly Hills to re-work a ring that Nick’s mother gave them. “It once belonged to my grandmother Evelyn and was studded with smaller diamonds,” Nick explains. “We decided to make eternity diamond bands, splitting Evelyn’s wedding stones between our two rings, half and half. They were our ‘something old.’”
To prepare for the ceremony, Nick and Casey wrote their own vows. “This ended up being one of the most special parts of the wedding,” Casey says. “Reading my vows and listening to Nick’s was more overwhelming than I expected. I was teary-eyed from the minute I walked out to the chuppah!”
“I had a tough time getting through my vows,” Nick admits. “I was choking back tears. Taking part in the tradition of marriage, which only recently became legal for us, is intense and beautiful and more powerful than I expected. And watching Casey cry made me lose it.”
“As cheesy as this sounds, I didn’t want it to end!” Casey adds. “It was the culmination of so many things and everything at that point came together so perfectly. Every word that our officiant, Michelle, said resonated so deeply. I was confident and emotional with my vows and when Nick said his, knowing before the ceremony even started what a talented writer he is, I was completely enveloped and filled with love. It was literally perfect.”
