A Thunderstorm Was the Perfect Excuse for Two Cocktail Hours at This Chef Couple’s Wedding Upstate
Sadie Mae Burns and Anthony Ha’s love story started with a hair tie. It was 2015, and Sadie Mae had hers break on her very first day as a line cook at Mission Chinese Food in New York City. “I desperately needed to borrow one. The rest of our coworkers knew to ask Anthony, as he has incredibly long hair—and also, because he is kind,” Sadie Mae remembers. “He says it was love at first sight.”
Not only did Sadie Mae and Anthony begin a relationship, but they quickly also started another venture based on their shared love of cooking. The couple founded Ha’s Dac Biet, a roaming pop-up centered around Vietnamese food that became one of the hottest reservations to score in NYC (and later, around the globe). After being a team in work and life for eight years, it was time to make things official. First, the pair began ideating their first permanent restaurant Ha’s Snack Bar, which is set to open in December 2024. Then, they planned to enter into their next stage of life as a married couple.
“We got engaged on September 13, 2023, just shy of our eight-year anniversary,” shares Sadie Mae. After finishing a pop-up in San Francisco, the pair decided to take a Big Sur vacation at a yurt suggested by their friend Nathan of Rose Delights. “With no further information and very little else planned, we drove there from San Francisco and wound up entering the dreamiest little enclave, way up in the mountains. We went on a walk to the edge of the property, where there was an amazing view of the rolling hills. Just as the sky had reached peak golden hour, Anthony turned to look at me and said, ‘I have a ring in my pocket.’ We both started crying as he pulled out the most gorgeous, vintage ring lined with pearls.” The pair actually saw the ring together at the Brooklyn shop Front General Store, and Anthony secretly ordered it. “We had the coziest, sweetest night afterwards—cooking dinner and texting all of our friends to tell them the news. We could not stop beaming,” Sadie remembers.
The date was set for a year later on September 7, 2024, at Bluefield Farm, a flower farm in Blauvelt, New York just 10 minutes away from where Sadie Mae grew up. “We have been going there together for as long as we’ve been dating and have known from the start that this is where we’d get married," says Anthony. It wasn’t going to be a small celebration, either. “We wanted our wedding to feel like a culmination of the remarkable people we have met through traveling and working together over the last nine years," they say. “A ‘the more the merrier’ mindset was adopted and before we knew it, the number of guests had ballooned to 300.”
While the duo worked with wedding planner Melody Partrick, who they note was integral throughout the entire process, their families all joined in to curate the big day. “Sadie’s mom is, luckily for us, a florist and exceptional event thrower,” the couple shares. “Both of our parents were very invested and involved every step of the way. It was practically all any of us could talk about for the 10 months leading up to it.” The to-be-weds also had their community help bring the celebration to life. “We are also incredibly lucky in that, because of the nature of our profession, we have met endlessly talented friends we were able to recruit along the way,” they say. "From food to djing to an entire dessert table, we were absolutely spoiled rotten in this sense."
The wedding had no dress code apart from wearing “semi-practical shoes” to account for the grass on the property. “Everyone looked amazing and so completely themselves, which is exactly what we wanted,” the couple shares. However, Sadie Mae and Anthony definitely stepped up their style for their trip down the aisle. Anthony wore a Prada jacket that the couple shopped for together. “We had so much fun trying on dozens of options in the store,” says Sadie. “Nearly every jacket they had in stock was carefully considered by him.” The rest of the outfit—including a custom shirt and pants by J. Mueser, Vaquero boots, and jade cufflinks—was a surprise to the bride. “Anthony has a very strong sense of self and of style, so I knew that he was going to look incredible,” she says. “He loved the process of bringing together his look—timeless, yet wholly him.”
Sadie Mae wanted to wear something “timeless and vintage” for the ceremony. “I combed through the internet for options, but nothing was feeling quite right," explains the bride. “My mom called one day and told me that, on a whim, she had taken my grandma’s dress out of the closet and that she thought it might be perfect.” The dress was from Priscilla of Boston and featured long sleeves, lace, and a bow on the back. ”My grandma was pregnant with my mom when she got married and she is no longer with us, so this felt all the more special," says Sadie Mae. “I brought the dress to friends Sophie and Claire, who run the brand SC103, who were so helpful in advising direction and insisting that I not ‘modernize’ the dress too much. Sophie sent me to her friend Mark Burnett, a tailor and designer based in New York, who carefully mended and altered the dress and also made my veil based on a photo of my grandmother’s.” She also made a visit to Happy Isles Salon for her after-party look: a vintage Dior dress in black and red. “It was the only official bridal appointment I had, as I already knew I was going to wear my grandma’s dress, but wanted the full experience of trying on dresses,” says Sadie Mae. “Finding the after-party dress was happily unexpected.”
In addition to planning for the wedding day, the couple also had a Vietnamese tea ceremony at Sadie Mae’s parents’ home in lieu of a formal dress rehearsal. “This was the first time that my parents were meeting some of Anthony’s relatives, who live in California. He has a really big family and we invited some of our friends, which meant my parents’ small backyard was filled to the brim,” says Sadie Mae. The couple says it was an all-hand-on-deck situation to string lanterns and create a canopy of greens in the space. ”Anthony’s mom went above and beyond, preparing so much food with his grandma and aunts [including] a banh mi charcuterie board, spring rolls, salads, and an entire baby pig that she ordered from a Chinese restaurant in New Jersey,” says the bride. “We definitely took some liberties and did things our own way, like switching out the traditional tea for shots of tequila halfway through.” The couple wanted to keep things traditional with their attire, so they both wore custom ao dai for the ceremony. “For this, we turned to our friend, Tin Nguyen, who is part of the New York-based brand CFGNY,” they share. “We trust his taste so much and knew that he would make us feel fabulous. We went to Mood Fabrics together to pick out material and then sent them off to the tailor that he works with in Saigon to execute his vision. He exceeded our wildest dreams.”
