The Bride and Groom Said Their Vows Beneath a Floral Chuppah at This Hamptons Backyard Wedding
Growing up in Scarsdale, New York, Samantha Zaitz always knew who Benjamin Rudin was. “Everyone did!” she says. “Ben was probably the most popular thing to happen to Scarsdale.” He was in the same school year as Samantha’s older sister, and captained varsity basketball when her brother was a freshman. “Ben may have been on his way to becoming a basketball star at Middlebury College, where he was an all-American, and went on to play professionally in Israel, but he was also known as the nicest and most kind person,” Samantha adds. “Basically, my family was obsessed with him.”
Fast-forward 15 years and Ben’s name came up in conversation among the Zaitzes, which prompted Samantha to ask her brother to set her up. When he refused, she took matters into her own hands. “I did the modern day version of making the first move—I added him on Instagram,” she says. “He played it cool by waiting a day or two to accept my request, and then as corny as it sounds, immediately DM’d me, and we’ve spoken every single day since.”
Samantha, who works in her family’s agricultural development company and prides herself on being a fourth-generation farmer, and Ben, now the head of real estate sales for an AI company, dated for two years—one of which was long-distance between Los Angeles and New York—before becoming engaged. “After I graduated from Cornell University, I moved to L.A. to work in entertainment,” Samantha explains. “When I started seeing Ben, I was working at a talent agency as an assistant.” Ben would stay up until the wee hours to FaceTime with Samantha when she got home from work on the West Coast. “Between my demanding schedule and the time difference, it was a real commitment to make long-distance work, but we both knew it was worth it. After a little over a year of dating, and both of us flying back and forth between L.A. and NYC, he asked me to move in with him.” They moved in together in New York, and Ben proposed one year later.
Samantha and Ben initially planned to get married in France, a place where they had spent a lot of time vacationing as a couple. “We always wanted a destination wedding, and the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat felt perfect,” Samantha says. “We had a really memorable date night at that hotel the summer before and fell in love with it.”
But their wedding plans came to a crashing halt the first week in March. “My mom and I were getting ready to leave for a trip to Paris for my second-to-last dress fitting and a final food tasting,” Samantha remembers. “Days before we were about to leave, the COVID-19 outbreak was starting to grow rampant in Europe. With the number of cases spiking and the future being so uncertain, we decided it was best to call it. This was not an easy decision! However, the thought of keeping our plans and having them fall through last-minute was not something any of us could stomach. Looking back, I feel so relieved that we canceled when we did. The health and safety of our guests was the most important thing to us.”
They didn’t come up with a new plan until three weeks before their original wedding date in June. “We had been engaged since December 2018 and didn’t want to postpone and have to wait another year,” Samantha explains. “It also didn’t feel right to plan on a destination wedding only a year away with so much uncertainty in the world. At this point, Ben and I knew we just wanted to marry each other, but the question was: How can we do something that feels like us and is safe and appropriate during a pandemic?”
Samantha’s parent’s backyard in East Hampton, New York, suddenly became the obvious backup location. “Our planner, Jung Lee at Fête, came in and saved the day,” Samantha says. “She assured me that although it would be extremely small—and most importantly safe—we could still make it feel incredibly special and nice.”
Once the location changed, the bride’s wedding weekend wardrobe was also adjusted. She was initially meant to wear a custom haute couture gown by Ashi Studio, but with shutdowns in Italy and worldwide shipping delays, it wasn’t possible to get the dress in time. “The dress has since arrived, and it’s truly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” Samantha says. “It’s a real work of art. We will have to throw some sort of anniversary celebration in the future just so I have an excuse to wear it!”
For the ceremony, Samantha wore the Monique Lhuillier Bloom dress from the spring 2020 collection, which was originally intended for her rehearsal dinner. In an effort to make it unique, Samantha shortened the front. “Doing so felt right for the new wedding setting,” the bride explains. She completed her look with transparent Amina Muaddi heels and diamond studs borrowed from her mother. “Due to the shipping delays, my veil didn’t come in time,” Samantha notes. “Thankfully, my best friend, Hannah, who got married in January, offered to let me borrow her veil. I was so touched by her gesture and was thrilled to wear something of hers down the aisle. Not to mention it was also Monique and went perfectly with my dress.”
The dress code for the intimate group of 20 guests was “Hamptons garden party chic.” No ties and no formal suits. “My dad was a big fan of this ‘casual’ dress code,” Samantha says. “Given that everyone had been in quarantine, and this was their first outing in months, I didn’t want people to feel any sort of pressure.”
On the wedding day, the weather forecast didn’t predict rain, but it began pouring just as guests started arriving. The planners quickly changed course—yet again—and started serving cocktails before the ceremony. After 45 minutes, the rain cleared, and a string trio playing “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys signaled the beginning of the ceremony. Ben’s nephew Fisher and Samantha’s nephew Bear walked the couple’s two dogs, Honey and Hershey, down the aisle. “Fête made the dogs little floral collars, and it was the cutest thing!” Samantha says. “They put a smile on everyone’s face.”
