The Brides Sang Their Vows at This Art-Filled Wedding in the Catskills
Although Katja Hirche, the owner of Bernd Goeckler gallery, and Yolande Batteau, an interdisciplinary artist, moved in the same New York City circles for years, they didn’t meet until a matchmaking friend suggested Katja produce a show of Yolande’s work.
Yolande, of course, had heard of the gallery, but she says she assumed, quite incorrectly, that it was owned by “an older Belgian gentleman.” Katja, for her own part, saw the show as nothing more than a business proposition. She had no intention of dating, much less marrying, at the time. Yolande, while open to the idea of a romantic relationship, never anticipated a wedding so soon in her future.
Shortly after their initial meeting, Yolande, who was quite pleased that Katja was not in fact an old Belgian gentleman, sent her an email saying she had a crush on her.
Katja’s succinct reply—“you are welcome to have one”—left Yolande with little hope. Until they met again six months later to take the official portrait for the show.
“I didn’t know what to do with my hands during the photo shoot, so I asked her whether I could put my arm in hers,” Yolande says, adding that Katja’s touch “gave me this coup de foudre feeling.” Katja had a similar butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling and asked her to dinner. Yolande wasn’t sure it was a date, which was okay because neither was Katja. Although food was served, neither ate much. Spirited conversation, in which they finished each other’s sentences, became a most satisfying main course.
When they returned to the gallery, Katja presented Yolande with a bouquet of fritillaries and Iceland poppies, which just happen to be Yolande’s favorite flowers. Mutually smitten, the pair had two more back-to-back dates and their first real kiss during a stroll in Central Park before they officially became a couple. “It was like a movie,” Yolande says. “I was floating on air.” Adds Katja, “I knew I had met my soulmate.”
A week later, when they were at Foxhill, now their shared country home in Shandaken, New York, Katja made a proposal that had nothing whatsoever to do with Yolande’s artwork.
“I had called her mother first to ask for her permission,” Katja says. “I didn’t have an engagement ring, so I gave her a cherished keepsake—a heart with a bell inside that my mother had given me 20 years ago and that I’ve kept in my pocket ever since to keep my heart safe.”
Two months later, Katja moved into Yolande’s house in Brooklyn, and they began planning their wedding. “We waited a year and a half to get married,” Yolande says, “because we were charmed by the idea of a hasty but long engagement.”
The invitation, a handmade clay plate with the date, came with two vials of custom scents—one for Katja and one for Yolande—that were meant to be applied together to represent their union.
They created a curated ceremony referencing the Black Forest folktales of Katja’s childhood in Germany and their shared love of nature that Yolande likens to “a visual, aural, and scented poem to one another and our community.”
Their Foxhill, which is where artist Tyler Hays started his furniture line BDDW and where Gabriel Garcia Lorca wrote his poems about New York City, was turned into an interactive art installation, inside and out, and decorated with marigold plants and fritillaries.
Yolande commissioned Zaldy to create her gown, hand-painted cape, and headpiece—a process that involved nine months of collaboration. “Zaldy isn’t the first artist who comes to mind for weddings, but his exceptional tailoring and profound gift for color and shape are uniquely special,” Yolande says. “We referenced historical couture, Shinto fox weddings, the Ballets Russes, and regional headdresses, and then we just went for it.”