The Bride Wore Erdem to Her Wedding at a Baroque Villa in Palermo
Tracy Dubb, the co-founder of the skincare company Isla Beauty, and Derek Davies, the co-founder of both record label Neon Gold and music technology startup Medallion, were first introduced in 2017 by their best friends Molly Howard and Ben Lovett. “They invited me to a show that Derek was putting on at the Public Hotel,” Tracy remembers. “But in true ‘me’ fashion, I showed up four hours late and there was no trace of the show or Derek. Luckily, they convinced him to come back, which he was understandably reluctant to do. A little after midnight, I was leaving the bathroom of the bar upstairs, and I walked right into Derek.”
Two years later, they got engaged in October of 2019—just before a big trip. “I was sure he was going to propose in Japan, which we were en route to when we stopped in Los Angeles,” Tracy explains. “I was supposed to have lunch with a friend, but she insisted I get a manicure with her instead, and then—even weirder—and she insisted on paying for it. But I still had no clue. Derek and I planned to meet back at the hotel before dinner when he was apparently going to propose. Once again, I was running really late, and I called him to let him know I’d just meet him at the restaurant. He was standing in our hotel room full of flowers and candles when I called him and said I wasn’t coming back, but was going to see my friend Jamie [Mizrahi] instead.” Derek then called Jamie to tell her to cancel their plans, with the message only reaching Tracy by the time she was almost on her friend’s doorstep. “I headed back to the room after that and was on a work call when I opened the door,” Tracy remembers. “I screamed and hung up on the person I was talking to. Hours later, when I resurfaced, I had to assure him that I was alive, well, and actually engaged!”
Their wedding was almost two years later, in September of 2022, in Palermo, Sicily. (Choosing Sicily as the destination for the wedding was an homage to Tracy’s grandparents, who were born and raised there.) Originally, however, the wedding was supposed to take place in the fall of 2020. “We had visited Palermo twice, picked our venues, and were getting ready to send out save the dates when Covid hit,” Tracy explains. “We postponed once the pandemic started, and thought we’d be able to go ahead in 2021. When that looked unlikely, we actually started to plan a wedding outside New York City, but as we got further into planning, we realized how badly we wanted to see our original vision through.” After Tracy became pregnant with the couple’s son in the summer of 2021, they decided to have a small civil ceremony at home officiated by Tracy’s brother and sister Steven and Lindsey, before forging ahead with their Sicily plan once again. “Timing was tricky however because the baby came in March, almost exactly 6 months before the wedding,” Tracy says. “It made for a hectic planning process, but our planners Riccardo Lanza of Lanza Baucina were amazing, and ultimately, we got there!”
Once in Italy, there were two nights of celebrations leading up to the wedding. The party started at a well-known Palermo bar that spills out into the streets called Botteghe Colletti. “The first was a party in the old city center of Palermo,” Tracy says. “It’s extremely historical and beautiful with a grittiness to it that you don’t expect, which is what we loved about it.” The second night was at the Villa Igea hotel, where many of the guests were staying. With ruins framing the pool and then a dramatic ocean view behind it, it made for a spectacular and classically southern Italian setting.
Guests entered the party to the theme song from The White Lotus piping throughout the entire hotel at Derek’s insistence—he wanted to create a very specific vibe. (Coincidentally, two weeks later it was announced the second season would take place in Italy.) Then, after cocktails, everyone sat for dinner at two long tables covered in two different Lisa Corti tablecloths. Over the next two hours, the beautiful meal was served and friends and family toasted the happy couple.
The ceremony and reception on Saturday were outside of Palermo in a small beach town called Bagheria. Historically, Bagheria was a seaside retreat for residents of Palermo, and in 1712, Villa Valguarnera was built. It is still inhabited by members of the original family, and they graciously allowed the couple to have their wedding there.
The bride wore a custom Erdem dress to the ceremony. “Designing it with Erdem and his team was one of the highlights of the entire experience,” Tracy says. “He has the most insanely beautiful fabrics and going through options for the dress was incredible. I don’t know how I finally made a choice. I thought I wanted a lace dress for the ceremony—because Sicily!—but we had loved these embroidered Mikado fabrics since we first started talking, and I realized that they gave a similar effect while also giving the dress structure. Most of all, I felt they were unique, so ultimately we went with the Mikado, which was made in Italy, and then we added the lace veil for extra drama, and it was a dream come true.”
