On the day of my wedding dress fitting, I texted Chioma Nnadi, my most trusted fashion friend: “Come to Le Meurice at 4 p.m.”
“Omg! Honeymoon before the wedding,” she wrote back. “So cool.”
Up until that point, my wedding planning process had been decidedly low-key. It was always going to be more party than “wedding.” The ceremony would be at New York City Hall, and the reception, as it were, would be dim sum at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Midtown. We emailed fliers in lieu of sending paper invitations, and there would be no flowers; no traditional wedding anything. But the dress had become a bit of a moment.
While my vision for the wedding party was clear, for a long time I had no real sense of what I wanted to wear. As I cast about for ideas, I was introduced to Svitlana Bevza, a Ukrainian fashion designer. She’d helped another friend, Liana Satenstein, create her dream wedding look, which had a very specific brief: a cream suit a la Michelle Pfieffer in Scarface that also made sense for an Orthodox Jewish ceremony. Somehow she got the assignment—and Liana—completely.
After a few WhatsApp messages, we hopped on the phone and started talking through ideas. It was clear she had already done her research, scrolling back through my Instagram to get a sense of my style. Bevza explained that when designing a dress, she wants to capture the woman outside of her wedding day.
“I looked at the outfits that you really love to wear in your life, that you choose by yourself,” Bevza said. “The process of creating is the most exciting part for me.”
Miraculously she landed on an all-time favorite look of mine: a corseted number with, quite literally, a full ballerina skirt and a hint of saloon. (Actually, this vintage dress came from Chioma’s closet.) Bevza envisioned the bodice in luminous ivory satin and the skirt in a playful silk taffeta. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
There was only one problem: How would I ever try this perfect dress on? Bevza had no atelier in New York; she was based in London, where she’d relocated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the idea of just praying on a DHL package wasn’t going to work for me. A month later, I was going to be in Paris for work, so Bevza and I planned to rendezvous for my first—and final—fitting.
