Our wedding was called Oyster Pearl in Candlelight: a late-summer salon dinner on the Brooklyn waterfront
Tell us a little about yourselves, what you do, what you love…
We’re both psychotherapists with private practices in Brooklyn, and we both trained in psychoanalysis. We live in Prospect Heights in an apartment full of books, run by our two cats, Belle and Joni, who are sisters.
Outside of work, we’re happiest in the city together: a lecture at the Morgan, a strange little off-Broadway play, a movie at BAM, or a long walk that turns into dinner. Robby loves art and music; I love a theme, a reference, and a good story. We both love philosophy, martinis, and laughing at the same things. We wanted the wedding to look exquisite but still feel completely like us.
How/where/when did you meet — and what were your first impressions?
We met on the first day of a graduate clinical internship at a harm reduction clinic in Harlem. We were put in a windowless room with a binder of onboarding guidelines, and within two minutes we were making jokes about it. I felt like I already knew him. I liked him immediately, which is exactly why I ignored him.
Seven years of friendship followed: dinners, long talks, and a few overtures from Robby that I somehow neither accepted nor declined. After I came home from a year in Los Angeles, I asked him to dinner in Brooklyn. That was the summer of 2022, and we’ve been together ever since.
What styling and visual elements worked best for you?
Our wedding was called Oyster Pearl in Candlelight: a late-summer salon dinner on the Brooklyn waterfront, as if the guests had been transported from a Gilded Age height-of-the-season party into a glass room beside the water. Everything grew from one object, the oyster shell: grey-green-blue on the outside, warm cream and iridescence within. Our rule was warm room, cool figures, aged everything. If it looked like a baby shower, it was out. If it looked like a Sargent watercolour left in the sun, it was in.
The River Café itself gave the wedding its sense of enchantment. It felt secluded, vintage, and almost secret, with glass, dark wood, water, skyline, and night around us. The party moved constantly between the room and the terrace. Guests drifted outside into the warm air and then returned to tables glowing with ivory tapers, greenery, grapes, flowers, and candle wax. It felt like an open-air salon — a beautiful dinner in transit, with a quiet ocean-liner undertone inspired partly by Titanic.
The room was made of candlelight. We kept the River Café’s silverware, but replaced the chargers with iridescent mother-of-pearl chargers and the tablecloths with velvet ivory linens from BBJ La Tavola. Robby and I sourced vintage Art Nouveau fairy lamps from eBay, which we loved. Against that foundation, Edelweiss created a garden: white ranunculus, tiny white garden blooms, trailing greenery, and grapes running through the tables. The whole table read as one still life — ivory, cream, pale green, shell, velvet, silver, and flame.
I was the pearl, and the bridesmaids were the shell. Each chose her own satin or silk in a shade from sea-glass through celadon and patina to duck egg and steel blue, “the colour of weather,” so that standing together they looked like they had stepped out of the same painting.
For dinner, I changed from structured ivory Mikado into pale blue smocked lace. It was softer, more undone, and the look that felt most like me. Jennifer Behr hair gems were woven through my hair so the pearls and crystals looked caught in it rather than placed on top of it.
What did you enjoy most about the planning process, and do you have any tips for couples starting their wedding planning journey?
The part we enjoyed most was deciding what the day should feel like, then watching people who were brilliant at their jobs make it real. Handing over a world of paintings, oysters, pearls, pale blue silk, candlelight, and old objects and getting it back as flowers, music, food, and a room full of people was a thrill.
Our tips: decide early what you want the day to feel like in one sentence. Ours was “exquisite, but not pretentious,” and it made a hundred small decisions easier. Hire a planner if you possibly can and let them carry the logistics. Lindsay at Opulent Events took so much off our plates. Spend where it matters to you and let the rest be simple. And don’t over-script everything. The unrehearsed moments are the ones we remember most.
Tell us about your vendors. Were there any standout suppliers you would like to make special mention of?
Truly every one of them, but a few deserve special mention.
Jenna Opsahl has an eye that feels like painting, which is exactly what we hoped for. She caught the candlelight, the terrace, the room in motion, and all the in-between moments. Looking through the gallery feels like being back inside the evening.
Romana of Romana New York understood the beauty language immediately: luminous, flushed, pearlescent, romantic, and a little excessive in the right way. She carried the look from “Ophelia in candlelight” to the pale blue second look and the Jennifer Behr hair gems.
Lindsay Detjen of Opulent Events kept every moving part in line. The River Café gave us the hidden waterfront setting, the food, the service, and the view. Edelweiss Floral Atelier made flowers that felt loose, garden-gathered, and alive rather than formal or over-arranged. BBJ La Tavola’s velvet ivory linens and the iridescent chargers helped create the material foundation of the room.
Alex Edge & Co. handled the music from the string quartet in the garden to the dance floor. We commissioned custom string arrangements of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” for the bridesmaids and Steve Horner’s version of “There She Goes” for my walk down the aisle, created by Aziz Sapaev. Hearing familiar songs transformed into chamber music was one of the most beautiful parts of the day.
Tell us about your main outfits, what was unique, and is there a story?
Our looks came from the same idea as the rest of the day: a pearl, and the inside of its shell.
For the ceremony, I was the pearl, ivory and structured. I wore the Truman gown by Augusta Jones in ivory Mikado, altered at Kleinfeld Bridal, with a cathedral-length chiffon veil by Sewing Inc. My jewellery was borrowed from Robby’s mother, Stacey: a diamond choker and matching diamond drop earrings she bought in Vienna. Wearing something of hers meant a lot to me. My hair was set in loose, Pre-Raphaelite waves with Jennifer Behr pieces, and Romana did my makeup. We called the look “Ophelia in candlelight.”
For dinner, the structure came off. I changed into MONTSAND’s pale blue smocked open-back lace maxi dress. Where the Mikado was precise, this was gauzy, romantic, pale, and almost otherworldly. Romana and I kept the hair soft and added the Jennifer Behr gems throughout. Of the two looks, it was the one that felt most like me.
Robby wore a Suitsupply tuxedo with a custom pleated shirt from Proper Cloth, mother-of-pearl studs, a family-heirloom cummerbund, and black patent Belgian loafers by MORJAS. He looked completely like himself, just at his most handsome.
Tell us about your wedding and engagement rings.
All of our rings — my engagement ring and both wedding bands — are from Macha Studio in Greenpoint, and we love them. They’re a little unconventional and very us. The best part is on the inside, where each one is engraved with a piece of our love story.
Mine has our initials, our wedding date, and the words “Then he did.” It comes from the night I realised I was in love with Robby. We had been friends for years, and I was sitting across from him at dinner when it hit me. I went to the bathroom to reapply my lip gloss, honestly unsure whether I was on a date with the love of my life or just out with a friend. Then came bodegas and martinis, and his new apartment: full of psychoanalytic books and so completely him that I saw him in a new way. He made us martinis, we sat on the couch, and I noticed myself having one thought for the first time: I hope he kisses me. Then he did.
Robby’s says “My green light,” with our initials. The year we met as interns, he reread The Great Gatsby and identified with Gatsby’s longing for Daisy across the water. For years, I was his green light. It feels right that we finally got married on the water.
What were one or two elements that were most important to you both that you were happy to spend a little more on?
Hair and makeup, honestly, and I don’t regret a penny. The whole look of the wedding lived or died on skin and hair in candlelight. Romana translated the idea into dewy pearlescent skin, visible flush, glossy bitten lips, dreamy eyes, loose romantic hair, pearls, and then a more undone pale-blue second look with dripping hair gems.
Our other splurge was photography. All of that work exists for one evening, and then it’s gone, so we wanted Jenna Opsahl there to make pictures that feel like paintings — not just portraits of us, but the room, the terrace, the guests, the flowers, and the night as it was actually lived.
Was there a favourite moment — or two — that you will treasure always?
We skipped a first look, so the first time Robby saw me was as I came down the aisle to the custom string-quartet arrangement of Steve Horner’s “There She Goes.” The bridesmaids had entered to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” also transformed into chamber music, and the contrast made the ceremony feel both personal and cinematic.
Our vows are another memory I will always keep. We had agreed not to write personal vows because we’re private and worried it would feel like a performance. Then, getting ready in separate rooms, each of us quietly wrote some anyway.
Later, the party spilled onto the terrace. People moved between the candlelit room and the warm air outside, returning to the tables and then drifting away again. That feeling — the room glowing behind us, the water beyond it, everyone in motion — is one of the clearest memories of the night.
What does being married mean to you, and are there any special rituals you have that you would like to share?
My vows began, “I have no expectations of you.” Robby is the first person I’ve been with where I never have to be something I’m not. I don’t have to perform. I can just be.
I ended with a passage from Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd: “Theirs was that substantial affection which arises … when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other’s character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality.”
We knew each other for years before we fell in love. I told him I loved all the rougher sides of his character and couldn’t wait to see how our romance grew out of the everyday moments ahead of us.
We play pickleball, make martinis afterwards, and read psychoanalysis to each other. We also love YouTube, anything strange or uncanny, like the Dyatlov Pass incident or the fungus that turns ants into zombies
LOCATION The River Café, Brooklyn, New York, USA, @therivercafe BRIDE April, @aprillrohr GROOM Robby PHOTOGRAPHER Jenna Opsahl, @jennaopsahl SECOND PHOTOGRAPHER Taylor Heby, @taylorheby.photo VIDEOGRAPHER Glenn Switzer, @glennswitzer PLANNER Lindsay Detjen – Opulent Events Planning, @opulenteventsplanning FLORIST Edelweiss Floral, @edelweissfloral CELEBRANT Friend of the couple, Henry Hall ENTERTAINMENT String quartet, ceremony and cocktail music, DJ – Alex Edge & Co., @alexedgeandco HIRE Velvet vory linens – BBJ La Tavola, @bbjlatavola; Iridescent mother-of-pearl chargers – Party Rental Ltd., @partyrentalltd CATERING & CAKE The River Café, @therivercafe STATIONERY Minted, @mintedweddings ENGAGEMENT RING & WEDDING BANDS Macha Studio, @machastudio OTHER SIGNIFICANT JEWELLERY Diamond choker and matching diamond drop earrings – Borrowed from the groom’s mother; Hair jewellery – Jennifer Behr, @jenniferbehr BRIDE’S CEREMONY DRESS “Truman” gown in ivory Mikado – Augusta Jones, @augustajonesbrides BRIDAL BOUTIQUE Purchased and altered at Kleinfeld Bridal, @kleinfeldbridal BRIDE’S RECEPTION DRESS Blue Smocked Lace Maxi Dress, Spring/Summer 2026 – MONTSAND, @montsand_official BRIDE’S ACCESSORIES Cathedral-length chiffon veil by Maria Yagenich, Sewing Inc., @sewinginc; Hair accessories – Jennifer Behr, @jenniferbehr; Diamond choker & earrings – Borrowed from the groom’s mother HAIR Sunny for Romana New York MAKEUP Romana New York, @romananyc BRIDE’S FRAGRANCE Safanad by Parfums de Marly, @parfumsdemarly GROOM’S TUXEDO Suitsupply, @suitsupply GROOM’S SHIRT Custom pleated tuxedo shirt – Proper Cloth, @propercloth GROOM’S ACCESSORIES Family-heirloom cummerbund; Mother-of-pearl studs by Proper Cloth, @propercloth GROOM’S SHOES Black patent Belgian loafers by MORJAS, @morjasshoes GETTING READY LOCATION 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, @1hotel.bklynbridge GROOM’S REHEARSAL DINNER TUXEDO Chinese Tuxedo, @chinesetuxedo BRIDE’S REHEARSAL DINNER OUTFIT Vintage 1930s chartreuse silk satin gown from New York Vintage, @newyorkvintageinc
