This Vogue Editor Bride Wore Custom Emilia Wickstead for Her Brooklyn Waterfront Wedding
By Willow Lindley’s own admission, she and her fiancé Eric Reeves had a “failure to launch” when it came to planning their wedding. After they got engaged in 2019—Eric hid a diamond ring in a tin of Willow’s favorite loose-leaf tea—they were immediately bombarded with questions about the when and where they were getting married. But a year quickly turned into two, and two turned into three. They still didn’t have any answers. By year four, even the nosiest aunt left them alone. “Our friends and family had completely given up on asking us when we were planning to finally get married,” Willow says, laughing. “We’re both quite private people and neither of us loved the idea of being the center of attention.”
That all changed on Valentine’s Day in 2024. Willow, the fashion market and collaborations director at Vogue, was seated between Vogue events consultant Eaddy Kiernan Bunzel and Vogue.com editor Chloe Malle at the Thom Browne show. They wouldn’t take her evasive “one day!” as an answer. “They really lit a fire under me about getting married!” Willow says. “Eaddy then proceeded to follow up with me almost daily until I started to really think about what we were going to do.” (After all, as one of the masterminds behind the Met Gala, Eaddy is a person who gets things done.)
The idea came to Willow one April day on the ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan. While at the Dumbo stop, she saw the River Café—the storied Michelin-starred restaurant in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Within hours, Eaddy had made contact with its onsite events planner. They only had one weekend date available, August 9—which happened to be the day before Willow and Eric’s 10-year anniversary. “It all felt like kismet after so long,” Willow says.
With only four months between then and August, the wedding planning process was fast and furious. Willow asked Raúl Àvila, whom she frequently works with at Vogue, to do the decor. Eaddy, meanwhile, stepped in to coordinate with the River Café. The save-the-dates went out the night before the Met Gala. “I think a couple of my friends thought I was having a nervous breakdown,” she says.
Then, there was the dress. “You’d think a fashion editor would know exactly what to wear to her wedding. False!” She says, laughing. Eventually, she asked British designer Emilia Wickstead if she could remake a dress that originally debuted in her Spring 2023 collection, but in white. She agreed—and even added a cape. “She had the dress ready in three weeks,” Willow says. “She’s truly a miracle worker.”
Wickstead still had one more miracle to perform. A week before the wedding, DHL lost Willow’s wedding dress somewhere in Leicester, England. Her team worked tirelessly to track it down—and, at one point, even began making her an entirely new dress. At the last possible moment, they got the call: DHL had found the package. Emilia, who had a trunk show in the Hamptons the same week as Willow’s wedding, personally delivered the dress to the bride in New York City two days before she was set to walk down the aisle. (“Oh, my God,” Emilia says about the ordeal, laughing. “Willow was the most relaxed bride I’ve ever possibly met in my life!”)
The dress required a few last-minute alterations. So Willow called Cha Cha Zutic, the beloved dressmaker and seamstress who often works on Vogue shoots. She made the final tweaks overnight. “One of my favorite pictures from the wedding is of me and Cha Cha hugging as she zipped up the dress and it fit perfectly—at 3:30 p.m. before the 5:30 pm ceremony,” Willow says.
The bride and groom got ready at Fouquet’s New York in Tribeca over bagels and lox from Russ & Daughters. (Although Willow snuck down to its Spa Diane Barrière for some R&R before it was time for makeup.) Her friends Mia, Gabi, and Rebecca came to watch her get ready. “I’m so happy they were there with me, especially because we didn’t have time to do something like a bachelorette with the short planning window, and we didn’t want to be super-formal with a wedding party,” she says. Meanwhile, another friend, photographer Hunter Abrams, came over to start taking pictures.
The couple had their first look on the Fouquet’s balcony. Despite them believing they weren’t “wedding people,” it turns out they very much were: “We both got really choked up. I just remember Eric kind of croaking out ‘look at you’ and me trying so hard not to completely fall to tears,” Willow says. The groom greeted his bride in a linen Ralph Lauren tuxedo and a pair of Louboutin velvet slippers, along with turquoise and silver Tiffany & Co. cuff links that Willow had given him as a birthday present years ago.
After an adventurous Uber ride where the driver had to jump-start his engine, Willow and Eric wed outside the River Café right before a rainstorm began. Her brother Bailey played “Here Comes the Sun”—a song they listened to on the first night they met—while her father served as an officiant. (“I asked Eric who he thought should marry us and without hesitation, he said my father,” Willow says. “Eric called my dad and asked him. Overhearing that call was one of the highlights of the whole wedding for me.”) Both their respective mothers walked them down the aisle.
They said “I do” just in the nick of time, as the skies opened up and the party rushed inside the River Café for a cocktail hour. Waiters served chorizo pigs in a blanket, potato pancakes with apple sauce, and salmon with caviar on corn blinis as legendary pianist Dom Salvador played on. On the tables were rocks that Willow’s mother collected in Montauk and painted with guest names. (The Long Island beach town holds a special meaning for the bride, whose family has been vacationing there since she was a child.)
“The food was fantastic,” Willow says of her wedding dinner, which included pear salad, lobster, and steak. “Eric and I wanted to roam around and talk to everyone, which we did, but we didn’t miss a course,” she says. King, the head server at River Café, even slipped them an extra dessert to take home at the end of the night.
After several toasts from friends and family, the couple’s friend and DJ Marques Emanuel got the party started. The first person on the dance floor? The groom’s niece, who did the worm. As the night turned into morning, Willow and Eric went back to Fouquet’s—and realized they’d forgotten to sign their marriage contract. On their terrace overlooking the city, they finally made it official just before midnight. “We had two of our friends, both named Eric, sign as witnesses,” Willow says. “Three Erics and a Willow make a marriage."
Now that it’s all over, the once reluctant bride says she’s still basking in her post-wedding glow. “It was a perfect night,” she says.
Photo: Hunter Abrams1/52I had a blast getting ready at Fouquet’s with the most wonderful hair and make-up team—Adam Maclay (hair) and Ashleigh Ciucci (make-up). Nothing better than mega-talented friends on your big day!
Photo: Hunter Abrams2/52Maybe my favorite moment, other than saying “I do,” was when the one-and-only Cha Cha Zutic came with my dress after being up all night to make sure it would fit perfectly. Superstar. This was at 4 p.m. and the wedding was at 5 p.m., so a little down to the wire.
Photo: Hunter Abrams3/52Dress success!
Photo: Hunter Abrams4/52My best friends Gabi Zecchetto, Mia Johnson, Rebecca Fourteau, and Adam Maclay the moment the dress was on. Rebecca is a wonderful film maker in addition and we were lucky to have her capturing video throughout the wedding.
Photo: Hunter Abrams5/52Cha Cha admiring her hard work. Again, superstar. I’m so thankful for her.
