Most brides spend the morning of their wedding day sitting stoically in a hair and make-up chair, rehearsing their vows, but Stephanie Nass is not most brides. As chef and founder of the culinary lifestyle brand Chefanie , Stephanie gave her wedding day the same treatment she gives all her events, with a devoted approach so hands-on that, per the bride, “Even the morning of the wedding, I woke up early to bake cookies and get the meal in order!” On 2 June 2024, Stephanie wed David Ulevitch, general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, in a backyard wedding at her childhood home in Westchester, New York. With a bespoke toile fabric featuring personalised illustrations of people and places of significance to the couple, customised embroidered linens, and hand-painted dinner menus – all in a summery, colour-splashed alfresco aesthetic – guests of the wedding were surprised to learn that the couple had but 10 weeks to plan their big day.
The couple got engaged while skiing in Montana in March and the wedding arrived less than a year after Stephanie and David met because, as the saying goes, when you know, you know. There was no reason to waste a moment before exchanging their I dos. Stephanie, who is the author of the forthcoming cookbook, Swing By! , published by Rizzoli, also just so happened to be prepping a meal when she first met David at a party in Easthampton on 14 July 2023.
“I had come from another dinner but kept my appetite for this second one,” explains Stephanie. “However, when I arrived, there was no food. There were some ingredients in the kitchen, and I started grilling them.
At the grill, I met David. We started a conversation that lasted hours that night – and continues every day.” “I was getting ready to leave when a gorgeous woman, who had clearly been dressed for a fancier party earlier in the evening, walked in,” David added.
“A few months later, we bumped into another person who had been at the party. She was shocked that that was the night we’d met; she thought we’d been together for years. It felt that way, and has every single day since.
” A first date would soon follow: David picked up Stephanie with a bouquet of hydrangeas, and instantly, it became their flower. (On their wedding day, Stephanie’s dresses featured hydrangea embroideries, as did David’s Stubbs and Wooten loafers.) After getting engaged on their ski trip, (“I could have proposed to Stephanie a week after I met her, but waited eight months,” says David), they set the date to be just 10 weeks later.
The location? Stephanie’s family home. “I had always dreamt of getting married at my childhood home in Westchester, NY, as it is such a tranquil and beautiful setting,” she says. Leave it to Stephanie to then plan a no-detailed-spared event in a matter of months.
“It was a 300-person wedding for 30 people, and it was absolutely perfect. Naturally, Stephanie was perfecting the table even after she put on her wedding dress,” says David. With a sunny weather forecast, the day took place largely outdoors.
(Beforehand, a legal ceremony took place at Manhattan’s City Hall, followed by a celebratory dinner hosted at Daniel Boulud’s Maison Barnes – Mr Boulud even made an appearance himself). As the bride and groom are both Jewish, the day started with the signing of the ketubah, which was adorned in a lace-like pattern that matched the gold embroidery on the Giambattista Valli dress Stephanie wore for the religious ceremony. Next came time for Stephanie to ready herself for her walk down the aisle.
With the ease of a bride in her own home, she dotted the Is and crossed the Ts of her decor, table arrangements and desserts. For her dress, Stephanie wore a two-piece look created with the help of Moran Kashi of Kashi Couture: a silk strapless corset top and a sweeping trained skirt. Both featured appliqués of hydrangea blooms, which Stephanie designed herself.
On her veil, dainty embroideries of vines in powdery green and blue cascaded (her something blue). Nass topped off the look with her mother’s five-strand pearl necklace (her something borrowed) and a pearl bracelet that was a gift from her grandmother (her something new). The bride walked down the aisle to “I Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley.
She met her groom beneath a flower-festooned chuppah, which featured a tallis wedding canopy that was passed down from David’s great-grandfather. “During the ceremony, I felt absolute bliss,” says Stephanie. “Afterward, David and I spent a few moments alone together in the house before we joined everyone for cocktail hour outside.
” Stephanie then slipped into something more comfortable, trading her silk corset for a hydrangea T-shirt that David had made her in their early days of dating. Guests then took their seats at a very Chefanie table for late lunch. Overhead, raffia lanterns florist Zeke Westerman decorated with dried flowers hung above the tables, while Stephanie and David laid linens which they intend to keep in rotation in their new household – a symbol-laden toile tablecloth in white and blue and monogrammed U napkins.
(“As tableware is my business, I put everything into production the way I produce Chefanie products. I supplemented the custom pieces with other lifetime favourites,” says Stephanie.) Down the centre of the table, like a runner, was a 28-foot-long cake peppered with cherries and sprouting with ranunculus flowers.
For the cake-cutting, Stephanie then changed into a vintage white Chanel dress and the party then migrated over to the pool – but not before one last outfit change into a white bathing suit and fringed Emilio Pucci cover-up to lounge poolside with her closest friends, family, and, of course, her now-husband. “I feel so glad that we got married exactly the way that we did,” Stephanie adds..
