The Tamesis
As someone who’s been attending the Met Gala since she was a teenager, Ali Lebow knew that creating the perfect wardrobe would be her first priority when planning her wedding. “I love fashion so much that I knew this was where I wanted to invest my time,” she says Fashion. But first, of course, she needs to find the perfect guy to spend the rest of her life with.
The Manhattan native met Brooklyn-born Jack Niedenberg at a friend’s apartment just as the world was beginning to open up after the coronavirus pandemic. “I haven’t seen a man in seven months, so I’m totally feral,” the TikTok brand strategist joked. “He was more thoughtful and actually wanted to get to know me – much to my dismay.” Three months after becoming friends, Jack asked Ali out on a date. “When he took action, we laid that foundation for us,” she said. After a brief “long-distance date” between Manhattan and Brooklyn, the couple moved in together in Bollinger Hills. “My little Upper East Side self lives in Brooklyn with him, and I absolutely love it there,” Ali said.
Jack later proposed on a beach near her home in East Hampton. Although Ali said the Booknook CFO might be a “math nerd,” Jack showed off his “creative edge” by working with a jeweler to design her engagement ring himself. “He told me he went to the jeweler seven times and picked out every stone.”
This meticulous attention foreshadowed Ali’s own process of selecting all the looks for their New Year’s Eve wedding at the former Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn. The bride admits she doesn’t have a particular “dream wedding dress.” “My goal is never to look classic or timeless because I think that’s boring,” she explains. “I just wanted to create something that felt different. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and I understand that.”
The first step in creating her wedding outfit was hiring bridal stylist Kelly Goldberg. “If I was going to spend money on this wedding, I was going to spend it on her because I knew I needed a consultant,” Ali said. The bride admitted that some friends wondered why she would hire a stylist when she had such a strong sense of personal style and close ties to the fashion world. “I just look at it as someone who can interpret my ideas and share my vision,” she said. “Even though I didn’t have a dream dress, I had a dream experience creating something with someone I truly admired.”
Photo: Afric Armando
