Inside Chloë Sevigny’s Elegant, Emo Connecticut Wedding

New Cannan’s Waveny Park is where Chloë always wanted to have her reception. “I hung out there as a kid doing acid and being a wild child,” she says. “This [venue] would be my fantasy dream wedding. Unfortunately, we landed on a Sunday so we had to be out of the venue by 10:00 p.m.”

When it came to planning, Chloë worked with Chris Hessney of Hessney & Co, who’d been recommended to her by Lauren Santo Domingo, Fabiola Beracasa, and Karin Nelson. Her longtime stylist Haley Wollens oversaw her wardrobe for the day. “She’s dressed me for all of my most important events—Cannes, different premieres, and yada yada,” Chloë says. “She was like, ‘Yes, but I have to do the whole thing. Bridesmaids, everything.’ It was so much work. We sent a lot of photos back and forth of silhouettes that worked on me, and things we’d seen in the past.”

Both Haley and Chloë were excited about Glenn Martens. “Serendipitously, he was doing Gaultier Couture this season, so we were like ‘Wow, maybe there’s going to be something there,” Chloë says. They fell in love with Look 8, a sheer ruffled number. “It was a godsend that they were willing to make me the dress.”

The only issue was there was a substantial train. “I couldn’t really dance at my own wedding [in the dress],” Chloë admits. “That’s not practical. I also had this long-standing relationship with JW Anderson, so we worked very closely on the second look.” The resulting short white Loewe dress had a square neckline and big, billowy sleeves.

Mugler’s Casey Cadwallader was tapped for the third look of the night—an ivory catsuit with a sheer bustier and matching pants that flared out into bell bottoms. “I’ve worn Casey at Cannes,” Chloë notes. “He sent some sketches, and Haley was very hand-holding with all of the designers and really looked out for me.” She accessorized with a white handbag embellished with a gold bow. For shoes, they pulled a million Manolos. Jewels were borrowed from Kentshire.

There was a no-phones policy during the ceremony. “I really wanted no phones,” Chloë says. “People are so used to pulling it out. Even if you tell them, they will just pull it out. You have to put a sticker on the camera. I was worried that was tacky, but everyone said it was the only way, so we got these really cute stickers with a photo of us kissing on them, and my brother walked in before [the ceremony] and asked everyone to respect our wishes and not document the service.”

The ceremony was “tears all around,” Chloë says. Vanja and his cousins walked down the aisle in sailor outfits that the mother of the bride had brought back from Austria. “It was really important for me to get married in the eyes of god and amongst my loved ones,” Chloë says of her feelings at the altar. “There was a real reverence for the institution, which is a difficult word for a lot of people. We really wanted to do this, we wanted to do it front of our friends and family. It felt really right.”

Flowers had been done by Chloë’s friend Ezra Woods and his company Pretend Plants & Flowers. After the ceremony concluded, cherry blossoms and lilacs were thrown in the air as the newlyweds walked out of the church. Chloë’s brother Paul was there in a vintage Mercedes to pick up the happy couple and whisk them away to the reception—Diet Coke and La Croix cans trailing behind. “Everyone was cheering, crying, and taking out their phones,” Chloë says. “Ripping the stickers off!”

Cocktails commenced on the terrace of Waveny House while High Time, a Grateful Dead cover band, played in the background. “I wanted that kind of energy,” Chloë says.

At dinner inside, there was a long table for close friends and family that Chloë referred to as The Godfather table. “We had our families at either ends and friends giving speeches–there were 130 people total.” Tomahawk steaks and golden potatoes were served. “It was a very meat-and-potatoes affair,” Chloë says. After dinner, the couple cut the sculptural cake by Aimee France, aka Yungkombucha. Then it was time to dance. “I didn’t want to sit down again,” Chloë says. “Let’s just get this party started.” Chloë and Siniša’s first dance was to Bjork’s “Cosmogony.” “Bjork invited us to The Shed when she was playing that residency there,” Chloë remembers. “She played this song with an Icelandic choir, and we were both moved to tears. During lockdown, we had the baby in May 2020, and we rented a house in Connecticut for a bit so my mom could help and we could all be together. We found ourselves listening to this song almost every night. We found so much comfort and solace in it. We found it very comforting during a time that was so terrifying.”

After lots of dancing, Chloë changed into her third look of the night, which took a bit of finagling. “It had this zipper that went up the bum, and it was also the lacing. It took a few people to get it just right.” Once she was in, guests loaded onto buses and the newlyweds got in a car. The next stop? Paul Casablanca, a Moroccan-inspired cocktail lounge on Spring Street, where the party went until 4 a.m.

“The next morning was not the most fun,” Chloë jokes. “Chris Hessney got us a room at the Bowery. My sister-in-law stayed with our baby—that’s what family is for. We had stopped at St. Mark’s [on the way to the hotel] and got a slice of pizza. We basically slammed pizza at 4:30 a.m.”

Days later, the bride is still riding a high. “Everybody keeps saying how it changed their idea of how a wedding can be,” she says of the celebration. “All of these people who were not into weddings are saying how they loved it. I think it was really special, it was very personal. One of my friends described it as the most emo wedding she’s ever been to. I was like yeah, it was very emo.”