As someone who began attending the Met Gala in her teens, Ali Lebow knew that curating the perfect wardrobe would be her main priority when planning her wedding. “I love fashion so much that I knew that this is where I wanted to invest my time,” she tells Vogue. But first, of course, she would need to find the perfect person to spend the rest of her life with.
The Manhattan native met Brooklyn-born Jake Nidenberg at a friend’s apartment as the world was beginning to open up after COVID. “I hadn’t seen a man in seven months, so I was completely feral,” the TikTok brand strategist jokes. “He was way more considered and actually wanted to get to know me—to my dismay.” After three months as friends, Jake asked Ali out on a date. “When he made a move, we had built this foundation for us,” she says. A short period of “long-distance dating” between Manhattan and Brooklyn concluded with the couple moving in together in Boerum Hill. “My little Upper East Side self lives in Brooklyn with him and I love it so much,” Ali says.
Jake would later propose on the beach near her family home in East Hampton. Although Ali says the Booknook CFO can be a “math nerd,” Jake showed 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.”
That careful attention anticipated 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 did not have a particular “dream wedding dress” going in. “My goal was never to look classic or timeless, because I think that’s boring,” she explains. “I just wanted to hopefully create some things that felt different. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea and I understand that.”
One of the first steps in building her wedding wardrobe was hiring bridal stylist Carrie Goldberg. “If I’m gonna put my money for this wedding literally anywhere, it’s going to be with her, because I just knew I needed a sounding board,” Ali says. The bride admits 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 see it as someone who can interpret my thoughts and share in my vision,” she says. “Even though I didn’t have a dream dress, I had a dream experience of creating something with someone I really admired.”
Photo: Afrik Armando