Joey and Gina met while playing Dungeons & Dragons, where their characters quickly became friends in the game. Two years later, they admitted their mutual crushes and began dating. For a long time, Joey and Gina believed they simply weren’t “marriage” people. After purchasing rings for one another to wear, because everyone thought they were married anyway, they eventually realised that an engagement felt right after all.

“We had already committed to each other a long time ago,” they explained, and celebrating that commitment with a party felt like the natural next step. They marked the occasion with an ‘engagementmoon’, traveling to Japan to propose to one another. Gina proposed at midnight while the two were snuggled in bed, and a few hours later, Joey returned the gesture in a moss garden tucked within the heart of a Kyoto forest.

Having met through a fantasy game, Joey and Gina knew whimsy and elegance would guide the vision for their wedding day. Their theme imagined a speakeasy overtaken by the Feywild, with inspiration drawn from the work of Alphonse Mucha, the Art Nouveau movement, and subtle nods to the fall season. Hosted at Carondelet House in Los Angeles, the venue’s vintage furnishings and brick interiors offered a timeless backdrop that transported guests to another realm.

During the ceremony, the couple brewed a love potion cocktail, with each ingredient symbolising a different aspect of their future together. They exchanged vows in front of a Mucha-inspired altar, encircled by a handmade faerie ring of mushrooms.

Gina wore a Galia Lahav gown in dusty pink and silver fabrics with intricate applique, paired with a secondhand headpiece that perfectly complemented the forest-inspired aesthetic. Guests embraced the dress code, arriving in whimsical formal attire – sequins, vibrant gowns, hair crowns, and mythical flourishes.

Florals were vining and organic, rich in tone and texture, with Gina’s bouquet trailing with ivy. Burlesque faeries performed the Celtic handfasting ceremony before leading the couple into their first dance. Artful and playful moments followed throughout the evening, including a live painter creating portraits of derrières and burlesque faeries mingling with guests. Candlelight and lanterns glimmered across the space, from chandeliers overhead to jewel-adorned performers casting the celebration in magic.

Joey and Gina abandoned traditional wedding party categories too. Instead of bridesmaids and groomsmen, they created a shared ‘fae court’. “There are a lot of gendered roles and ideologies built into the traditions and marketing of weddings”, Gina said. “So many men asked Joey if he was even involved in the details of his wedding, and were shocked to hear how much we were partners in the planning process. Even the idea of splitting our bridesmaids and groomsmen down the line. We had a ‘fae court,’ and they were all a part of it. Why should Gina get all the women and Joey all the men when these are OUR closest friends on the planet? It felt great having all of them together for both of us.”

With such a strong vision for their wedding, they knew they’d need an incredible wedding planner, and they found one in Jessica Foster Events. “We knew we wanted a planner, and we knew we needed a planner, and we can’t imagine doing this process without the amazing Jessica Foster. She saved us in every conceivable way and made the experience unforgettable.”

Looking back, they say one thing deserves more attention in wedding conversations. “Prepare for the ‘post wedding blues’. You just spent presumably several months pouring a lot of energy and vulnerability in an event. You will need time to recover both physically and emotionally. Especially if you aren’t going on a honeymoon right away.”

For Joey and Gina, building a wedding outside of expectation created space for something that felt familiar from the beginning. “Our favourite part of planning was just how liberating and freeing it was. We didn’t feel bound by any of the more traditional wedding obligations and traditions that always felt inauthentic to ourselves. Getting to invent our own traditions and treat the whole night like a very personal production let us express our passions.”