Ashley’s old friend Christian Louboutin gifted the bride the shoes of her choice. But I decided to have the jumpsuit that I was wearing the night we met done in white lace.” Jennifer suggested the playful matching bunny ears fascinator, which were so last-minute that she flew in to deliver them in person. “I have a ‘sartorial archive’-by which I mean I’m a hoarder-and I already own four or five dresses that could be considered wedding dresses, which is quite frightening. “As we were getting married so quickly, I really couldn’t be bothered to do the whole dress thing,” Kata remembers. He had 24 hours to source a hard plastic floor. It rained hard for a week before the wedding, and as Ashley had forgotten to put in any drains, the newly even field turned into a muddy swamp. True to form, however, England’s weather was as uncooperative as it could be. He leveled an undulant field to take the tent and used the displaced earth to make a memorial wedding mound. “Being very lazy and very poor, I went for the cheapest option, which I found on the Internet,” Ashley deadpans, “. “I just hate white marquees,” says Ashley, who instead sleuthed a striking Indian tent that was bathed in red light.

But we invited too many people, and I turned it over to Ashley, and it became. “I wanted to have a pizza party,” Kata remembers. The wedding party was planned on the grounds of Ashley’s country house in Oxfordshire, its legendary, architecturally geometric gardens laid out by his father in the 1970s.

“It’s good to have a sense of humor in a marriage,” said the registrar firmly, “but it is a serious commitment.” She and Ashley exchanged improvised rings that they had made from copper wire and were convulsed with laughter for much of the ceremony. (Ashley subsequently commissioned a more formal engagement ring from Solange Azagury-Partridge-a ruby-eyed viper.)įor the couple’s official registry office nuptials soon after, Kata wore a leopard-print version of the famous Fleur du Mal jumpsuit and a flamboyant Erickson Beamon necklace. Luckily, Kata had several Chanel rings that she acquired when she worked for the company. It was so spontaneous that he didn’t have a ring. Just another week later, Ashley was in Manhattan to see Kata again, and before he left for the airport-and with encouragement from his daughters, Angelica and Ambrosia (whose mother, the designer Allegra Hicks, is now married to the Marchese Roberto Mottola di Amato)-he proposed. “Actually, I just dropped her off at the airport.” Within a couple of minutes, we were old friends.”Ī week later, Ashley called on his old friend again. “You don’t have stiff, difficult conversations. “Because you’ve been following this person every day for six months, you get an insight into their character and personality,” says Ashley. “I’m legally blind and I choose not to wear corrective lenses because I prefer not to see people and their daily disapproving gazes,” laughs Kata, “so I told Ashley to look out for me-I’d be the person with the inflatable crocodile.” To Ashley’s considerable relief, the eight-foot rubber gator was deflated and folded under Kata’s arm when she walked in, striking a dramatic figure in a jumpsuit made by her friend Jennifer Zuccarini of Fleur du Mal. Earlier that day, Ashley met an old friend and told her he was having dinner later “with this crazy American woman I’ve made friends with on Instagram.” Though Ashley flatly denied that it was a date. “I could really only do dinner,” she remembers, so they decided on The Wolseley. Kata’s London schedule was frantic, but the two settled on a date.

Later, when Kata had a trip planned to London, she asked Donald if she could look up his friend Ashley. “They were quite spectacular with very witty banter.” Planning a talk at South by Southwest on the use on anthropomorphism in social media, Kata reached out to Ashley for some high-res images of those characterful hens, and he politely obliged. “I saw his Instagram and he had some really beautiful chickens,” Kata remembers in turn. And obviously it made wedding planning-which was all done on such short notice-much easier. There was really no debate on the wedding venue, as it would be almost impossible to find a more beautiful place to get married than our own backyard.

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