The Bride Wore a Vivienne Westwood Cape Embroidered With Her Own Artwork for Her California Movie Ranch Wedding
In 2016, artist Austyn Weiner and producer Dylan Lewis had a chance encounter at Burning Man. While lying on a giant bean bag in a zebra onesie, Austyn was joined by a man wearing just a loincloth. Without a word, the two kissed. She then walked away, satisfied with the chance encounter. “It was all very biblical,” she says, laughing.
Except what happened in the Black Rock Desert didn’t stay in the Black Rock Desert. A few months later, a friend asked Austyn if she could bring a friend to her studio. When she opened the door, there stood Dylan. This time, he was fully clothed.
“We immediately recognized each other, and thus began a six-year dance of artist and collector, friend, and crush,” she says. “Eventually the pandemic brought us to committing to one another and we never looked back.”
In 2022, Dylan proposed to Austyn at their friend’s house in Eze, France—a place of creative solace where she often goes to paint. “On the most picturesque afternoon, Dylan found me on our balcony, hair disheveled, taking out the trash in a 20 euro mumu I had bought off the side of the road. He told me to stand still so he could take a photo of me. Mid-photo, he dropped down to one knee and asked me to marry him,” she says.
Austyn gave a one-word response back: “Really?”
The couple knew they wanted to marry at the groom’s movie ranch, Blue Cloud, just north of Los Angeles, which doubles as a film production set and therefore is a blank slate. For the next two years, they turned Blue Cloud Ranch into what Austyn describes as their “very own world.” Dylan built a botanical garden and had their artist friends Stan Edmondson and Jen Stark come out and make site-specific works. Austyn herself painted a mural on the side of a shed. Meanwhile, her friend Naina Shah began work on their linens and ceramics. Austyn’s sisters, Amanda Alagem and Farryn Weiner, acted as a creative consultant throughout. “From the very beginning I wanted to take on a ‘Bring Your Own Talent’ approach to this wedding, so I called on all of the brilliant creative people in my life to collaborate with us,” she says. The couple also enlisted event planner Mindy Weiss to execute their vision. "Working with Dylan and I couldn’t have been easy as we are both artists,” Austyn admits. “But she got it, got us, and loved it.” They set their wedding for the early spring day of April 6.
On April 4, Austyn and Dylan had welcome drinks at the East Hollywood burlesque bar Jumbo’s Clown Room. The next night, they held their rehearsal dinner at Citizen News. Austyn turned the warehouse-like space into an exhibition, where she hung paintings she made from 2016 to the present—the exact years of their love story. Meanwhile, on the napkins were drawings the groom made the morning he proposed. “As a nod to the art of it all, Mindy decorated the tables with butcher paper and our seating ‘cards’ were custom crayons, so that guests could doodle on the tables while they ate dinner and socialized with other guests,” says Austyn. She wore a Chanel dress from Karl Lagerfeld’s Egyptian-inspired Métiers D’Art 2019 collection, paired with a vintage coral ring of her grandmother’s. The groom opted for a custom Bode jacket embroidered with his favorite books, the names of their family members, and his bride-to-be’s artwork.
On Saturday, the two wed upon a mesa with a sprawling view of Blue Cloud Ranch, its movie sets, and Edmondson’s sculptures in the distance. Austyn wore a custom corset dress and cape by Vivienne Westwood.
The 11-foot cape was a wearable canvas of Austyn’s art. Embroidered floral motifs from her painting The Last First Symphony were intertwined with hidden love notes written by the bride which all together created the illusion of patchwork lace. “So much went into the details of this cape,” Austyn says. “I am so honored to have collaborated with the Vivienne Westwood team on this project.”
Dylan was waiting for her at the end of their 100-foot yellow rug aisle adorned with flower-petal mandalas by Hart Floral. He wore a custom suit by Manuel Couture of Nashville—embroidered with the same signature flowers as her veil. “I think we both felt we were the most present we have ever been in our lives,” Austyn says. “Every moment of the ceremony felt like a little lifetime within it.”
After reading their vows and the breaking of the glass, Austyn and Dylan walked back down the aisle along with their dog, Pablo. They then headed into their trailer for a moment alone—as well as a hearty glass of Aperol spritz.
Meanwhile, their guests (many who embraced the couple’s dress code of “color encouraged”) enjoyed cocktail hour on the mesa during sunset, which was decorated with earth-toned velvet couches, wooden furniture, and brightly-patterned rugs.
In their dinner tent, Austyn and Mindy created an ambience that the bride describes as “1950’s Casablanca meets provincial France.” The walls were draped in sunflower yellows, sages, and Courbet greens, and the table settings included wicker and earth tones. Meanwhile, David Johnson of Leaf Cutter Studio made two neon signs of the couple’s drawings. The emotional pinnacle of the night came when they played a projection of a speech by Austyn’s father, who could not attend the wedding. “Everyone could feel his presence in the space. He delivered a killer speech that took the house down,” she said. “We were also able to have the whole ceremony and reception immersively live streamed on an iPad for my dad, so that he could feel like he was moving through the space and having as close an experience of being present as possible.”
For the after-party, they moved to an airplane hangar which “really gave that feel of a down-and-dirty disco,” says Austyn. The bride changed into a black and gold Chanel disco set from the 2023 cruise collection, as DJs Blondish and Nicola Bernardini played until sunrise. As the light came over the horizon, Dylan and Austyn got in his 4Runner to drive off of the ranch as husband and wife. “It was the perfect ending,” says Austyn.
Photo: John Dolan1/68Welcome to the Magical Mystery Tour of Love.
Photo: John Dolan2/68Dining amid a curation of artworks, all created over the course of my relationship with Dylan.
Photo: John Dolan3/68For the rehearsal dinner, we paired my artwork on the walls with Dylan’s drawings on the napkins. These puzzle pieces were drawn by Dylan the morning of our engagement.
Photo: John Dolan4/68The speeches were pretty damn funny.
Photo: John Dolan5/68Butcher paper and custom crayons with each guest’s name lined the tables so people could doodle while dining.
