Bones, BuzzBalls And Blow-Up Swans: Inside The London Wedding To End All London Weddings

But first, the prologue: the brides initially crossed paths at Frieze Art Fair in 2023, while Yektai was on a semester abroad at Central Saint Martins. By the end of a night of post-pavilion drinks – during which they had spoken pretty much only to each other – a friend had wandered off with Van Son’s scarf. Yektai gallantly took it upon herself to arrange a coffee so it could be returned. “Joanna had this adorable mullet,” she says. “I was enamoured.” A month of dating followed, and six days before Yektai was due to return to the Rhode Island School of Design, they made it official, embarking on a long-distance relationship of bi-monthly flights and elaborate letters in between. “It slowed the relationship down, which was a good thing, because I’m sure we would’ve gotten engaged and married after a month otherwise,” she says. “When you know, you know,” Van Son adds. “Well, actually, I was going to say we’re really those typical U-Haul lesbians, but I didn’t want to be that crass”.

In the end, it took around a year and a half for the couple to become engaged, with the proposal taking place when Yektai was staying at Van Son’s Stoke Newington sublet in December 2024. “It was a cold, no-heating Christmas and none of our friends or family members were in London,” Van Son recalls. “Lilah just said: ‘If we can get through this, we can get through anything’, and that was that.” The couple exchanged necklaces – Van Sonn’s featured a cross pendant, and Yektai’s was a locket – and were later that evening awoken to the violent shrieks of two foxes mating, their bodies thrashing against the flimsy warehouse doors. “At first I thought someone was getting murdered, and so Lilah picked me up and took me upstairs,” she adds. “I took it as a sign that we would always fend for each other.” The following morning, the fiancées headed to Alfies Antique Market in Marylebone, where they bought two diamond-and-sapphire engagement rings dating back to the Victorian era.

Dani d’Ingeo

You could say the dress decisions were also made in tandem, but it was really Van Son’s speculative painting of her future bride that sealed it. “Did it inspire you?” she asks. “Well,” says Yektai, “I had wanted to wear a big ball gown, but I always feel most regal and elegant through your eyes.” Sure enough, when the couple made a spontaneous visit to Annie’s Ibiza, it was the brand’s hand-embroidered Aphrodite corset and aqueous silk Florence dress that Yektai gravitated towards, while Van Son went for the same pairing in a flaxen hue reminiscent of her gold-leaf paintings. All their accessories were chosen giddily, alone at home, on the morning of their Saatchi & Yates blowout in March – lace-up booties from Christian Louboutin for Yektai, gifted by her grandmother, who couldn’t make it to London, while Van Son borrowed Yektai’s Tabis, with an old pair of opera gloves. “We knew we’d have no time on our own,” Yektai adds. “So we wanted to savour it, and just be jitterbugs, which we were: Joanna took an hour lacing me up.” And that was all their prep done and dusted.

Because Saatchi & Yates had organised everything else. “It’s a ‘yes-man’ gallery – that’s what makes it so great,” says Van Son. “As soon as I floated the idea of having the wedding during the exhibition, Arthur [Yates] was like, ‘Just have the whole thing here!’” In all the months of preparation, the only detail the couple had heard mentioned was the presence of balloon-sculpture swans, which, admittedly, gave Yektai pause. “I didn’t know what it was going to look like,” she says. “So I made sure we arrived 10 minutes before everyone else.” The first impression? “It was incredible.” Even more so, one imagines, once the space had filled with 200 loved ones piling registry gifts – the requisite Le Creuset sets, Estelle wine goblets and Peruvian-woven alpaca-wool throws – beneath a spread of Maison François canapés and Berry Cherry Limeade BuzzBalls. “The only time I’ve seen BuzzBalls is along Kingsland Road on a Sunday morning,” says Van Son. “Who knew they could be so chic?”

Dani d’Ingeo

Then came a needle scratch and a beribboned chocolate cake – with swan-bride figurines perched on top – while Elvis’s “Unchained Melody” played out. It was placed in front of two new paintings of Yektai that Van Son had created for the wedding, which she hoped would serve as speeches in themselves should she be too overwhelmed to find the words, likening her insatiable, lifelong desire to paint to her insatiable, lifelong desire for Yektai. “Then it descended into ruckus,” she says. “The whole evening just felt like letting the world in on our love: a drug that everyone wants to share and be around.” There came a point when even their cup was full, and the couple exited beneath a canopy of flying bouquets thrown over their heads, before climbing into a black cab. Their actual (well, legal) wedding would take place the following morning at Fitzrovia Chapel. “The adrenaline of walking down the aisle healed us up real fast,” says Yektai. “The tears detoxed our bodies,” Van Son adds.

The would-be brides again coordinated their looks, this time in sinuous trained dresses by Notting Hill’s Jane Bourvis, who specialises in repurposing antique textiles into gothic bridalwear. Lilah’s was cut from Edwardian silk lace, while Joanna’s was made from French cotton lace. “We were just dripping in lace and ribbons,” says Yektai, who added her mother’s veil, and Van Son gold Louboutins that reflected back the chapel’s gilded ceiling. Both brides’ older sisters served as witnesses. “There’s a duality to how we conducted the wedding,” explains Van Son, describing this ceremony as a foil to the Saatchi Yates event: “far more intimate, almost like pillow talk”. She later changed into a cargo-pocketed John Galliano dress from 2003, while Yektai stripped back to her silk underlayer, pairing it with ruby-red dancing shoes by Souliers Dulion, modelled on those of Marie Antoinette, and a vintage face veil studded with Swarovski crystals. “You looked like an astronaut,” Van Son says, with a laugh.

Seventy of their closest friends then descended on St John for a banquet of ox heart and bone marrow – or, as Yektai puts it, “grotesque trays of bones, almost like our intense love”. There were yet more speeches, before their first dance at around 11pm to “Rigoletto, Act IV” by Luciano Pavarotti – “Such a fun song,” says Van Son – during which they surprised their fathers by pulling them into the choreography. Some guests went on to continue the night elsewhere, but the couple – after two back-to-back celebrations – were spent. And yet, in the aftermath, they find themselves wanting only to be back in the fray – “to hang out with everyone who was there and relive it,” Van Son says. “I totally understand why my mum would turn up in her wedding dress to pick me up from school like a total nutter,” she adds. “I get it! That’s going to be me.” If the wedding is a memory they’re desperate to hold onto, married life is now the part they can’t wait to keep living. “So fun,” says Yektai. “I’m already excited to plan a vow renewal – can we do it every year? I’ve been obsessed with Joanna for three years, right Joey? You better be as obsessed with me.”