“Lu, how did we get engaged?” Lena Dunham calls her three day husband across the room in Somerset, England, where they are on a short honeymoon after their wedding in London last Saturday night. “Lu”, also known as a Peruvian-British musician Luis FelberPerforming as Attawalpa pauses his dinner preparation – a vegetarian pasta with ginger, garlic, onions, and chopped pumpkin, served with a salad of tiny green plums and fennel in agave dressing – to weigh in. Feeling good, asked to see you in Going to hospital and I stayed longer than I should have stayed. And I just thought it made me feel weird to see that you weren’t okay. And then when you came back the next day we were in bed and I said, ‘I just want you never to go through this alone again.’ And you said, ‘Oh, I want to marry you one day.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t we do this sometime, soon? The next day I went for a walk with my friend Tom and he was talking about his life and I thought, ‘I think I proposed to Lena last night.’ And when I got home, we made it come true. “
“He does the engagement story better than me” Dunham says her joy is palpable on a transatlantic phone call. After Dunham and Felber met in January through a “series of machinations of friends” who the 35-year-old actor, writer and filmmaker considered wore three custom-made dresses by Christopher Kane. “I tried to analyze it and we kind of talked about it, but we talked around it.” Dunham says of Felber‘s suggestion, noting that some people do exactly that for 10 years. “So we just reduced the 10 years to 10 hours. And then it took us a month to get married instead of waiting six months or a year. “
Dunham and Felber, both in the midst of their own creative projects (Dunham is editing a film for which Felber is writing the music), accepted that planning and hosting a wedding in just a month during a pandemic would not be possible without his challenges . So they called in reinforcements. “There was no way I could do it without help, and it was my mother who suggested reaching out to her gallery owner Amanda Wilkinson’s child, Donna,” says Dunham. Event coordinators Donna Marcus Duke and her partner, Jacob Mallinson VogelHe had never celebrated a wedding before, but was up to the challenge, which was significant not least because of the COVID travel restrictions. “Poor Jacob and Donna have such wavy invitation stuff because people keep falling out,” says DunhamShe added that some people on her already shortened guest list were unable to attend because they contracted the virus. “Hearing from a wedding guest that they can’t make it because they have COVID is a great reminder that they still do and to take all precautionary measures seriously.” And that was very important to Dunham and Felber: All guests had to take two lateral flow tests and submit proof of vaccination. “I have a weakened immune system, so I take COVID restrictions very seriously,” explains Dunham, “but it’s important to both of us. Lu wants to protect me and he wants live music to come back, and he just thinks about human safety in general! ”At the venue, which was set up so that there was enough space between the guests and between the ceremony, reception and dance masks were also provided.
Everything in it, Dunham It is estimated that around 60 people gathered at the members-only club to watch the couple take the vows they had written themselves under a makeshift chuppah designed by florist Gail Smith. “One of the first influences we showed Donna was those colored baby blue bodega roses and they said, ‘But what if you didn’t have to dye your flowers?'” Says Dunham. (“We knew immediately this was going to be a wedding without a single white rose,” Duke jokes.) “They introduced us to Gail, who uses all the local English flowers, but because she knew we were obsessed with bright batik, almost overcolored, flowers, she managed to be in both worlds and completely blew us away. ”The chuppah, a traditional Jewish wedding altar, was one of the few spiritual gestures that Dunham, whose mother is Jewish, and Felber, whose father is Jewish, wanted to include. Through Duke, who studied theology at Oxford, they met their minister, Dr. Harrie Cedar, who helped them keep traditional elements with modern accents. “I loved her from the moment I saw her,” says Felber of Cedar, a queer woman who has traditional elements like circling the bride and groom three times, drinking from the same wine goblet and breaking a glass as a sign of Celebrations coordinated the end of the ceremony. “Lu did some really amazing Spanish accent Hebrew that had all the space in engravings,” Dunham says of the ceremony, which was viewed in person and on Zoom and broadcast to many of her friends and family in New York and Los Angeles, and to Felber’s family in Peru.
But Dunham and Felber, who wore a bespoke blue suede suit designed by Emily Bode, were visibly delighted with the personal commitment. “As for the bridal shower, if we include siblings, we were nine. You can have a much bigger wedding with fewer bridesmaids, but I think it just speaks to how excited I was to have my close friends there, ”Dunham explains of her bridesmaids being included Taylor Swift; actor Myha’la Herrold; Rosa Mercuriadis; Tommy Dorfmann; her cousin Jenna Hally Rubenstein; Felber’s sister Alma-Kori Felber; and Dunham’s podcasting partner, Alissa Bennett, who flew in and brought over for the weekend Dunham her “something borrowed” in the form of her son’s Lego soldier Ollie. “I spent so much time talking to my friends about our feelings about FaceTime during the pandemic, but I haven’t seen some of my best friends in over a year,” says Dunham. “And you know, my friends have had a lot of unfortunate things to do with me in adulthood.
This article was previously published on Vogue.com
