Everyone Danced on the Beach Until Dawn at This Wedding in Oaxaca
Everyone Danced on the Beach Until Dawn at This Wedding in Oaxaca
Alex Crane started as Caroline Hurley’s intern. “At some point, the attraction became undeniable,” Caroline says. She owns her own textile company, Caroline Z Hurley, and Alex now runs an eponymous clothing company. “We dated. We broke up. We were miserable without each other. Then we got engaged.” Believe it or not, things got so complicated, they actually gave a PowerPoint presentation at their rehearsal dinner to explain the complexity of their courtship. “We had a bonfire and projected it on a sheet stretched between two logs on the beach in Oaxaca,” Caroline remembers. “There were some technical difficulties for sure, but I think people got the gist.” “On February 14, 2013, I went to a Valentine’s Day dinner at Katz’s Delicatessen, and a friend of a friend told me a woman named Caroline Hurley was looking for someone to hire,” Alex says. They met at her apartment in the West Village, and she hired him a few days later. “I was sort of in love with her from the first moment I met her,” he admits. “But we had to solve some logistical things before we actually got together: I had a girlfriend, she had a boyfriend, she’s seven years older than me, I was her employee, et cetera. But eventually we wound up on some islands off the coast of Panama, and the rest is history.” The proposal was almost exactly five years after the day they met. “It was a long, complicated on-and-off situation for about three years, hence the PowerPoint presentation,” Caroline jokes. Eventually, Alex whisked her away to the San Juan Islands—a place that’s special to him and his family. “It was an odd trip, come to think of it,” Caroline remembers. “I had a panic attack and almost refused to get on the plane. And then there were these wildfires raging when we arrived. The day before he proposed, we went on a hike, and the air was so acrid, we couldn’t see more than a foot in front of our faces.” But the morning he proposed, the light was magical. “It was like I’ve never seen—a gauzy pink—it felt like a movie set,” she says. “It was better than I could have imagined. It was dreamy and quiet—it felt like only the two of us existed. I’m glad Alex made me get on that plane.”
He had worked with Kate Jones, a friend of Caroline’s from Rhode Island School of Design, to design a ring that was similar to his mother’s from the ’80s. Once it was completed, Kate shipped it from Maine to Alex and Caroline’s apartment in Brooklyn. Once it arrived, Alex kept it in his backpack at all times so he could touch the box and make sure it was still there. “I felt like Frodo! I took Caroline to Orcas Island because all my mama’s family comes from the northwest, and I’ve gone to the Puget Sound every summer of my life. I think summer in the northwest is the best it gets.”
After Caroline said yes, the couple started to think about where they might want to get married. “I first found [the nonprofit arts center] Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2016,” Caroline says. “I was working with artisans in Oaxaca City for my textile line, and I decided to take a trip to the coast. When I walked on the property, I felt chills all over my body. It was a religious experience. I knew I would end up back there one way or another.”
After she and Alex got engaged, she found herself writing a cold email to the Casa Wabi contact page. “To my surprise, I got a response right away, and it turned out the owners lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn! I met Lucia for coffee, and it all just happened so fast.” Before she knew it, they had set a date for February. Built by Bosco Sodi, Casa Wabi is a 312-meter concrete structure separating the mountains from the ocean. It gets its name from the Japanese concept wabi-sabi, meaning “beauty in the imperfect.” “We thought that was a nice metaphor for marriage,” Caroline says. “It’s very hard to capture the essence of Casa Wabi with words or even photos. It’s a place you feel. That’s why it’s so special.”
“I trust Caroline in most everything and particularly when it comes to aesthetics,” Alex adds. “So, when she said Casa Wabi was the place, I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Suffice to say I wasn’t disappointed.” There aren’t many wedding planners in Puerto Escondido, so the couple worked with Sofia de Parada, a member of the Casa Wabi team. “She was extremely helpful,” Caroline says. “Internet and cell service is spotty at best, so we had to handle a lot of logistics on the ground. But everything else, I did in-house with my CZH team. I designed a pattern inspired by wabi-sabi, and we incorporated it into the invitations, runners, throws, gift bags, et cetera.”
Caroline took this hands-on approach to her wedding wardrobe as well, wearing four dresses over the course of the weekend. On the day of the wedding, she wore a sheer lace dress with a slip underneath passed down from her Sicilian great-grandmother, who also happens to be her namesake. Then, for the ceremony, she wore a flowy floral dress by Silvia Tcherassi. “I wanted everything to feel natural,” she says. “And it looked pretty cool blowing in the warm evening breeze. I actually hardly wore shoes the whole weekend except these yellow heels from Stuart Weitzman, but I took them off after about 30 minutes.” To prep the morning of the wedding, she took a long swim in the ocean and then had her friend Kristina Holey give her a facial and face massage before the ceremony. Alex wore clothes from his line, Alex Crane—a Bone Kite jacket, Bone Cham pants, a Snow Playa shirt, and leather sandals he bought from the market in Puerto Escondido. The couple told guests to dress in “beach formal,” and almost all of his friends wore custom Alex Crane suits made with CZH block-printed textiles. “Everyone was living their best, breeziest life,” Caroline says.
The ceremony took place on the beach underneath a Tadao Ando structure that looks like a modern bus stop. Taylor from Fox Fodder Farm covered the structure with local flowers. “The sun was setting, waves were crashing softly, and pelicans flew low over the water,” Caroline remembers. “And as I walked down the aisle, a local Mexican band sang a truly terrible rendition of ‘God Only Knows’ by the Beach Boys. It was so off-key and off-tempo that guests thought we were kidding. So it was perfect wabi-sabi.”
Alex’s aunt officiated the wedding, kicking it off with a short meditation. Then Alex’s sister Rozzi sang “Gypsy” by Fleetwood Mac. “She brought the house down—it was the only time Alex cried the whole weekend,” Caroline says. Alex and Caroline wrote their own vows and read them to each other while local dogs looked on. “The whole thing felt like a dream. It was an out-of-body experience…or maybe an extremely in-body experience. It was surreal. I felt and still feel the happiest I have ever been in my life. Alex is my soul mate. I have felt that quietly since the moment I met him, and I was hoping this day would come.”
After the ceremony, everyone walked back to the main casa, where a long table had been set up parallel to the pool for a family-style meal of fish, vegetables, and fresh, handmade tortillas by the chef of Almoraduz, in Puerto Escondido. Toasts were kept to a minimum. “We wanted everyone to get grooving on the dance floor,” Caroline says. “We hosted a ‘talent show’ after the rehearsal dinner so everyone had a fair chance to share their talents and feelings.” Post-dinner, friend Sam Wilkes started DJ’ing and absolutely crushed it, according to Caroline. “He got the vibes going, and he kept them going all night long! We danced until sunrise with the ocean crashing in the background.”
Originally Appeared on Vogue
