I knew that if I ever got married, I didn’t want the big fairy-tale wedding. As a kid, I was obsessed with two things: fashion and climate change. I was born in New Orleans and understood from an early age that my city was on the front lines of rising sea levels, and I would stay up watching Fashion TV on VH1 (google it) while fixating on coastal erosion. I recently found a journal entry from when I was nine years old, detailing three things on my mind: global warming, what to wear on the first day of school, and the boy I liked. (Spoiler: It’s not the man I married a few weeks ago on spring equinox.)

When I was young, I bristled at the idea of marriage and weddings as some sort of final destination. I looked to my mother, grandmother, and godmother as examples of how to pave one’s own path. My mother was far from traditional: She gave me and my sisters her wedding dress as a Mardi Gras costume, never being overly precious about it (a version of upcycling?). I saw my New York City godmother, the late gallerist Julie Saul (who never got married), as the independent option. And I joked that my Grandma Bea was going to have her grandmother license revoked for telling me, “You don’t need to get married and have kids. But if you do, choose someone who makes you laugh.”

I put marriage aside altogether and fixated on becoming an environmental lawyer. When Hurricane Katrina became the backdrop to my college graduation, I doubled down and got jobs working for environmental nonprofits and the co-chair of the Congressional global-warming committee. I unexpectedly fell in love with storytelling, so I moved away from law and toward PR. In 2013 I cofounded an agency with a mission: to amplify the people, companies, and nonprofits working to create a better world.

A few years in I met a man who met my grandma’s criteria: He shared my values and made me laugh a lot. In 2019 we spontaneously got engaged over dinner at Russ & Daughters Cafe on Orchard Street, where my grandma’s family coincidentally had a modest hosiery cart in the early 1900s. I told him I didn’t care about or want a new ring, so the next day we went to Pippin Vintage and selected a vintage pearl band by Mikimoto, a company with a long history of sustainability, which felt more aligned. While I couldn’t help but start to dream of the big New Orleans wedding, I really wanted a small affair that didn’t cost a lot and created minimal waste.