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\n Photo: Chellise Michael Photography\n <\/p>\n
When we ask newlyweds to think back on what they wanted most for their big day \u2014 and we\u2019ve interviewed hundreds of them over the years \u2014 the most common response is \u201cFor it not to feel like a wedding!\u201d Gathering with old friends and eating mini grilled cheeses in formalwear to celebrate love feels more necessary these days than ever, even downright therapeutic. And the betrothed have never been less attached to the old wedding handbook \u2014 or the need to please their great-aunt. So in a flurry of drippy amaranth bouquets and cocktails named after people\u2019s dogs, how do you pull off a non-cookie-cutter affair? For the answers, we decided to interrogate the cool couples whose weddings we would actually want to steal, right down to the tiger-shaped cake toppers.<\/p>\n
Katie Tutrone and David Calello really didn\u2019t want their wedding to feel like a wedding. So they got the \u201cI do\u201ds out of the way quickly \u2014 their August 2025 nuptials began with a surprise rooftop ceremony at their Friday night welcome party. That allowed the rest of the weekend to become the immersive theater experience \u2014 or a \u201cweather wonderland chaos\u201d \u2014 of their surrealist dreams. Tutrone, who\u2019s an on-air storm tracker for the Weather Channel and entertains nearly 900,000 followers on TikTok<\/a> with her posts about science, and Calello, a consultant at McKinsey who spent much of his childhood in Hong Kong (a key detail for later), devised a multiday, multi-venue, multi-costume event that involved professional dancers dressed as clouds, a bridal descent from the ceiling, leaf blowers, indoor rain, and about a thousand other activations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Katie: I like wowing people. I wanted an experience that wasn\u2019t like anything anyone\u2019s ever been to. I studied theater in college, so I was like, \u201cHow can I make this a multi-act theater performance, bringing in all these different acts I\u2019ve wanted to pursue and bits I\u2019ve created in my head, across one to two days?\u201d<\/p>\n David: Our wedding was a glimpse into Katie\u2019s brain. We\u2019d push each other to come up with new ideas. I couldn\u2019t even imagine all the things that ended up coming to life.<\/p>\n Katie: David\u2019s family has a place in the Catskills, and we had a background vision of \u201cWe can always get married in the Catskills and have one of those whimsical forest weddings.\u201d Hell no. We\u2019re going full, bonkers circus in a warehouse. A priority for me was not spending a chunk of money at a place that supports Big Wedding. I wanted to feel like it was contributing to the New York community. That\u2019s where House of Yes<\/a> came in. That money is supporting a whole network of artists at a place that means so much to me. It\u2019s kooky chaotic brains in there. Who else would I rather brainstorm my day with?<\/p>\n David: On the surface level, we could not be more different. I\u2019m a consultant. I\u2019m pretty square, very logical, methodical. Katie\u2019s this funky, creative person, but that\u2019s what drew me to her. She makes my life so much more special.<\/p>\n Katie: He\u2019s low-key, and he might seem buttoned-up on the outside, but he is a theater boy. I listen to him singing Dear Evan Hansen every morning in the shower. We met in college. I dated his roommate for a year \u2014 I remember he was just the sexy guy in the biomedical engineering program.<\/p>\n David: Our social scenes overlapped. Harvard has these \u201ccolleges,\u201d like dorms, each with their own dining hall. I was like, Who is this girl always hoarding the peanut butter?<\/p>\n Katie: I was covering the eclipse in April 2024. It was a big moment that so many people planned their lives around, including myself. This was my Super Bowl. I was in Russellville, Arkansas, which had the greatest amount of time in totality.<\/p>\n David: I was at a friend\u2019s party on the Lower East Side and they were like, \u201cThat\u2019s a cool event! You didn\u2019t want to go? Wouldn\u2019t it be special to experience it together?\u201d And it clicked: I was going to propose there \u2026 the next day.<\/p>\n Katie: I was on-air, covering a giant wedding ceremony in this field, 200 couples getting married at the eclipse. Then David pops up out of nowhere.<\/p>\n David: I bought a train ticket to Baltimore, where her family lives, and said, \u201cHey, can you guys go out for a quick beer?\u201d They immediately knew why and were very excited. I flew from Baltimore to Dallas, Dallas to Arkansas, where I had to beg an Uber driver to take me as close to Russellville as possible, a four-hour drive, then I hitchhiked to Russellville. She was in a field, on-air, and right as she was coming out of it, I pulled her aside and proposed. She was back on the job ten minutes later.<\/p>\n Katie: My emotions were out of my body. There was a mixture of wanting to punch him, but also being like, Holy shit, I can\u2019t believe you pulled this off.\u00a0<\/p>\n David: She had these huge, grand visions for the wedding, and the House of Yes team was amazing, enabling them while also bringing new ideas. Whereas I was the one with the Excel spreadsheet, being like, \u201cOkay, how is this going to fit in?\u201d<\/p>\n Katie: I\u2019ve just spent a lot of time at House of Yes, and I love the performers. They have an amazing event coordination and creative team. I just said \u201cweather wonderland chaos,\u201d and the wheels were already turning.<\/p>\n David: I\u2019m sure our wedding planner, Bethany Pickard at Modern Kicks<\/a>, was freaking out at points, like, You need to calm down at some point. But my favorite part of the whole wedding was the planning.<\/p>\n Katie: It was my maid of honor Emily\u2019s idea to have a surprise ceremony on Friday. My parents were so down. I am their kooky, weird daughter, and they knew it was going to be freaky, but they were like, \u201cWe\u2019d love if the ceremony was somehow outside?\u201d<\/p>\n David: While House of Yes is amazing, it\u2019s an auditorium without any windows. There was something about having the ceremony outdoors, walking down the aisle in a beautiful setting in New York. Also, it just played to the idea that this wedding would be full of surprises, and this was one of many.<\/p>\n Katie: It was at Westlight at the top of the William Vale<\/a> hotel. People were mingling downstairs, and we recorded a fake weather alert, which sounded like a tornado warning.<\/p>\n David: It was like, \u201cPlease make your way upstairs \u2026 this is a love storm warning.\u201d As soon as they got to the roof, there were rows of chairs set up, and pinwheels, which Katie\u2019s mom and dad ordered.<\/p>\n Katie: David is a triplet, and we had his brothers doing a western-style standoff at the front of the turf, \u201cfighting\u201d each other for who would officiate.<\/p>\n David: The only people in on the secret were our immediate family and Emily. My brothers decided, in the spirit of kookiness, to dress up as cowboys. We had our flower boy \u2014 my friend Jeremy from Hong Kong \u2014 do the flowers. We weren\u2019t allowed to throw petals, so he handed out full-stem sunflowers to some lucky participants. I had a more normal entrance.<\/p>\n Katie: Then my dad and I biked down the aisle. David and I are top one percent Citi Bikers. It means a lot to us. And I cannot go down an aisle just walking on, God forbid, my feet.<\/p>\n David: Fun fact: I had a change of heart and bought my wedding suit in the lobby of the William Vale, off the rack, about two hours before walking down the aisle. There\u2019s a Suitsupply there.<\/p>\n Katie: I found this dress off Vestiaire. It\u2019s by a Lebanese designer, Super Yaya<\/a>. It was the first dress I looked at. Everything just lined up.<\/p>\n David: Katie and I wrote our own vows, to a parody of a musical.<\/p>\n Katie: It was from Dear Evan Hansen, the \u201ctap-tap-tap, waving through the window\u201d song, but we wrote it about us. Then we had our rings spring out of a jack-in-the-box that we\u2019d wound up.<\/p>\n David: When we got pronounced husband and wife, Katie \u2014 in very Katie fashion \u2014 dipped me back for the kiss. Then we biked back down the aisle.<\/p>\n Katie: People said, \u201cWhere do we go from here after this big surprise?\u201d And I\u2019m like, Just you wait. \u201cBuckle up\u201d was the theme.<\/p>\n David: After the ceremony, we couldn\u2019t get people downstairs again for a long time. Everyone was taking photos and relishing the moment, and the sun was setting. Finally, we got them down, where a buffet dinner and more passed apps were served. Our friend Tim, who is a DJ, started to play and people danced. And there were more performances and toasts from our family and friends.<\/p>\n Katie: My dad sang with my brother, who played guitar. He\u2019s Italian, and he sang \u201cChe La Luna Mezzo Mare,\u201d but a dirty version of it. It was kind of wild, the gesturing they were doing.<\/p>\n David: I think we planned to go to midnight, and it went until 1:30 a.m. or so. We told people, \u201cGuys, I know everyone\u2019s excited, but we have a big day tomorrow that starts early.\u201d<\/p>\n Katie: We started the second night at Xanadu<\/a>, which has a partnership with House of Yes. We had over 200 people, which wouldn\u2019t have fit in House of Yes for dinner. It was a new venue \u2014 they\u2019d never hosted an event or dinner, so this was a trial run \u2014 and I loved the vibe.<\/p>\n David: It\u2019s a retro roller rink. At first, you\u2019re like, Wait, am I getting married in a third-grade gymnasium dodgeball party? But it was such a fun canvas to work with.<\/p>\n Katie: Bethany coordinated vendors for the tables and chairs, and House of Yes has a relationship with food vendors, so we did dinner from Queen<\/a>, the restaurant in Bushwick, and Caf\u00e9 Mogador<\/a>.<\/p>\n David: We got there and it was a cocktail party, with passed drinks and apps. You buy these packages where you have a specialty cocktail, and in Katie fashion, she said, \u201cTequila.\u201d Just literal shots of tequila. That was the only drink people had for the first hour.<\/p>\n Katie: One thing I didn\u2019t want was flowers. We brainstormed meteorological elements with a florist who was more of a sculptor by training, Felisa Funes at Of the Flowers<\/a>. Felisa had created cloud sculptures before, with lights inside them so it looked like lightning. She found a way to incorporate every weather element into the reception, like raindrops throughout and umbrellas for some tables with hail coming off of them. The seating chart was in a giant tornado. I was drooling with meteorological wonder.<\/p>\n David: I wore an Issey Miyake<\/a> suit I bought with my mom. I didn\u2019t know what Katie was planning to wear, but I heard Katie working on the dress through closed doors and knew it involved tweezers and metal clanking.<\/p>\n Katie: The designer of my Saturday dress is Leeann Huang<\/a>. I started following her on Instagram when I saw SZA and Rene\u00e9 Rapp wearing her cloud designs. I would go to Leeann\u2019s for fittings because I was in L.A. a lot last year for the fires, sadly, and their aftermath. She built this thing around my body; it\u2019s a series of square plates kind of clipped together.<\/p>\n David: Then we directed people onto the roller rink, where the tables were set up, and that\u2019s where the dinner and performances were. Katie and I entered on roller skates. Now, Katie is a freak athlete. She\u2019s a professional squash player. I consider myself athletic, and yet \u2026 they are so much harder than they look.<\/p>\n Katie: We came out to Lady Gaga\u2019s \u201cEdge of Glory.\u201d We pretended that we were really bad at skating and held onto the edge the whole time. I mean, I am pretty bad, but I was on the ground, crawling. My dress was snapping and pieces of metal were flying off left and right. We gave a \u201cforecast\u201d of the night. We had these cloud girlies, with their heads in clouds, just roaming around.<\/p>\n David: Our friend Kennedy was the MC. The theme of his speech was \u201cPlanet Earth,\u201d describing and observing the species of David and Katie. Our friends Molly and Chirks were detectives cracking the case of David and Katie. My sister gave a touching speech and tribute to my dad, who passed away over ten years ago. But again, it was rarely \u201cspeeches\u201d and more \u201cperformances.\u201d<\/p>\n Katie: Our friends all contributed their skills. We didn\u2019t give any instruction; everyone just kind of matched our freak. My heart was racing with excitement for the next thing, the next thing.<\/p>\n David: My friends from Hong Kong did a hilarious rap and dance in Chinese.<\/p>\n Katie: Obviously, nobody knew what they were saying, but people were in love with these hot guys singing. My parents did a singing parody of \u201cI Got You, Babe,\u201d after a change into little disco outfits. I did a father-daughter dance, and then David\u2019s mom wanted to show people she could moonwalk.<\/p>\n David: And then ten minutes prior to dinner ending, Katie and I had a sign spinner come in and rally people for the walk to House of Yes.<\/p>\n Katie:. We escaped and did a costume change and went to stake out House of Yes. I entered in a bubble that would fall from the ceiling \u2014 I was rope-pulleyed up and down. I was up there for 15 minutes, levitating, and I\u2019m watching people fill the space. It was 75 feet up, at least.<\/p>\n David: As soon as we were at a critical mass of people, on the dark dance floor, the spotlight hits Katie in the air, in this sphere, in a new wacky dress.<\/p>\n Katie: David was singing \u201cBeauty and a Beat,\u201d like, \u201cShow you off, tonight I wanna show you off.\u201d When he pointed up to me, the song changed to Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cFreakum Dress.\u201d I came down from the ceiling, and people were losing their minds.<\/p>\n David: She was lowered onto an elevated platform in the middle of the room, where we did our first dance to Sophie Ellis-Bextor\u2019s \u201cMurder on the Dancefloor.\u201d<\/p>\n Katie: I chose that because I took a class once learning a choreography to the song by Angela Trimbur<\/a>. We took the first few moves from her, and then choreographed the rest ourselves. David was very invested in the choreography. I had to work with his pickiness. He\u2019s a really good dancer!<\/p>\n David: Growing up, my brothers were more the theater people. They were getting the star roles in West Side Story and I was Officer Krupke, just someone that people made fun of. It\u2019s not my nature to be the center of attention, but with Katie, it feels much more natural. She encourages all of us to live in the goofy and not take things too seriously. It was so much fun, both practicing it and performing it.<\/p>\n Katie: From there, the plan for House of Yes was that the season would change every 30 minutes. There was a giant clock on the wall, and a new song initiated each season, like \u201cIce Ice Baby\u201d for winter. We worked with House of Yes to choose the dancers and their hair and wardrobe. They were dressed like vintage TV weather girls in custom wigs. They\u2019d kick off the weather changes, like now it\u2019s a windstorm and they came out with leaf blowers and sang Kesha, \u201cThis place about to blo-o-o-w.\u201d<\/p>\n David: It definitely looked and felt like chaos to most, but it was actually a well-run machine behind the scenes. We also had a DJ, Ian Gray<\/a>. The dancing continued for many, many, many hours. We had a tornado photo booth set up and a little outdoor area if people needed a bit of peace and quiet.<\/p>\n Katie: The final act was an indoor rainstorm to \u201cIt\u2019s Raining Men.\u201d It rained into a kiddie pool, with our beautiful dancers wearing raincoats.<\/p>\n David: The House of Yes creative director, Adam, was like, \u201cDo you guys want to get in the pool with them?\u201d We did, but we didn\u2019t want to get our outfits soaking wet, and he said, \u201cI have just the right idea.\u201d He pulls out two cupcake costumes.<\/p>\n Katie: David and I changed into cupcakes, because what else would we change into? It felt good, because I was dripping in sweat and then suddenly I was rained on. We were wet cupcakes.<\/p>\n David: My brother James was so moved, he ripped his shirt off and got in the pool with us.<\/p>\n Katie: The after-party started then, in the Onyx Room at House of Yes. It was Hong Kong nightclub\u2013themed. David decorated that, because it was his thing. We had scallion pancakes and dumplings from Vanessa\u2019s<\/a>.<\/p>\n David: We had decorated with Chinese lanterns, and we had the Chinese symbol of \u56cd, which means double happiness, behind the DJ.<\/p>\n
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