When Madison Utendahl and her fiancé Lex Kendall began planning their engagement party, they decided to turn the tables on traditional expectations of what a wedding celebration could be.
“We went back and forth about doing a small engagement party and a bigger wedding, or a big engagement party and a smaller wedding. We came to a consensus that having a humongous engagement party in New York was the way to go,” Utendahl tells Harper’s Bazaar. “I’m a born and raised New Yorker. Lex has been living in New York for 15 years. It just felt like the best decision in terms of bringing our communities together and allowing us to have a big party that was accessible to everyone, versus putting pressure on ourselves to have a big wedding.”
The couple used their engagement celebration as an opportunity to appease their parents on both sides, while still getting a chance to showcase their personal aesthetic as a couple. That meant orchestrating a guest list so big, it even included an invitation for her father’s podiatrist—the more, the merrier.
Utendahl believes that what makes wedding planning stressful is the part where you’re trying to please so many different people in your life. “Like Grandma needs to have an opinion, and your dad and your best friend need to have an opinion,” she explains. “But if you’re just like, This is what I’m doing, people are like, Okay, we’ll be there. Once we made the decision to be super intentional and have everyone we love there, the stress went away.”
Opting to have a smaller wedding down the line is more in tune with the couple’s engagement story, anyway. Kendall proposed at Utendahl’s favorite resort (the who’s-who haunt Palm Heights Hotel in the Cayman Islands) with a book featuring photos of their travels together—including secret snapshots of Kendall posing with the engagement ring over the previous few months.
“He had been holding onto the ring forever and had it in all these different trips that we took. And that moment was the one that he chose to propose, and I just broke down in tears and I looked up and he was on his knee,” Utendahl recalls. “He really understood how much I love a vacation, how I love being on the beach, and that I’ve always said that I didn’t want a proposal moment to really be shared with everyone. I really wanted it to be just us. So he did good!”
Of course, Utendahl is no stranger to creating larger-than-life experiences. The founder of Utendahl Creative, she’s been the brain behind viral projects such as The Museum of Ice Cream, campaigns for Sephora, Target, and more. It only took a few months for her to put together and plan what would become a lavish Studio 54-inspired affair at The Standard’s club, The Boom Boom Room.
“The Boom Boom Room reminded us of New York pre-social media, where you could go out and have a lot of fun and get to experience New York in such a pure form. We both, funny enough, spent many years in that room together not seeing each other, just based upon being in other relationships or wherever we were in our lives,” she says. “I became pretty fixated on other iconic eras that were carefree and focused on fun, where people got dressed and enjoyed themselves and had this sort of ‘living in the moment’ energy that I think we’re so deprived of in this day and age. Immediately I thought: obviously it has to be Studio 54, disco era.”
Utendahl stressed to guests that being on theme for the celebration was crucial, but being in costume was not. She wanted her 350 guests to embrace the thrill and recklessness of old New York, including the feeling of freedom that comes when you’re not spending the whole night on your phone. The couple hired three photographers for the evening—an all-woman crew that included Emma Trimm, Flo Ngala and Poupay Jutharat—to ensure that every guest could count on having a great photo from the evening, and could properly unplug and party.
She also sent a short but concise mood board ahead of the night to guests to help them understand the theme—think classic black-and-white snapshots of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Bianca Jagger on horseback. According to the bride-to-be, all of her guests nailed the assignment.
“People looked fabulous,” Utendahl said. “I strongly recommend [sending a mood board], because it sets a tone for people and how they’re going to dress and show up and how people are going to be spending their night. And it sets a tone for you and how you want your energy to be for everyone else.”
Utendahl’s dress wasn’t to be missed, either. Crafted by Jackson Wiederhoeft of the NYC brand Wiederhoeft, which is known for fantastically glamorous gowns, it featured a plunging neck and a micro-mini balloon hem. Utendahl paired it with a diamond necklace from Lizzie Mandler Jewelry and shoes from Amina Muaddi. Her sister, Sydney Utendahl, did her makeup for the occasion and her hair was styled by Illeisha Lussiano.
“I thought, if I’m going to wear something, I want it to be locally made in New York. I want it to be made by either a person of color or a woman, or queer folk. I fell in love with Wiederhoeft after being introduced to his brand after Rita Ora wore his dress to the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party,” she explains. “I’m the only person he had made this tutu dress before. It’s in his lookbook, but no one had bought it. No one had worn it. It had never been shown publicly. He and his partner Smith are just wonderful. They really made me feel like a million bucks. Also, really the only way to buy his work is to go his showroom in the garment district and try things on, and that feels kind of like a lost art. I don’t know when I’m going to wear it again. I think I’m going to have to frame it!”
More than the dress or the guest list, Utendahl’s number-one priority for the engagement party was to hire a team of female, femme-identifying, queer, or POC vendors. As someone who has curated events countless times during her career, Utendahl was tired of being told that major corporations and companies could “never find” women or people of color to incorporate into their big-budget events.
“When we received a ‘suggested vendors’ list, it was all straight white men, which is what I’m up against all the time. I have a design studio and less than 1% of design and creative agencies are owned by women and less than 0.1% black women. So I hear this excuse all the time, like, ‘We just didn’t know—we couldn’t find you.’ And that’s just such bullshit,” she says. “We chose to challenge the expectation that vendors of any capacity are hard to find. It just became this very intentional party. It was no longer just “Come celebrate Lex and me,’ but ‘Come have this carefree experience for yourself. Come meet these vendors who are basically pulling together this party with us, and walk away with knowledge about this amazing florist or great DJ or incredible candle that is your gift.'”
For the couple, every aspect of putting together their dream engagement celebration was about creating memories.
“I have such a big, Black, New York City family, and there was one moment where I turned around and there’s like 35 Black people doing the electric slide,” Utendahl laughs. “Anytime I see Black joy that’s so physically free, it’s an emotional and beautiful experience for me to witness. I was just so grateful to see so many people have that.
“Again, it’s intentionality,” she adds. “We create these experiences, whether it’s a Thanksgiving or an engagement party or a wedding, and so often they’re designed just for the person hosting, not for everyone else. But if you go in with the intention for everyone to have a good time, then people, I believe, do have a good time. People will live their best lives.”
Culture Editor
Bianca Betancourt is the culture editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, where she covers all things film, TV, music, and more. When she’s not writing, she loves impulsively baking a batch of cookies, re-listening to the same early-2000s pop playlist, and stalking Mariah Carey’s Twitter feed.
