During her freshman year at Northwestern University, Benita Chan, now the director of digital content and social media for Saks Fifth Avenue, lost her student ID at a party. Ever the gentleman, Grant Anderson found it and messaged her on Facebook. “We had never met before, but I responded with ‘Yes, I love you! Thank you so much!’” Benita remembers. Despite her enthusiastic reaction, the moment didn’t lead to a meet-cute, as Benita asked a friend to pick up the ID on her way across campus.
The two finally met, three years later, when Grant was assigned to be Benita’s mentor in a consulting club. Grant quickly developed a crush, but a romantic relationship never developed during their college years.
The summer after Benita’s graduation, they ran into each other for the third time at a party in New York City. Grant’s friend told Benita that Grant still liked her, so she decided to go out on a date with him. “We went to the Guggenheim for our first date, and he really impressed me with his knowledge of art and music—he’s a drummer!” Benita says. “I think I impressed him with stories of backpacking around New Zealand alone, and my directness—especially when I told him to stop talking so we could contemplate a Kandinsky painting. The rest, as they say, is history!”
They had been dating for six years when Grant proposed. He initially wanted to incorporate the scene of their first date into the proposal, but Benita had just been to the Guggenheim a couple days beforehand, so he had to switch gears to avoid suspicion. “He set up brunch with our friends at the Met members’ room so that I would get dressed up,” Benita explains. “Then he took me for a walk through Central Park while our friends feigned an errand they had to run. He had flown in one of my friends from high school, who is also a professional photographer, to capture the entire moment. Our friends returned after the proposal, and we celebrated with champagne at the Loeb Boathouse.”
As soon as they started the wedding planning processes, Benita and Grant set out to find the perfect location. “We have always loved concrete industrial loft spaces, but couldn’t find what we were looking for in New York,” she says. “Everything was brick and rustic. One of my bridesmaids interned at Yoox Net-a-Porter in Milan and told us about Carlo e Camilla, a restaurant there that she thought might fit what we were looking for. We were intrigued, so we stopped through Milan for a weekend on the way home from a vacation in Morocco.”
They had dinner at Carlo e Camilla and immediately fell in love. “Though we didn’t have anything else figured out, we knew our wedding had to be there in Milan,” Benita says. “We loved the elegant chandeliers and long white wooden tables with the rough and raw industrial space, and we worked with our wedding planner Le Jour du Oui to combine elements of a minimalist, raw aesthetic with an elegant, glamorous aesthetic throughout our wedding.”
Once the location had been decided, Benita embarked on an extensive wedding dress search. “I tried on more than 150 ceremony dresses and narrowed it down to five very different options before Grant helped me choose the final dress,” she says. “He printed pictures of me in the five dresses, laid them out on our bed, and imagined me walking down the aisle in each of them.” They ultimately chose a simple Vera Wang crepe dress with an origami fold at the bust and a Vera Wang embroidered veil. Benita kept all of her jewelry simple—classic diamond studs and a diamond tennis bracelet. For beauty, she went with a low bun with floating pearls in her hair and soft, natural makeup.
The overall wedding aesthetic was all about contrasts. “We loved the idea of having a modern ceremony aesthetic in a classic venue, followed by a classic reception in a modern industrial space,” the bride explains. The ceremony was led by the couple’s longtime friend Margaret in a 600-year-old cloister surrounded with green wisteria that complemented the flowers. A minimal broken arch composed of white orchids, hydrangeas, anthurium, roses, ranunculus, and dried poppy pods was erected at the end of the aisle, serving as the backdrop for the service. “There was a lot of crying during the ceremony, but also a lot of laughing during our vows and Margaret’s speech,” Benita says. “Thankfully, Grant had a handkerchief that we shared between sentences.”
Like Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle before her, Benita is a big believer in the power that a scent can have on one’s wedding day. “It is the strongest sense in evoking emotions,” she notes. “And I wanted to scent my wedding so that my husband and I, along with our guests, could be reminded of the evening when we returned to our everyday lives.” She chose Bibliothèque by Byredo, and the wedding planner lightly sprayed it on their wedding programs, invitations, and menus. They also placed the candles in the bathrooms, on the favors table, and in the bookcase where they showcased photos of their family during the reception.
After the ceremony, there was an aperitivo in the courtyard of Carlo e Camilla. There, the newlyweds mingled with their guests before Benita changed into an airy dress by Eisen Stein for dinner. “This time, I had the opposite experience from selecting my ceremony dress,” Benita remembers. “The second I tried the dress on, I knew it was right. It had the right amount of sparkle, sheerness, and movement! I wanted something I could dance in, and loved the romantic feathers on the skirt.”
When guests entered the party, they found gold fortune cookies awaiting them near the entrance, in lieu of a table with traditional escort cards. “Once they opened them up, everyone could compare fortunes and find their table for dinner,” Benita explains. Guests took their seats for a five-course set menu, including Carlo e Camilla’s famous golden soft egg dish.
Music was very important to the couple, and they were completely against playing anything that felt like typical wedding music. “That’s not what we like to listen to,” Benita explains. “Our DJ, Jamie, was amazing and wove together a really fluid set that took everyone on a journey from the aperitivo all the way through the club vibe at the end of the night. When it came to the last song at the end of the night, Jamie hit us with ‘World, Hold On’—he had just played with Bob Sinclar the night before in Milan—and then mixed it into one of Grant’s all-time favorite house songs, ‘Your Love’ by Frankie Knuckles. It was the perfect end to a night focused on love.”