Wedding | Leen & Ryan

The Anti-Bride
14 minutes ago
6 min read

Tell us a little about yourselves!

We're two designers who grew up on opposite sides of the planet (Ryan in Philly and Leen in Beirut) but our lives converged when the company Ryan was working for acquired the one Leen was working for :P

We met for the first time on a work trip to Istanbul in 2019 — although we suspect we crossed paths regularly on 23rd street in NYC where we both lived between 2010 and 2013 — but it wasn't until a few years after the Istanbul trip that we started dating (secretly at first!) After doing long-distance between Dubai and London for a few years, we decided to move to Amsterdam together and in July 2024, Ryan proposed on a sunset boat trip in Ibiza and we started planning the wedding(s)!

As experience designers and hosts who love bringing people together, we knew immediately we wanted to design a wedding that both broke all the rules and also felt true to who we are as a couple, rather than falling into all the traditional traps.

We decided to split the celebrations into two to avoid having to design one massive gathering for completely different groups. So we landed on an intimate ceremony for close family and a few friends in Philly in April, and a 3-day "Maybe a Wedding" festival for our friends in Turkey at the end of the summer.

Funny enough, producing two weddings in the same year inspired us to start our own creative studio called House of Madder, which is an accumulation of all the private events, travel experiences, pop-ups and professional gatherings we've designed and organized over the years.

Why did you decide to get married where you did?

We met in Istanbul, and one of our first trips together was to the coastal town of Alacati in Izmir, and we fell in love with its charm. It's a hidden gem by the sea with cobblestone streets and a real local, undiscovered feel which is rare to find these days.

We wanted a venue that felt like we were hosting at home but also had character, so when we found The Stay hotel we knew it was the perfect fit — the hotel is a converted beer factory that was designed to host parties and the lobby literally has a giant disco ball hanging from the ceiling. We booked all 24 rooms for close friends and family, and the rest of our guests stayed in nearby hotels. We also chose an off-season date at the end of September so we basically had the whole town to ourselves.

How many guests did you have?

175 friends from 34 nationalities and our parents

Tell us about your outfits.

Because we broke away from the traditional format of a wedding we wanted our outfits to reflect the playfulness of the festival as well as the overall dress code which we shared with guests: white with a pop of color.

We opted out of a dress and suit for the "ceremony", and instead Leen wore a custom halter and pant set from Lebanese duo Azzi & Osta and carried a hand-made glass flower bouquet she bought at a street market in France.

Ryan wore a white linen matching set that was custom embroidered for the occasion — we worked with a talented Jordanian illustrator (Aya Mobaydeen) to design motifs that represent our story, and then worked with a Ukrainian designer (Vyshyta) to embroider the motifs and produce the outfit.

For the pool party, Leen changed into a beaded Oceanus one-piece swimsuit, and Ryan was in Arrels Barcelona x Malika Favre swimtrunks.

For the after party, Leen wore a variation of the ceremony outfit with a matching sequined tube top (also Azzi & Osta) and Ryan wore a custom-embroidered t-shirt that we made ourselves using decals we ordered from an Etsy seller.

The outfits were a real reflection of our styles & the non-conformist nature of the wedding. No dress, no heels, no suits, prioritizing creative expression and comfort over formality and tradition.

What was the most important aspect for you, in terms of planning your wedding?

There were three things that were really important for us to incorporate during the planning process:

Presence: We wanted guests (and us too!) to lose track of time and really be in the moment, especially since the celebrations started at noon and went on for 16 hours! We distributed phone pouches as favors at the entrance so people would put their phones away, and encouraged people to take their shoes off and feel at home.

Play: We wanted it to feel like a festival, with plenty of surprises and unexpected twists that make you feel like a kid again — from the color costume bar to the tattoo station to the ice cream stand to the pinata cake. The djs were asked to play feel-good and care-free tunes rather than dark or deep tracks, so people were dancing pretty much the whole time.

Connection: We knew that people were coming from all over the world to celebrate us, but we really wanted it to be just as much about celebrating the friendships we've gathered over the years, and mixing different groups together. The ceremony was purposely interactive, and we even built a whatsapp matchmaking bot that matches people to each other based on shared interests and fun facts.

Were there any elements that were important for you to incorporate?

In the end we managed to totally flip the script and design something really original, while staying true to the "key moments" of a typical wedding:

The Ceremony: Two close friends led an interactive ceremony where guests connected with one another while hearing stories about us through four themes that define our relationship—home, creativity, growth, and community—each shared by a different friend. As part of the ceremony, every guest received a folded Victorian love letter, wrote a note inside it, and hung it on a massive olive tree. We did the same, exchanging our own letters instead of rings, and adding them to the wishing tree.

The First Dance: When it was time for the first dance, we surprised our friends by playing a B2B set (our first time ever playing!) which we had been secretly preparing for months.

The Cake: Instead of a real cake, we worked with a paper artist studio in Istanbul (AneHos Studio) to build a 4-tiered pinata cake which we filled with gummy bears and paper confetti, and live-decorated with markers before smashing it to pieces in front of the guests.

The Souvenirs: Instead of giveaways, we had a real tattoo artist (Ufuk Şimşek) set up a tattoo station in one of the hotel rooms. Leen and both her parents (along with 20 other guests) ended up getting tattoos that day!

Any tips for couples getting married?

If you can, find a way to throw the rules out the window and do it your way. We never imagined we'd get away with not having a traditional wedding but we figured out how to do it without upsetting anyone and it was so worth all the effort.

Are there any vendors that you would like to tell us a little more about?

There are so many incredible people who made this a reality, especially our local planners SUN who helped us bring our crazy ideas to life, Easthaus for documenting the day so perfectly, and The Stay team for making us feel like the hotel was really our own home.

And of course none of it would have been possible without all the creative talent we collaborated with — from our atypical officiants and ceremony storytellers, to the djs and live musicians, to the illustrators and animators, to the fashion designers, tattoo artists and paper artists! It was a true communal effort and we are forever grateful to everyone who contributed, big or small.

Photographer & Videographer: Easthaus @easthaus.co | Creative Direction & Design: House of Madder

@house__of__madder | Planning & Production: SUN @sun.creative.consultant | Venue & Catering: Warehouse by The Stay @warehousebythestay | Celebrants: Mitch Balintos & Haya Shaath (friends) | Hair: Semih & Orhan Kuafor | Pinǎta Cake: AneHos Studio @anehosstudio | Live Music: Taylan & Roza | DJs: Monokultur @monokulturmusic, Chafic @chafic_music, John Woods @johnwoodsmusic Merve

@mervebozdag, Nikos, Mert C. @mrtctnky, Sinan Onurlu @sinanonurlu | Illustrations: Aya Mobaydeen

Rings: Alexandra Hakim @alexandrahakim