Stella Fiore & Joseph Szladek
Church of Saint Saviour and the Montauk Club
October 17, 2009
There was really no question of whether Stella Fiore would be getting married in Brooklyn. Born in Carroll Gardens and raised in Bay Ridge, she was living in Cobble Hill while getting her M.F.A. when she met her now-husband, Joe, in April 2007. But although they’d spend the summer together, Stella, 32, had plans to devote nearly a year in Maine to working on a novel (“To make me pursue her,” Joe jokes). Eight months later she returned, and Joe, 31, proposed. Their wedding was firmly rooted in Stella’s home borough and Italian heritage: Her family’s priest married them, the ceremony took place nine blocks from the couple’s Gowanus apartment, and, like any good Italian mother, Stella’s spent weeks praying for no rain—and her wish was (largely) granted. It could have had something to do with the date: “Two weeks before the wedding, my mom pulled out my great-grandmother’s wedding invite,” Stella says. “It turned out she got married the same day we did, many years ago.”
The Details
Jewelry: Badgley Mischka
Groom’s Suit: BCBG Max Azria
Flowers: Denise Fasanello Floral Design
Music: Nancy 3. Hoffman (procession and cocktail hour) and D.J. Shakey (reception)
Cake: Sweet Melissa Pâtisserie
Hair: Courtney Benedetti
Stella Fiore & Joseph Szladek, October 17Photographs by Bethany Bandera “I didn’t want people to jump in their cars again and have to deal with parking in Park Slope, so we decided to create this celebratory parade. I wanted something visual that would make people feel they were part of a group, so we carried white peacock feathers.”
“This is kind of embarrassing, but my name means star flower in Italian, so the flower in Joseph’s boutonniere was a starflower pincushion. They were also in my bouquet.”
“Nancy 3. Hoffman played the accordion. She has an accordion troupe up in Maine, the Maine Squeeze. She also runs the only umbrella-cover museum in the world.”
“My mom made four different kinds of cookies: seven-layer bars, pecan tassies, rosettes, and these anginetti, or Italian lemon drops.”
