In 2016, artist Austyn Weiner and producer Dylan Lewis had a chance encounter at Burning Man. While lying on a giant bean bag in a zebra onesie, Austyn was joined by a man wearing just a loincloth. Without a word, the two kissed. She then walked away, satisfied with the chance encounter. “It was all very biblical,” she says, laughing.
Except what happened in the Black Rock Desert didn’t stay in the Black Rock Desert. A few months later, a friend asked Austyn if she could bring a friend to her studio. When she opened the door, there stood Dylan. This time, he was fully clothed.
“We immediately recognized each other, and thus began a six-year dance of artist and collector, friend, and crush,” she says. “Eventually the pandemic brought us to committing to one another and we never looked back.”
In 2022, Dylan proposed to Austyn at their friend’s house in Eze, France—a place of creative solace where she often goes to paint. “On the most picturesque afternoon, Dylan found me on our balcony, hair disheveled, taking out the trash in a 20 euro mumu I had bought off the side of the road. He told me to stand still so he could take a photo of me. Mid-photo, he dropped down to one knee and asked me to marry him,” she says.
Austyn gave a one-word response back: “Really?”
The couple knew they wanted to marry at the groom’s movie ranch, Blue Cloud, just north of Los Angeles, which doubles as a film production set and therefore is a blank slate. For the next two years, they turned Blue Cloud Ranch into what Austyn describes as their “very own world.” Dylan built a botanical garden and had their artist friends Stan Edmondson and Jen Stark come out and make site-specific works. Austyn herself painted a mural on the side of a shed. Meanwhile, her friend Naina Shah began work on their linens and ceramics. Austyn’s sister, editor Amanda Alagem, acted as a creative consultant throughout. “From the very beginning I wanted to take on a ‘Bring Your Own Talent’ approach to this wedding, so I called on all of the brilliant creative people in my life to collaborate with us,” she says. The couple also enlisted event planner Mindy Weiss to execute their vision. “Working with Dylan and I couldn’t have been easy as we are both artists,” Austyn admits. “But she got it, got us, and loved it.” They set their wedding for the early spring day of April 6.