Writer and filmmaker Jacob Brown and painter Benjamin Curtin Staker met about eight years ago when Benji was singing backup vocals in a band. Jacob caught a show he played at the Boom Boom Room in New York City’s Meatpacking District. A couple of years later, they became friends while living in L.A. “We really hated living there,” Jacob admits. “I moved back to New York after nine months, and he soon followed. And we both ended up being single. Initially he was traveling a lot as a model, spending months at a time in Tokyo, Paris, or Guangzhou, but when he was in New York, we started hanging out a lot as friends.” They discovered all kinds of shared interests—obsessions over obscure books, artists, and aesthetics. “There was never that awkward dating or getting to know each other phase because we were already friends,” Jacob says. “So when we first kissed outside a West Village bar, the relationship already felt inevitable and comfortable and exciting and wonderful.”
An engagement came about very naturally. “We had already talked about it for some time,” Jacob says. “It felt really obvious and true.” Benji popped the question on Fire Island where the couple had been sharing a house every few weeks with their COVID pod. “We were on one of our long walks together, and he was acting all weird and wanted me to got to this one specific area that he had picked out in the dunes. Probably the best part was right afterwards, we came back to our house share for dinner with a lot of our friends, and got to tell them all at once—there was this amazing and immediate warm celebratory moment.”
The wedding was planned for August 16th at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “It’s an incredible, beautiful place that we love,” Jacob says. “We got engaged in September of 2020, but were sort of waiting to schedule the wedding until we were sure that our family would be able to attend. So we planned enough—and did it late enough—to not have to postpone.”
The goal was to create a wedding that felt simple but special—“like a really perfect day at the park with friends,” Jacob says. “Neither of us drink anymore, so we decided to make it a daytime affair, and to skip the seated dinner. And we kind of flipped the day around. So we had what you might call the reception first. Followed by the ceremony. Followed by what we thought would be a quick bite of cake but turned into two hours of cake, speeches, and dancing and hanging out. Thankfully the venue just let us run over cause it was a ton of fun.”
The two did everything together, for better or worse. “I think our moms—particularly Jacob’s—were getting very anxious because we really didn’t want to stress or rush, which meant a lot of things didn’t fall into place until the last week,” Benji says. “A week before the wedding, we still didn’t have an officiant, photographer, or string quartet. But our process worked really well for us.”
For the officiant, they knew they wanted someone traditional, but not religious. “We ended up googling ‘Lesbian Rabbi’ and came across Gail Nalven, who we could immediately tell from her voluminous scarves and silvery brooches, possessed the second-wave feminist mom vibes we wanted. She was amazing, and gave us a simple ceremony that followed the contours of a traditional Jewish ceremony without any mentions of god.”
For the photographer, the two knew they didn’t want a “wedding photographer.” “It just felt wrong,” Jacob explains. “We really wanted someone we had a personal connection to and who would know some of our friends and was queer.” At the last minute, Jacob reconnected with Charles Caesar, who he had worked with on some editorial projects and a film project years before.
For the music, the couple ended up finding Art Strings Ensemble, led by Alex Abaev—who Jacob says “looked straight out of a Wes Anderson casting, gray hair and formal tuxes, etc., and who played in really immaculate classically trained style.”
The couple did their own planning, but they were grateful to accept help with execution as the date drew closer. William Gideon from the Botanic Garden’s in-house caterer organized the food and drink, realizing Jacob and Benji’s request for a menu that could be described as “Eccentric Tea Party In The Park.” Benji’s best friend Erica Rompani came from Italy two months early and took over all the planning, right up to the day of, carrying bushels of dried flowers to the venue.
The grooms both wore Thom Browne for their main looks. “We coordinated by wearing seersucker,” Jacob says. “Mine was a little more classic, gray stripes on white. Benji was a little more fun, going with jacket and shorts in patchwork seersucker and solid navy blocking, as well as shiny nautical brass buttons.” Jacob wore his with Givenchy lace-up derbies and a Fendi floral print shirt. Benji went with a Thom Browne shirt and a pair of Dries Van Noten lace-up derbies with a spiky platform sole.
“We chose Thom Browne suits for a bunch of reasons,” Jacob explains. “He was the first designer I met and interviewed years ago when I was starting out. I’ve written about him for everyone from Paper to the NYT to Vogue. And I felt like in the context of a wedding, the sort of theatrical-tinge to his tailoring adds a really special sense of formality, without anything stuffy or serious or self-conscious. Benji has also modeled a ton for him, both runway and fit modeling.”
On the day of the wedding, Jacob’s 4-year-old nephew Knox served as the ring bearer. “We sort of assumed he would be shy but he was really the life of the party,” Jacob says. “He had no problem marching right out with the ring and posing for a quick photo.”
Before the service, Jacob and Benji had wicker baskets filled with dried flowers on display in the garden. “Our hope was that during our pre-ceremony reception, guests would assemble little Shakespearean bouquets to carry with them and hold at the ceremony,” Jacob explains. “Of course no one did that—until Knox discovered the flowers and started making bouquets for the guests. Then everyone got really into it and made their own.”
As the grooms eventually made their way over to the location for the ceremony—it was held in the Greek amphitheater, so they had guests walk through the Cherry Esplanade while they walked on their own by the Japanese Pond—they kept running into latecomers who wanted to stop and chat. “We wanted to be polite but also had major butterflies,” Jacob remembers. “Then our photographer Charles, bless him, made us stop for some portraits. So our nervous energy was through the roof by the time we walked onto the base of the amphitheater. The simple words of the ceremony that our officiant Gail used felt really powerful. We were both crying and trembling. I guess everyone says this, but it felt like the most beautiful ceremony ever to take place.”
Immediately after, the newlyweds were mobbed by their guests—but eventually they made their way to the Botanic Garden for pictures despite being tear-streaked. “We pulled it together for some portraits, then ducked into our little green room so Benji could do his outfit change,” Jacob says. “Then, to be honest, we didn’t really know what we were supposed to do. Do you talk to people? How does the cake happen? We hadn’t really thought that part through. But somehow we ended up at the cake.” They cut a slice, danced some, then listened to friends give speeches. After things wound down, they spent the night at the Plaza eating room-service desserts.
“I think neither of us are wedding people,” Jacob says. “We didn’t expect for it to be so ‘magical’ — that’s such an overused word when it comes to weddings but the truth is, it’s the only word to describe the day. The other thing we both feel is that, as amazing and singular a day as it was…all of it feels part and parcel of our life together. The days before, during, between, and after both our wedding and honeymoon feel like a single trajectory. Somehow we’ve stumbled/lucked our way onto this amazing life path together and every day feels as exciting as the last.”
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