See Inside a Witchy Wedding in the Woods

When we ask newlyweds to think back on what they wanted most for their big day — and we’ve interviewed hundreds of them over the years — the most common response is “For it not to feel like a wedding!” Gathering with old friends and eating mini grilled cheeses in formalwear to celebrate love feels more special these days than ever, even downright miraculous. And the betrothed have never been less attached to the old wedding handbook — or the need to please their great-aunt. So in a flurry of pampas grass and perfectly mismatched-to-match bridesmaid dresses, how do you pull off a non-cookie-cutter affair? For the answers, we decided to interrogate the cool couples whose weddings we would actually want to steal, right down to the tiger-shaped cake toppers.

In the case of Marion Mason and Cassiopeia Sachs-Mason, two self-described “spooky fantasy nerds” who reside in Los Angeles, the phrase “fuck it” came up seven times when speaking about their wedding-planning process. Should they give guests swords? Fuck it, yes. Should they evoke faeries and witches and Lord of the Rings in their celebration’s aesthetics, including carnivorous plants in the tablescapes? Fuck it. Should they invite loved ones who might not be entirely comfortable with their sexuality and presentation? Truly, fuck it. Last September, that intrepid attitude produced a singularly magical weekend filled with love, riddles, and banana pudding for just under 100 guests in the Catskills. Here’s how it happened.

Cas: I’m the exception that proves the rule: Sometimes the bartender is into you.

Marion: I had a survival job running a bar-restaurant-arcade here in L.A. Cas came in every Thursday to play pinball with her best friend, and they would sit where I was stationed and annoy the absolute living shit out of me.

Cas: A few months into knowing each other, I leaned over and said, “I would marry you tomorrow.”

Marion: I was like, “Haha, very funny. Did you want a beer or what?” It wasn’t romantic for about two and a half years.

Cas: She was a white whale, the total package: funny and gregarious and nerdy and charming.

Marion: We were still just friends when she asked me to grab coffee. Cas sat me down and said, “I wish I had been born a woman,” and I went, “Oh thank God. I thought you were going to say you were in love with me.”

Cas: We kind of flirted, and things built over time. When we were both single, I invited her to a movie. Our first official date was three weeks later, when I asked her over to play a long-term game, Gloomhaven. I knew. I had faith. When you know, you know.

Marion: We figured out together how she wanted to present to other people; we came up with Cassiopeia. It was a huge part of our relationship for a long time — we got to build her up as a person while we built our relationship. We moved in together in January 2020 and then had the smoothest, most delightful quarantine experience. It was like, Oh, this is how it’s supposed to be. Stuck with each other forever. 

Cas: I proposed to her in front of all her friends at the Ojai Valley Inn.

Marion: We had already picked out rings. We knew it was going to happen.

Cas: The weddings I’ve found to be the most engaging and charming were the ones with a personal touch. I knew I wanted to focus on unique experiences that conveyed who we are. People will appreciate that, and if they don’t, fuck ’em. We wanted upstate New York for familial reasons. I grew up in Mamaroneck, and my parents are in Rye.

Marion: I’m from Connecticut, my parents are in Connecticut, my brother lives in Boston. The tristate area was the general vicinity. We wanted it to be a whole weekend experience. We visited Foxfire Mountain House, and the atmosphere was so magical.

Cas: It was that perfect mingling of bucolic but not too distant, familiar but novel.

Marion: Cas and I are huge nerds, as you could probably tell, but also deep lovers of fantasy. We wanted the wedding to feel very much like a fantasy magical getaway without it being too cosplay, Comic Con–y. We didn’t have anybody show up in elf ears.

Cas: For our dresses, I had a hyperfixation on the terms Seelie and Unseelie, from the Fae kingdoms, in Welsh or Gaelic folklore; it’s the idea that Seelie are the good faeries and Unseelie are the evil faeries.

Marion: We wanted to do a black-and-white thing. It matched her hair better, and we got this contrast effect in our photos, which we really loved.

Cas: For some of my family, this was the first time they’d see me fully femme presenting, and there was a thematic resonance, a nod to mourning the person that I was, or the person they thought they knew, while still trying to embody a transfiguration of beauty. Trying to find a dress that fulfilled that criteria was a challenge.

Marion: We looked at Lorien, which is a very nerd-geared bridal shop in Los Angeles. At a follow-up appointment, the owner, Amanda, said, “I’m so glad you’re here, because I just got a dress in that reminds me of armor and I thought of you.” The top half was mostly sheer, but covered in crystals and sequins so that it looked metallic from far away. Because I have a background in costumes and props, I made these chains off the shoulders to make it look like chain-mail pauldrons. Then, Amanda and I picked out a big, fluffy overskirt by Maggie Sottero to put on top, because the dress itself, by Watters, was slinky and stretchy and easy to dance in but didn’t have the pouf-y fairy-princess vibe that I wanted.

Cas: We ended up hiring Alysia Cole, a stylist we found on Instagram, just as she was blowing up. I put on this dress by Essence of Australia, from the bridal shop Della Curva, and something about the details embodies all those different values and themes I wanted to communicate. I knew it when I saw it.

Marion: We both wore tiaras. We tried on a few veils, and they just felt a little too traditional.

Cas: The theme we came up with for the aesthetics was when you’re a child and people warn you against going into the woods; what they’re worried about is what you’d find at our wedding.

Marion: That part of a fairy tale where you’re not supposed to go into the woods with these witches. We wanted to feel like the world could bite you.

Cas:  Our florists were like, “What about carnivorous plants?” We said, “Absolutely.”

Marion: They got Venus flytraps for our tables. We found our florist, Dark and Diamond, through Foxfire. When I was looking through their portfolio, I saw they had done this dark, sexy, spooky palette of blacks and reds and purples, and I found out it was for their own vow renewal. We wanted the tables to feel like a forest floor, lots of moss and ferns and branches, really lush. I brought a Venus flytrap home, but it did not survive. But I did try.

Marion: Cas and I got ready together. We’d already seen each other’s outfits, so we didn’t need a big reveal or anything. Also, I am far too controlling and type A to not have eyes on everything all the time.

Cas: Our officiant was our dear friend Ariel. We’ve played Dungeons and Dragons with her and her husband every Sunday for seven years now.

Marion: We crafted the whole ceremony with her. It was all very patchwork. Ariel had everyone do a kind of call and response, like “Do the people here pledge to support this couple? Give them your wisdom and your love and your patience?” And everyone got to say “I will.”

Cas: We both have Anglican backgrounds, Irish and Scottish, and we found out about the tradition of hand fasting.

Marion: It’s where the term “tying the knot” comes from. You tie a rope around the couple’s hands as they’re clasped. Ariel held the rope in place as we pulled our hands so that it stayed. We practiced like 200 times and still messed it up. It’s more difficult than you think!

Cas: I liked having a physical vessel that was a symbol of the marriage other than just rings; something we could literally hang on our wall. And we did.

Marion: I think the stumbling was really endearing to everyone.

Cas: Because we met at an arcade, we wanted to have all these lawn games. We had Ice Cold Beer, this game on a pegboard with joysticks. We had little dagger stickers put on clothespins and you could put them on people to “backstab” them. We had swords.

Marion: This company called Upstate Jamboree had all these games, like shuffleboard. People really went balls to the wall with it. Apparently the dishwasher at Foxfire had dagger clothespins stuck to his back because the bartenders and staff started doing it.

Cas: We had edible glitter you could put in your drink as a “potion.”

Marion: I found tiny bottles meant for crafts, and cleaned out hundreds of them, and they became these tiny vials of edible glitter, like little fairy potion bottles. Some of them were color changing, which freaked people out.

Cas: For the seating assignments, we wanted it to feel like little pixies had stolen everyone’s seat order and everyone had to solve a riddle to get their table name.

Marion: Dinner was under the permanent tent at Foxfire. They have a really amazing focaccia there. Brussels sprouts, a mint-and-pea risotto, a sweet corn succotash. Then there was pan-seared branzino and braised short rib on a giant platter. They worked with us to make the whole meal feel like it was an overflowing feast. My one thing was, I can’t let anyone leave this wedding hungry. That is a cardinal sin to me.

Cas: Two of our best friends gave speeches halfway through, and my mom, and both our dads. We found this clip of Marion’s first Christmas, where her dad is carrying her as a baby, shot on an old Handycam, dancing to “Unforgettable.” We dimmed the lights and played this video from 30 years ago, and then brought the lights back up and they danced to it as adults. My mom and I danced, and I hugged her and I can still feel it. It’s such a sense memory, her head on my chest.

Marion: We had a DJ, Jay McElfresh. Our first dance was to a Noah Kahan song that we love, and the rest of the playlist was a lot of indie pop, like standard cool wine-bar music and jazzy bossa nova standards. Then there was the Charli XCX after 10 p.m. once Grandma left.

Cas: I am a large person with a disproportionate amount of Neanderthal blood, so I sweat profusely, and nobody tells you how heavy those dresses are. I changed into a sort of gothic tuxedo top with a frilly undershirt and a two-piece skirt. It was like I was letting out my inner vampire as night fell.

Marion: We had a cake more for Cas than anybody else because Cas’s favorite thing in the world is Funfetti.

Cas: We had a Funfetti cake because my transition goal is to be a basic bitch, and I like what I like.

Marion: Foxfire asked us if there were dishes that meant something to us that we wanted to incorporate into the menu. My mom makes banana pudding, and a chocolate cream pie where the base is pot de crème; they’re seared into my DNA as the two most important desserts on the planet. So they made little jam-jar versions, and they were spot-on. I think I ate five of them. Everyone tells you, “Remember to eat on your wedding day!” I’m like, I’m going to bust out of this dress if I keep eating.

Cas: I still wake up in sweats, thrashing, wishing I could get more of that banana pudding.

Marion: We moved back to the glass house for an after-party, where we had a karaoke machine set up and pomme frites, like big Belgian fries with dipping sauces and little sliders, late-night food.

Cas: Marian and I sang “Shallow” together.

Marion: I don’t think people expected our wedding to be as elaborate as it was. There was a sense of childlike wonder.

Cas: There were some people I did not expect to come and be supportive, and they absolutely were. Did they turn around and vote for the guy who alleges that all trans people are pedophiles and groomers and are sex-changing your child during their lunch break? Yes. But I’m here trying to present a different picture. This was an opportunity. I’m not on a high horse; I think having a neutral or positive experience of people will slowly build to that being more embraced and normalized. Ultimately, this is just an expression of love. We wanted anyone who was receptive to bear witness to that, because this is another tiny grain of sand weighing the scale toward empathy. Making a show of “Hey, I exist, and my existence is not a threat to you, and in fact, maybe you could have some awesome banana pudding?”

Marion: People looked happy, and everything was worth it. When I saw people having the time of their lives? Worth it. Everyone got to feel the same amount of joy that I feel in my relationship.

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