N.O.W.
real wedding
A LOUISIANA FÊTE
Alex May-Sealey & Brandon Gaynor JUNE 24, 2017
PHOTOGRAPHER: Trent Spann, Images by Robert T. WRITTEN BY: Natalie Pompilio
WHEN BRANDON GAYNOR DROPPED TO ONE KNEE during an early morning walk in the Hamptons, his girlfriend, Alex May-Sealey, wasn’t surprised or particularly excited. It wasn’t the first time her boyfriend of three years had tried to trick her into thinking he was asking her to marry him. And earlier in their stroll, Brandon had seemingly ignored Alex when she’d commented that this beach would be the perfect place to propose. So she asked him to stand up. Instead, he offered her a diamond ring. “It was real!” Alex says. The couple’s romance had begun the Hamptons years earlier, when this self-proclaimed Southern Belle and this Yankee from New York were part of a group sharing a summer rental in East Hampton. (One of Alex’s friends and Brandon’s roommate were dating after meeting on a chance plane ride, another love story that deserves to be told some day.) Alex and Brandon immediately hit it off — “We became best friends,” Alex says. Soon she was making the six-hour train ride from her home in Washington DC to the Long Island resort town to see Brandon “and, of course, to hang out at the beach.” By summer’s end, they were more than friends. With Alex still in the nation’s capital and Brandon in New York, they began a long-distance relationship.
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“For two years, we alternated weekend traveling to each other, taking 2 a.m. trains on Mondays to make it back in time for work,” she says. Almost a year after their engagement, in June 2017, Alex, Brandon and more than 220 of their nearest and dearest gathered in New Orleans. The couple was eager to show off Alex’s home state to the many out-of-town guests who had never visited before. They created a wedding hashtag — #geauxinggaynor — which undoubtedly confused some guests at first sight. They encouraged visitors to take a Southern cooking class, explore the bayou and visit a plantation. On the night before the wedding, Alex and Brandon gave a lesson in Carnival, renting a Bourbon Street balcony where guests enjoyed a Haydel’s Bakery king cake while throwing more than 350 pounds of beads to the ever-changing crowd below. The next day, after the wedding reception at Marché, the bride and groom handed out masks and led a second-line to Pat O’Brien’s for an after-party. “We wanted to provide a true experience all the way from the views to the music to the food,” Alex says. “It was great to see that come together with the ones we love.”