Booksmart star Beanie Feldstein opens up about camp-themed ‘Jew-ish’ wedding: ‘Magic was present’
Booksmart star Beanie Feldstein has shared the sweet story behind her intimate summer camp-themed wedding ceremony to producer Bonnie-Chance Roberts.
Congratulations are in order for Booksmart actor Beanie Feldstein, who tied the knot with fiancée Bonnie-Chance Roberts on 20 May 2023.
The pair first met in London in 2018, when Roberts cast Feldstein as the lead in Caitlin Moran’s coming-of-age adaptation How To Build A Girl.
Now, in a wide-ranging interview with Vogue, the loved-up couple have opened up about the long-awaited proposal and their “magical, awe inspiring” nuptials at the summer camp venue Cedar Lakes Estate in the Hudson Valley, New York State.
Feldstein, who married the British producer, 32, after five years of dating, explained that the wedding location is the pair’s “happy place”, as much as it is a tribute to her family’s love of summer camps.
“I grew up going to summer camp for 10 years, and my parents and both sets of my grandparents met at summer camp, so camp is a lineage of love through the generations of my family,” she began.
“Even though we met in London and fell in love on a film set, to get married at a camp was a truly beautiful emotional homecoming.”
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Feldstein, who rose to fame with 2017’s comedy-drama Lady Bird and went on to receive a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical in Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut Booksmart (2019), also said that the festivities were a modern tribute to the couple’s Jewish heritage.
“We are both proud Jewish girls, but we didn’t have a rabbi or cantor that we felt knew us both equally and that was very important to us to get married by someone who could capture and reflect us both equally,” Feldstein said, adding that they eventually chose her guncle (gay uncle) Charles.
And they introduced guests to the traditional Jewish dancing performance, the hora.
“It was really important to Bon [Roberts] to hora right away, as that is the tradition at Liverpool Jewish weddings, and it was amazing!” she said. The couple’s first dance song was performed by best friend and fellow actor Ben Platt.
Feldstein also explained how the dress code was inclusive to people of all genders.
“It was very important to us for our friends to feel like themselves on our big day. We didn’t want them stuffing themselves into anything that didn’t feel right to them.
“We ended up asking them to wear a single block springy or light colour with no patterns. In all honestly, we were very worried about it, but on the day, it really took our breath away. It was such a joyous wash of colour amongst the trees,” Feldstein reflected.
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As for how the “fairytale” wedding came to life, guests were given the “true camp experience” with “bandana tablecloths, s’mores for dessert, pennant banners and friendship bracelets”.
“We really wanted to surprise guests when they entered the barn for the reception,” Feldstein added. “We wanted it to feel unexpectedly elevated and romantic and like nothing they had seen.”
In fact, the entire wedding was a “love note” to the guests with “embroidered song lyrics, personal items such as our favourite childhood toys, road signs of significant places, a cake from an anniversary, items found in our apartment, and funny quotes or jokes that only our friends would understand”.
In the interview, Roberts also reflected on the path to walking down the aisle. After spending over a year apart on two different continents due the Covid-19 pandemic, she finally got the chance to propose to Feldstein with a bespoke Michelle Oh ring made to look “as if a shard of magic was frozen in time”.
“After so long apart, I felt like Beanie deserved a perfect moment that would feel out of time or space,” Roberts continued. “We’ve always marvelled at the fact that we come from two very different places and that, despite the odds, we found each other.
“It never felt more palpable than during our 13 months spent separated in Liverpool and LA. And so the proposal was a celebration of the long roads we had taken to find each other and to get to the moment of committing to marriage.”
And in a moment of queer joy, Feldstein remembered what it felt like to read their intimate vows to one another.
“It made it feel like truly there was nothing else in the world except for all of us there beneath the trees. It was genuinely the most magical, awe-inspiring moment of our lives.”