The New York newlyweds who turned their big day into an art show [inside my journal]

New York-based artists and newlyweds — Easton and Kai — share the story of their one-of-a-kind wedding including: an art gallery reception, drag queen, instant ramen bar, and leather journals for their closest creative friends. 

Tell us about yourselves and the creative work you do. 

Easton: I studied digital media with a focus on video games, so a lot of my professional work is in animation and 3D. But I’ve been an illustrator since kindergarten, that’s always been my foundation. Most of my ideas start on paper before they go anywhere near a screen. There’s something about that first physical mark that feels essential to the process. 

Kai: I went to school for film and TV, so I’m in a similar space: visual storytelling. I don’t work professionally in film right now, but writing is still my main creative outlet. I’m working on a feature-length screenplay and a short TV series. I bounce between projects a lot, which suits me. 

We came to New York separately. I moved from California in 2014 for school, and Easton came from Chicago in 2015. We actually met online, and only found out afterwards that we’d been at the same college. That overlap meant our circles came together quite naturally, and a lot of the people who ended up being part of our wedding came into our lives through that connection. 

How do journals and notebooks fit into your creative process? 

Easton: Coming from a background that spans both digital and physical media, I think a lot about what each does differently. Paper has a permanence that screens don’t. When you put something down, it stays; you’re making a commitment to that idea.  

In digital work, everything is mutable. You can shift things, undo, revise endlessly, which has its place in industry pipelines where last-minute changes are part of the job. But for an artist trying to develop their own work, that mutability can actually get in the way. It can make it harder to commit to a direction. Paper cuts through that. It’s the fastest route from something in your head to something real, without too many roadblocks. 

Kai: I come at it slightly differently because my writing is personal rather than professional, so there’s no time pressure or deadline. But I think that actually makes the intentionality of pen and paper even more valuable. There’s no ‘Command Z’. You can’t just undo a sentence or drag a paragraph somewhere else. It slows you down in a way that I think is genuinely useful. You let the thought settle a little before you commit it to the page. And I think that means the output is often closer to finished. Instead of pouring everything out and spending hours editing, you’ve already done some of that processing before the pen even touches the paper. 

What’s your journal set up? 

Easton: I have two notebooks inside my journal; one for work, one for personal life. The work one gets used constantly: meeting notes, tasks, reminders, anything I need to track day to day.  
 
The personal one I use to monitor how consistently I’m working on my own creative projects. It’s a form of accountability, being able to look back and see whether I’ve actually been showing up for the work, or just thinking about it. 

Kai: Mine is similar. I’ll use it to plot out story structure, sketch out scenes, work through problems with a script. Something about seeing it physically on the page, the shape of a story, where the weight falls, tells you things that a screen doesn’t. And there’s also just the pleasure of it. Slowing down, thinking carefully, writing something by hand. I think a lot of people are craving that right now. 

Tell us about your wedding — it sounds like it was anything but traditional. 

Kai: We actually got married at city hall in 2023, then took our time planning the celebration. We finally had our wedding last August. Because we were already married, a lot of the pressure fell away. We didn’t feel like we had to do things a certain way, which freed us up to really rethink what we actually wanted. 

One of the first things we reconsidered was the wedding party. Traditionally you’d have people standing up at the altar with you, but we decided we didn’t want that. We still wanted our closest friends and family reflected in the day. So instead, we asked around twelve of them, including siblings and some of our dearest friends, to create an original artwork around a theme we’d set. Those pieces were displayed as an art gallery during the reception. 

Easton: It ended up being closer to thirty contributors with about twelve finished pieces; some people collaborated. There was an oil painting, sculptural work, and someone even made a video game. Both of our moms officiated the ceremony. A drag queen performed to kick off the transition from cocktail hour into the reception. At the end of the night we had a karaoke after-party with an instant ramen bar to keep everyone going. It was the biggest party we’ve ever thrown. 

Tell us about the wedding programme. 

Easton: Instead of a standard order of service, we made a comic. It told the story of things we love about living in New York, and each mapped to something in the wedding itself. We love a particular taco place, so we served tacos. We love art museums, so there was the gallery. And so on. 

In the comic we gave ourselves characters; Kai is a triangle and Easton is a square, based on tattoos we both got separately, very early on, before we’d even met. They turned out to be almost identical in style. Complete coincidence. So that became our thing. 

Kai: For the guest book, we gave everyone a card with a circle printed on it, making them all part of the same shape family, and asked them to draw themselves inside it. That collection of drawings became our record of everyone who was there. 

What was the setting like? 

Kai: We’re based in Queens, just outside Manhattan, and the wedding was on a Friday evening in August. Having it mostly at night meant everyone got to enjoy the full New York summer day beforehand, and then we had this incredible city skyline as the backdrop once the sun went down.  

Where did the idea to give paper republic journals as gifts come from? 

Kai: The journals came out of thinking about what we’d normally give to a grooms party. We wanted something genuinely meaningful for the people who’d contributed so much — these were some of our closest, most creative friends. I’d been eyeing paper republic for a while after seeing it on Instagram. We were deep in wedding planning mode, and I kept telling myself it wasn’t the time to be buying things. Then the question came up of what to gift everyone, and I thought: I know exactly what it should be! 

We got each person a grand voyageur, had their initials embossed on the cover, and chose a specific colour for each person based on how we see them. So everyone had something personalised and distinct. It felt right; a gift for artists and creatives, something physical and lasting, from people who value exactly that. 

Easton: The night before the wedding, instead of a traditional rehearsal dinner, we hosted a dinner for all twelve of them and presented the journals there as a thank-you. It felt like the right moment; intimate, just us and the people who’d made the day what it was. 

Have you seen those journals out in the world since? 

Easton: We visited a friend in Chicago recently — she was one of the thirty— and I saw her journal sitting in her bookcase. It was just lovely to see it there, part of her everyday life. That’s what you want a gift to do.  

Kai also made bookmarks from ribbons used in the wedding decorations, so the event literally lives inside our journal now alongside everything we’re working on today. Something that connects the wedding to our ongoing creative lives, all held together in the same place. 

Easton and Kai are artists and writers based in Queens, New York. See their work on their website: easton self

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