Stone Fox Bride Molly Guy Weddings Visionaries

Photographed by Winnie Au

New York City is hard. So hard, it can crack you wide open. Sometimes your dreams break on the concrete; other times, all the junk gets pounded out of you, and you go from doing what you thought was the right thing to what is. Molly Guy (née Rosen) thought she was supposed to be a writer and editor. After a few solid years at the trade, however, she found herself at a job she didn’t like, writing copy for a big, corporate cosmetic company. "This was a low point in my working life," she says of those times, "but it happened to coincide with me meeting my now husband. He asked me to marry him, and when I was in the midst of planning my wedding, which I could only do by my desk at work and on the weekends, I couldn’t find a niche for myself. My needs weren’t being met — my style needs, my emotional needs."

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Two-and-a-half years later, Guy is meeting those needs for other out-of-the-ordinary women with Stone Fox Bride, the unofficial anti-wedding boutique for the engaged and hip. From her Noho showroom/salon, she tends to a growing flock of nontraditional brides (Jemima Kirke, Aimee Osbourne, May Anderson, Pamela Love, Sarah Sophie Flicker, etc.) with the options she wished she had when planning her own nuptials: unexpected wedding dresses from Electric Feathers, Wren, Lindsey Thornburg, and her own bridal line; vintage, hand-sewn Chantilly-lace veils with 10-foot trains in purple; heirloom-like engagement rings that Jared couldn't even comprehend; and references to marriage-minded yoga instructors, sex counselors, and more. "I’ve finally found it," says the mother of her own hippie-marriage den that's stocked with copies of Forever and Confetti System trimmings. "This is the right thing."

Photographed by Winnie Au

Down the Aisle
“Originally, I had hoped to have a store downtown that offered a really well-curated collection of wedding dresses for the discerning, stylish, downtown woman who was really turned off by the whole wedding culture. I really thought I was opening a small, 300-square-foot place that would carry dresses. Since then, I’ve developed a lifestyle, wellness, and fashion brand that really speaks to the woman who is weathering her marriage transition and trying to get through the period while maintaining her authentic, true self.”

"Fuck Weddings"
"So, the ‘fuck weddings’ thing came about unintentionally when I brought my baby daughter into work at 7 weeks old last summer. I thought it’d be funny if we bought a onesie and wrote ‘fuck weddings’ on it and sent a picture to my family. Once that picture started making rounds on Facebook, people asked if we sold the shirts. So, we started getting them made. Honestly, the sentiment is not about giving the finger to weddings. I love weddings. I love family. I think celebrating the union of marriage is sacred in this day and age. What we’re really saying is, ‘Fuck the wedding industry as it exists today.’ What we’re sort of eschewing is the old-school, 1950s' notion that once you walk down the aisle with a smile plastered across your face, you’ll live happily ever after, which is just not the case.”

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Ladies' Room
“A lot of people come in and say it feels like home, or it feels like my best friend's closet. Like right now, my feet are up on the couch, and I’m lying back in a yoga pose. My assistant is wearing Mukluks. Even though we have a vibe of 'we’re a bunch of mellow stoner/slackers,' we really get our work done. We’re disciplined and are very unguarded and true to ourselves. My mind is blown every day that I get to be creative all the time with so many other creative-minded and talented people. Oh, and luckily, it’s filled with friends that are as bat-shit out of their minds as I am."

The Bride of Tomorrow
"I’d like to think that the world of wedding retail is heading into a place of high-fashion — that there’ll be high wedding fashion, and it will reach a consumer who feels like herself on her wedding day. As for Stone Fox, I don't think we'll ever become the Urban Outfitters of weddings. I have enough faith in me and my team that we will always remain on the cutting edge.”

For more in-depth interviews with inspiring visionaries, click here.

Hair and makeup by Andrew Colvin.