Real Weddings: Lauren and Hayley

For fashion followers, Lauren Chan and Hayley Kosan need no introduction. For everyone else, Lauren is a 35-year-old model, TV personality and former editor at Glamour (she also happened to make Toronto Life’s list of Most Influential Torontonians of 2023). Hayley is a 36-year-old filmmaker and cinematographer. After moving to New York from Toronto in 2013, Lauren made headlines in 2023 for coming out as queer in Sports Illustrated and, in 2025, became the magazine’s first lesbian cover model. She and Hayley met on a commercial set in 2019 and went on their first date in late 2022. They fell fast, and Hayley proposed via PowerPoint on a birthday trip to Rhinebeck, New York, in 2024. A year later, they wed with a civil ceremony at New York City Hall followed by a delightfully gay 70-person reception at No Bar in Manhattan. Here’s how it all came together.

Lauren: I’ve been really lucky over my career to work with people I immediately get along with. I met one of my best friends, Precious Lee, at the first agency get-together I ever went to. Another best friend, Noah Silverstein, came from my time at Glamour. So when I met Hayley on set for a commercial casting for Rent the Runway in 2019, I figured it was the beginning of another cool connection. We hit it off, but I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t know I was queer then, and we were both married.

Hayley: Looking back, I wish we had a flirty first meeting—but I was worried about getting the shoot done.

Lauren: Over the next few years, and especially during Covid, almost every aspect of my life changed. I got divorced, came out in a very public way and spent many hours with my therapist learning how to process my feelings in the moment. I’m serious when I say I did not know how to process, feel or act on desire.

Hayley: I changed a lot too. I also separated from my previous partner and took some time to reevaluate my priorities. When Lauren and I went on our first date, in December of 2022, I had done a lot of work on myself and was ready for something serious again.

Lauren: Except neither of us knew it was a date.

Hayley: That’s true. Lauren and I had been casually exchanging messages on Instagram about basketball, and she DM’d me asking if I wanted to get a drink at No Bar, the queer space in the Standard Hotel in Manhattan. I thought, Oh, that’s fun. Lauren’s funny. I’ll just be her lesbian friend.

Lauren: I wasn’t publicly out yet. It was exciting—I felt like I was on the verge of becoming the new me, one that was fully authentic. A few nights later, we were sitting in the corner of the bar. I spent the first while trying to get our banter to fall in the right cadence. Our jokes kept missing their landing, and I couldn’t suss out what was off.

Hayley: I almost blew my shot with Lauren because I was painfully hungover. What I really needed to do was lie on the couch, but I didn’t want to cancel.

Lauren: I just kept teasing Hayley about it by sarcastically saying, “This is so fun.” Still, we both seemed to want to salvage it, so we went to two NYC icons—Sel Rrose in the Bowery for oysters, then the Odeon in Tribeca for french fries and a nightcap. At the Odeon, we were talking about basketball and Hayley looked at me and said I was her dream woman. I was like, Okay, now we’re on the right track.

Hayley: On the way out, Lauren put her hand on my lower back, and I clued in at last.

Lauren: We were smitten quick. I was going through my own thing—discovering my identity and all—but being able to do that with someone who is so thoughtful, caring, fun, funny, vulnerable, patient and excitable all at once was a gift.

Related: Inside a Virgin Radio host’s joyful ceremony with chosen family

Hayley: We just wanted to hang out with each other all the time. New York is such an exciting backdrop for a blossoming romance, and we hadn’t really steeped ourselves in it before. Full afternoons turned into evening dates. We saw just about every museum and gallery show possible.

Lauren: By spring, we were playing basketball together and blending our communities in queer spaces.

Hayley: We tried to resist the classic lesbian U-Hauling trope, but we only made it five months before I moved into Lauren’s place in May of 2023.

Lauren: Living together is so fun. I say to Hayley often, “All we do is have fun and be in love.” When Hayley wakes up in the morning, she sees me with big shiny eyes just blinking at her with a smile, waiting for her to get up and play with me.

Hayley: Lauren uses that terminology a lot—playing together. I knew we were going to be together forever when we found our groove at home, dancing in the kitchen or doing silly character bits and cackling all day, every day.

Lauren: A few months later, on our dates, Hayley started doing this smooth move.

Hayley: We’d be two martinis deep in the booth of a dark, candlelit restaurant, and I’d lower my chin and look at her with bedroom eyes and say, “I’m gonna marry you.”

Lauren: And my pupils would just dilate into the heart-eyed emoji. Some divorcées say they don’t want to dabble in the institution again, but we really, really wanted to get married. Especially in the US, it’s such a measure of equality for gay people. It affords you a thousand advantages within the system of the country, and it’s a big moment of recognition.

Hayley: Since we had been talking about it, the proposal wasn’t a surprise. But my delivery was. In August of 2024, we went up to Rhinebeck, New York, for Lauren’s birthday. One of my recurring bits is making PowerPoint presentations for Lauren. She loves a show-and-tell moment, so whenever she needs a pep talk, I’ll put together a speech complete with slides full of animations. Naturally, for her birthday I had one ready to go, and the last slide said, “In conclusion, will you marry me?”

Lauren: Hayley says I jumped up and down a lot, but I blacked out in the joy of it all.

Hayley: We didn’t do traditional engagement rings, but I proposed with a diamond band and we designed our wedding rings together later. Mine is a Hermès silver band.

Lauren: I joked that I wanted mine to look lesbian—but that is the truth. So much of what was on the market felt too trad or femme for me, so I worked with Lauren Addison on a chunky platinum set with strong lines that would pair with my steel barbell ring by Isamaya and my classically sapphic silver thumb ring. We waited to plan the wedding for a few months, soaking up all the pride and happiness for a bit instead.

Hayley: I hadn’t met Lauren’s extended family yet, so we took a trip out to Brantford around Christmas. Her family is Chinese, and as they were giving all of the kids red envelopes, they gave me one too, which made me feel so accepted. Anyone Lauren brings home, they care about.

Lauren: When we got back to New York, I was like, Okay, I should get to some of the logistics of the wedding.

Hayley: That’s an understatement—she absolutely planned the whole thing.

Lauren: We agreed that we wanted a big gay party. We didn’t really consider anywhere other than No Bar—our first-date spot—for the venue.

Hayley: After we booked it, we got excited about the many events we could dress up for. Fashion is such an important device for expression, and it was fun to apply our styles to such a traditional setting.

Lauren: My style leans provocative and campy, and Hayley’s style is more masculine and androgynous.

Hayley: I always say my style is Darth Vader meets Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous.

Lauren: We ended up doing five different looks, one each for the bachelorette, the civil ceremony, the welcome dinner, the reception and the after-party. We were fitted for our reception look first. Sally LaPointe was the first designer I’d ever interviewed as a fashion editor, and I’m always in awe of how warm and connected she is with everyone she meets. We love her chic, monochromatic style, so she and her team did a custom look for each of us.

Hayley: For me, they made a cinched, cropped neoprene blazer—like scuba suit meets power suit—paired with draped black satin pants.

Lauren: Sally created a floor-length silk cowl with a draped cowl neck for me. Throughout the fitting process, I was enamoured of Hayley in her suit. We arrived at her silhouette early in the process. I love that she looked like the strongest and most stylish version of herself—it was truly drool-worthy. When I saw myself in my final dress, the silky draping and the scarves made me feel statuesque, and I loved the severity of the stark white.

Hayley: We felt powerful. A few months later, in July, we hosted a bachelorette with 20 friends. We’re big WNBA fans—I’ve been a fan since the inaugural season, in 1997—so we booked a suite at a New York Liberty women’s basketball game in Brooklyn, which came with a margarita-and-hot-dog bar. That night, I had a warm-up jersey altered into a pair of shorts by Esque/By, and I wore a custom tee that said “Lauren Chan” with her Sports Illustrated and runway pictures on it. If anyone’s in the market for their own, they can search “custom girlfriend tee” on Etsy.

Lauren: My look didn’t have as much of a direct WNBA reference, but it was so fun. I snagged a cool ivory vintage girdle with conical breast cups from Etsy and wore a white men’s Mugler blazer overtop.

Hayley: About a month before our reception, we had a civil ceremony at New York City Hall.

Lauren: I love the marriage bureau—although I hope to never see it again as a bride.

Hayley: I think the third time you go you get a discount!

Lauren: It’s such a special place. All kinds of people are there for the same reason—to be in love. Some brides are dressed up, some aren’t, but everyone’s beaming—and so were we. We were both wearing Don Nicó. He’s a queer emerging designer out of Texas, and we felt really at home in his corseted looks and pants.

Related: Inside a sparkly queer art party with multiple drag performances

Hayley: It was so sunny and beautiful out, and the ceremony was warm and intimate. It was just us; Lauren’s best friend, Jaclyn Sarka; Jaclyn’s daughter, Ripley; and our photographer, Sophie Sahara. The actual ceremony was quick—no more than two minutes—but it must have been a slow day because they gave us a few extra minutes in the room. We exchanged our vows there privately. It felt right to do it there instead of in front of a big crowd.

Lauren: We walked to the Odeon for lunch afterward while Sophie snapped photos of us around our city.

Hayley: We weren’t sure if we were going to do a rehearsal dinner since there are already so many events around a wedding. But, on October 3, about two weeks before the big day, we ended up booking the basement party room at Wo Hop, a Cantonese institution in Chinatown.

Lauren: My parents were so excited about the chow mein that they changed their flights to get into New York earlier. It reminded my dad of a dish my grandmother used to serve at her own Cantonese restaurant, Nanking, in Brantford.

Hayley: That night was also the only time I wore white—which in retrospect was a little dangerous with spare ribs on the table. We both played with menswear proportions for the event. I was in an oversized cream leather Nanushka suit.

Lauren: I wore a classic black men’s Margiela suit with a tie, backward. It was a little restrictive on the throat but totally worth it for the statement.

Hayley: Since we’d gotten the stress of our friends and families meeting out of the way the night before, the morning of our wedding party was nice and relaxed. Weddings can involve a lot of time away from your partner, hosting other people, so that morning was really grounding. We had a lovely little date in Chinatown, where we walked around in the sun and picked up some fruit.

Lauren: Around 3 p.m., we started getting ready with our friends. Guests started arriving at No Bar around 7 p.m. We had an open bar with dirty martinis as our specialty cocktail, some passed bites like ahi tuna and sliders, and a buffet with short ribs and mushroom risotto. But we couldn’t eat any of it. You don’t have time to eat at your own wedding.

Hayley: I remember some chocolate ganache tarts going around for dessert, but we didn’t do a cake. But we did have gorgeous merlot-coloured florals by Talulot, which is run by Lauren’s friend Lesley Admana from the fashion industry. And we bought antique silver candelabras—my best friend Natasha Pirouzian, who works in set decoration in LA, came in early and installed them for us.

Lauren: The only particularly traditional moment was when my dad made a speech, which was very sweet and heartfelt. He shared that my late grandmother would be proud of me, and he welcomed Hayley to the family. Right as he finished, our drag performers started.

Hayley: It was quite the transition. We had reached out to our friends, the drag queens West Dakota, Cherry Jaymes, Alika Hall and Citrine Cash, who agreed to perform together at our wedding. Together, we decided they’d wear bridal ensembles. Our DJ, Hope 808, made a mix of tracks for their numbers: “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross, “All for You” by Jacket Jackson, “So Emotional” by Whitney Houston, “Marry the Night” by Lady Gaga and, for the finale, “Spice Up Your Life” by the Spice Girls.

Lauren: The show was the most fun I’ve had—maybe ever. The only brief I gave them was to outdo us—they got the memo. Citrine even did a bouquet toss. Afterward, both of our dads owned the dance floor. There was a moment where everyone formed a circle around them and cheered.

Hayley: Around 10 p.m., we changed into our last looks. I wanted to be my best Y2K girly, so I wore a Juicy Couture velour tracksuit and a bedazzled baseball cap that said “Bride” on it.

Lauren: I was ready to be comfortable, so I threw on a pair of vintage Levi’s jeans that I’d had “Kosan” embroidered across the bum of, a white T-shirt by Sia Arnika, and a giant feather boa by the drag queen Milk, which everyone kept stealing and putting on for photos.

Hayley: Our after-party at Club Cumming—Alan Cumming’s cabaret club in the East Village—was magical. Everyone got up onstage with the DJ. It was one of those movie montage nights where you end up dancing for hours even though it only feels like a few minutes.

Lauren: We headed back to the Standard around 12:30 a.m. I stayed up chatting with my brother and my publicist, Victoire Selce, and my childhood best friends, but Hayley was conked out.

Hayley: Waking up the morning after the wedding felt surreal. I thought, I can’t believe this is my life and I found this person.

Lauren: In many ways, it feels like we’ve been married since our first date. But, at the same time, being married has its own special glow. I’ve noticed a difference in my pride. I love walking into a room with Hayley and introducing her as my wife.

Hayley: It’s beautiful to see the reactions of other people who are excited for us, to be uplifted by our community, and to get to do all that growth and celebration together that marriage symbolizes.

Cheat Sheet

Wedding Dates: August 5, 2025 (ceremony), and October 18, 2025 (reception) Photography: Sophie Sahara Videography: Liam Schwarz Ceremony venue: New York City Hall Wedding venue: No Bar in the Standard Hotel After party venue: Club Cumming Florals: Talulot Food: No Bar DJ: Hope 808 Drag performances: West Dakota, Cherry Jaymes, Alika Hall and Citrine Cash Hair and makeup: Alex Levy and Sergio Estrada Lauren’s ceremony look: Don Nicó Hayley’s ceremony look: Don Nicó Hayley’s welcome-dinner look: Nanushka Lauren’s welcome-dinner look: Maison Margiela Lauren’s reception look: LaPointe Hayley’s reception look: LaPointe Lauren’s after-party look: Sia Arnika and Levi’s Hayley’s after-party look: Juicy Couture