Introducing The Super-Fabulous, Super-Connected Mario and Cait Carbone

That post was for her and Carbone’s intimate wedding in Sicily this summer. Their nuptials were beautiful. The bride wore Balenciaga couture by Pierpaolo Piccioli, archival Chanel, Prada and Valentino, as well as custom Ludovic de Saint Sernin. Their families wept at the church, overtaken by the power of their love. Yada yada yada—long story short, Italy was fab but they wanted to throw a blow out rager for all their friends in Manhattan. Or at least Bailey Carbone did. “Why did we decide to do that, Cait?” Mario says, raising a playful eyebrow at his wife. She laughs. “Where’s my alcoholic drink?”

They chose the interconnected restaurants of The Grill, The Pool, and The Lobster Club all in Midtown’s Seagram Building, for several reasons: it’s an architectural marvel—the International-style tower is the only Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed building in New York City. The interiors, meanwhile, are by Philip Johnson and filled with an insane Warhol-and-Jeff-Koons art collection thanks to billionaire owner Aby Rosen. Secondly, it can fit up to 750 people; and most importantly, Major Food Group runs it all.

They had a vision: Capote’s Black and White Ball meets a Salvador Dalí surrealist feast. (Carbone is a superfan of the artist’s 1973 cookbook, Les Dîners de Gala.) “We’re both so specific and old souls when we do things like this. We love anything from the past,” Carbone says.

Here’s how that played out. The dress code was strict black tie. Unfurling through the grand midcentury Grill room was a snaking, glamorously gluttonous serpentine buffet that stretched from entrance to their 20-foot tall windows. Upon them was a menu straight out of Mad Men: Goose terrine, whole roasted ducks, pickled sardine fillets and cured salmon (served with mimosa eggs), crown roasts with mint jelly and yogurt as well as caviar service with blini, soft egg, chives and crème fraîche. And that was just the edible arrangements. Scattered around were Lalique glassware and surrealist sculptures. (“Is that… a duck made out of palm fronds?” My friend asks me as we approach the buffet. I look closely. It was. Carbone later tells me they hired a food stylist, Romilly Newman, to arrange everything just so.)

In another corner was a full raw bar complete with clam-and-lobster shaped ice sculptures. Served from silver gueridon carts was prime rib, Dover sole meunière, and avocado crab Louis. Waiters in Tom Ford tuxedos, meanwhile, passed around crab cakes and spicy rigatoni—the signature dish of Carbone’s eponymous restaurant. As for cocktails, they served a menu of classic drinks: martinis, negronis, margaritas. A bunch of hot, handsome men in tuxes murmured about the hot gossip of the night: apparently, Benson Boone was going to perform.

It was a wild array of food, and a wild array of celebrity guests pursuing it. There was Sylvester Stallone, DJ Khaled, and Ashley Graham as well as VF special correspondent Derek Blasberg and OpenAI’s vice president of partnerships Charles Porch. (Last summer, Porch had a splashy wedding of his own, marrying Metropolitan Museum of Art board of trustees Robert Denning at the Musée Rodin in Paris.) Laura Harrier was there in vintage Donna Karan and Pretty Little Liars’ Shay Mitchell, Bailey Carbone’s maid of honor, showed up in a green sequined midriff-bearing set. (Her former cast mate, Ashley Benson, was there too.) Dixie D’Amelio sauntered in wearing a shimmering black Gucci dress. “They’re both so lovely and amazing people, and Cait is my sister. I’m so grateful for her,” she tells me. In the bathroom, Tina Leung, star of Bling Empire: New York, buttoned up her vintage Dior by Galliano dress with an assist from Markarian designer Ali O’Neill. (Speaking of designers: Khaite’s Catherine Holstein took a break from fashion week to attend.)

With all due respect to Leung and D’Amelio, the most insane designer fashion credits go to Bailey Carbone herself. She turned up at the venue in a Chanel coat by Matthieu Blazy, got ready in a vintage Dior robe, and then arrived at the reception in a Schiaparelli dress by Daniel Roseberry. She has Karlie Kloss to thank for that look. The model and entrepreneur walked in Schiaparelli’s Fall 2026 couture show, where Roseberry sent a number of avant-garde silicone looks down the runway. She knew Bailey Carbone was looking for wedding looks and urged her to go to the resee. (“You need to see these things up close. The runway show was not enough,” Bailey Carbone recalls her saying.) Bailey Carbone and her stylist Mimi Cuttrell hatched a plan with Roseberry after looking at the collection in person: they’d swap the silicone on one dress for a more wedding-friendly fabric, but keep the silhouette. She paired it with a necklace from Lorraine Schwartz.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a moment for my bride. I love you, baby!” Carbone shouted out to the crowd from The Grill’s balcony in a Tom Ford tuxedo. (He tells me he wanted to wear the same brand as his staff.) “New York City is where Cait and I fell in love. So it’s only appropriate tonight in these hallowed halls of the greatest restaurant space man has ever built, that we come together as one giant family,” he said, also taking a moment to thank Rosen—the building’s owner, who was somewhere below.

The Schiaparelli stayed on as guests moved to another room in the Seagram Building for performances. Yes, performances, plural. The first was a soulful serenade by Jessie Murph—another one of Bailey Carbone’s clients. (“I was crying when she was singing. Truly I had tears in my eyes. I was like, No, no, no, makeup, no, Cait says.)

As for the second? The rumors were true: it was Benson Boone. He rocked and shimmied as he belted out “Beautiful Things.” I look at the bar in front of me. Someone’s propped up their Mini Kelly. (A friend elbows me in the side—I’m sorry, did Jordan Belfort, like The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort, just walk by? Sadly, I was unable to confirm.)

Wedding planner Marcy Blum then stepped in to usher guests to the next portion of the night: a walk through the building’s vast, impeccable, stainless, multi-floor kitchen. “I used to joke with Mario that I wanted to get proposed to in that kitchen because it’s the most impressive kitchen,” Bailey Carbone said. While the guests up to that point had been on their best black-tie behavior, the bowties started to come off. Waiters handed out espresso martini shots and warm chocolate chip cookies. Earle took one and then laid on a stainless-steel counter, filming a TikTok. At one point, Richie Akiva jumped into frame.

It all led to The Lobster Club, a subterranean bar designed by Peter Marino and with a Jackson Pollock–inspired paint splattered floor. Paige Paul—wearing the very giant diamond earrings that made her go viral at the US Open—sat on top of a booth whispering with Lea Michele. And one guest, inexplicably, walked around with his own bottle of a 2014 Cabernet, swirling it to the sounds of DJ duo Sofi Tukker. “I take my own wine everywhere,” he says nonchalantly when I ask.