Tiffany Marie Brannon & Justin Siegel

Blind dates don’t typically lead to anything but horror stories, but for Tiffany Marie Brannon and Justin Siegel, a blind date led to marriage. After a few too many glasses of champagne at her sister’s wedding, Tiffany asked a family friend to set her up with a nice guy. A few weeks later that friend gave her a call—she’d just had lunch with US Ambassador Siegel and his wife, and they’d talked about their single son, Justin.

With a little prodding (his mother pretty much forced him to go on the blind date), the two headed to Soho House in West Hollywood where they hit it off over the club’s legendary warm chocolate chip cookies and a little political sparring.

“I was surprised by how smart he was and how much we had in common on such a variety of subjects. And he was funny!” Tiffany says. “We ended up closing Soho down that night and didn’t even realize we’d been talking for four hours straight until we got a tapon the shoulder saying we were the last ones left in the building.”

The next few years had some ups—they got engaged in Scotland and planned an Oxfordshire wedding—and one major down: they broke up six months after that first engagement. They got back together when Justin showed up on Tiffany’s thirtieth birthday at their original wedding venue, and he proposed again on a secret beach in Malibu.

They knew they still wanted to get married in England—both Tiffany and Justin attended Cambridge University and Oxford University for their Master’s degrees in Theology—but the venues they wanted were already booked. Then a week after that second engagement Tiffany got a call out of the blue from Babington House, the Soho House property in the English countryside that was her dream wedding venue. She’d put her name on the waitlist the first time around just in case, and they called to tell her they’d had a cancellation four months out. “I jumped at the chance and said yes!” Tiffany says.

So they got to work putting together a romantic, artistic, platinum-themed wedding week that friends and family wouldn’t forget. “More than anything, I wanted our wedding to be a magical, ethereal experience full of pure joy,” Tiffany says. “Justin and I are both creatives and art freaks, so we wanted there to be lavish details from our favorite works of literature, music and art. Including the chocolate chip cookies from our first date.”

Those details included hand-painted wedding stationery, incredible bands from all over the world, an artist who illustrated each guest at the reception and a truly stunning wedding gown. The dress, designed by Paul Vasileff, creator of haute couture house Paolo Sebastian, featured blue embroidered nightingales, swallows and hummingbirds to represent special memories and family members.

A vintage red double-decker bus transported everyone to the ceremony at St. Andrew’s Church, a gorgeous thirteenth-century country parish, before the party started at Babington House. Wildabout Flowers nailed the magical, enchanted-forest feel that Tiffany wanted, leaving guests in awe of the decor.

“It was everything I could have hoped for,” Tiffany says. “It could not have been a more perfect week. I still get texts from people asking us if we can throw a wedding every year to relive the magic and joy of that week together in Somerset. Also, everyone wants more of those chocolate chip cookies.”

The couple enjoyed a month-long safari in Africa for their honeymoon and then spent a week in Mykonos and Santorini before heading back to the UK.