Designer and stylist Brit Smith’s wedding to producer Billy Hines is a sartorial fantasy
Words by CAROLINE CAGNEY
Photography by ERICH McVEY
In 2016, actor Emma Roberts was so certain that her friends — fashion designer and stylist Brit Smith and film and TV producer Billy Hines — would hit it off as a couple, she and another co-conspirator planned a gathering so they could connect. “I didn’t want a party to be thrown for our first meeting,” recalls Brit, who co-founded the womenswear label Elkin with her sister, Kara. “So I texted Billy and said, ‘Let’s go out on our own terms.’”
After a long dinner at Pace in Laurel Canyon, the two became inseparable. They arrived at Roberts’ party five days later as a couple. “It was quite a surprise for everyone to see,” Brit says. Two days after that, they flew to Mexico for Billy’s birthday, where Brit met his friends and family.
While in Paris in fall 2017, Billy proposed to Brit amid hundreds of white roses in their room at the Four Seasons Hotel George V, and 14 months later, the L.A.-based couple welcomed their first child, son Henry. “Instead of rushing into a wedding while being pregnant, we decided to wait and enjoy the engagement and the birth of our child,” Brit says. The couple enlisted California-based event planners Alexandra Kolendrianos and Mindy Rice to execute their vision: “elegant with an Old World European theme with lots of florals and vintage botanical prints — but at the same time, effortless and California cool,” Brit explains.
On Oct. 12, 2019, as Brit was getting ready, Billy sent over a love note and a surprise gift: a sapphire and diamond ring that the bride immediately put on to wear with her custom French lace Dana Harel gown — the first of five dresses she would wear that evening. “It was my something blue!” she says.
The couple wedded before 250 guests at the Old Mission Santa Barbara church before heading to Billy’s parents’ Montecito estate for a reception featuring French-influenced dishes by Duo and chardonnay and pinot noir from one of Billy’s father’s first vintages. After dinner, guests danced the night away under the stars, surrounded by centuries-old eucalypti and oaks, candles and twinkling lights. “One of my favorite moments of the evening was my first dance with my father, because it was also my first dance with Henry,” Brit says. “It was all so magical.”
Feature image: BRIT SMITH wears a GIAMBATTISTA VALLI couture gown before cocktail hour.
This story originally appeared in the Spring 2020 Issue of C Weddings.
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