Brooklyn Wedding: Electric Anvil Tattoo and Aita Trattoria

Oh my gosh, where do I even start with Nadira and Dave’s COMPLETELY AWESOME Brooklyn wedding? To begin, they’re two of the coolest, smiliest, smartest, funniest, and warmest human beings on the planet. We first met them on a rainy day at Pershing Square Cafe right across from Grand Central, and over steaming mugs of tea we talked for more than hour, and could have kept going for several more hours if work hadn’t beckoned.

Nadira and Dave connect with people effortlessly. So it’s no surprise that their wedding was a neighborhood wedding. They met each other at last call at their local bar, the Crown Inn in Crown Heights, and their first date was at Aita Trattoria. Guess where they headed for wedding portraits on the big day, and where they hosted their high-spirited reception?

Yup, portraits at the Crown Inn in Brooklyn, reception at a restaurant Aita Trattoria.

But the pièce de résistance of their wedding day was the ceremony. Both David and Nadira have some very special tattoos, and one of their favorite places in Crown Heights is Electric Anvil Tattoo, a cozy shop filled with framed prints, Japanese noh masks, and exotic little talismans. When they were trying to find a small wedding venue in Brooklyn to get married, one of their friends suggested, how about the back garden at Electric Anvil Tattoo?

It was a left-field idea, and Nadira and Dave had no idea what the owners of the shop would think — but when they asked, they got an enthusiastic, “Sure! Let’s do it!”

They pulled in two extraordinarily talented professionals to help them make it happen: Brooklyn-based wedding planner Sarah Campbell of Pollyanna Events, and flower designer Molly Oliver. You can see from the pictures how everything came together. The ceremony was colorful, intimate, and deeply touching. (We love the picture of Nadira’s sister, watching them exchange vows with tears rolling down her cheeks.) And the after-ceremony cocktail hour was joyfully rambunctious.

Somehow Kyo and Sarah and the Electric Anvil crew corralled everybody at the ceremony into a group picture in the garden, smiling and waving, transmitting all their well wishes to Nadira and Dave at the center of the photograph.

Cheers, Nadira and Dave! Keep doing what you do and make the world a better, funnier, happier place.