When Madeline Moore and Nick Forland decided to get married after eight years and two children together, the couple already knew that a traditional wedding wasn’t on the cards. “We went into the planning process very comfortable with ourselves, giving ourselves permission to have fun,” Madeline says. “We weren’t trying to check all the boxes or accommodate our family’s desires. We were putting this on for ourselves, and we got to be really playful with it.”
The pair’s unorthodox approach was informed by Madeline’s past experiences as a bride-to-be. “I actually planned a wedding when I was 20 and then canceled it three weeks prior,” she says. “I look back on it and it was so basic. I didn’t know who I was. I was just trying to check all the boxes.” Now, in her mid-30s, Madeline knew that she wanted to show up as her most authentic self. “I just wanted to get married in something that was not going to be performative.”
But Madeline, a stylist and creative director who runs the Bay Area-based consultancy, Choice Studio, struggled to find a dress that fit her vision—partially given her self-described eclectic tastes. “I’m a Gemini and that every single day I’m a brand new personality,” she jokes. One night, though, an idea struck. “I had a vision when I was going to bed one night,” she recalls. “I actually just want to get married barefoot in the woods in a nightgown.”
Madeline purchased a cotton ready-to-wear dress from Molly Goddard’s bridal line. “It’s quite sheer despite how voluminous the fabric is. I loved the interplay of my nude body showing underneath all of this cotton fabric,” she says. “This dress felt really vulnerable and really tender.” But mere days after she purchased the dress, Goddard dropped her spring 2025 collection. “My heart fell in my stomach,” she says. “I was like, oh, no. That’s what I’m supposed to wear.” (But more on that later…)
She decided to pivot, wearing the original sheer cotton dress to procure their marriage license at San Francisco City Hall, styled with white Dries Van Noten pumps that featured a blue jewel heel, which she had originally sourced for a friend’s sister. “She needed a size up, so when I got married, she mailed them to me and she was like, ‘These can be our sister shoes,’” she says. “The something blue is so beautiful on the heel.”
Madeline’s Simone Rocha bag was a recurring piece throughout her wedding festivities. “When it arrived at my house, I was really overwhelmed by the scale, so I bought the miniature one,” she says. But when her three-year-old daughter, Melba, discovered the purses, she decided she wanted one for herself. “She was like, ‘One’s for you and one’s for me,’” Madeline says. “So we carried matching Simone Roche bags at the actual wedding.” Her four-year-old son, Ludo, got in on the action, too: “He put our rings inside of it, so when we had to get them out, he popped it open. It was very cute.”
When it came to her ceremony look, Madeline was transfixed by look eight from Molly Goddard’s resort 2025 collection, a pale yellow dress with a sheer short-sleeved bodice and grand, drop-waist skirt composed of tiers upon tiers of tulle ruffles. She wasn’t only taken with the dress, but the statement behind it.
That season, Goddard told Vogue Runway that she was hitting pause on the demanding ready-to-wear cycle, eschewing endless commercial growth and adopting a timeline that allowed her to prioritize her creativity. “Oh my God, I don’t have to participate in the bridal industry,” Madeline recalls saying when she read the story. “I can actually find a dress that resonates with me, feels extremely special, is also casual and is still taking the environmental issues that are happening right now.”
But that also meant that buying the dress wasn’t as easy as swiping her credit card. The dress was one of one. “I emailed her studio and I was like, ‘I need this dress. These are all the reasons I needed. I studied art. I’m an artist. I specialize in fabric manipulation. I can see the hand work here.’ I was really trying to make my case!” she says. Though Goddard’s partner, Tom Shickle, wrote back to inform her that she was one of the people they were considering, Madeline stayed persistent. “I just kept hounding them, and I was telling my loved ones and my family, ‘I found this dress and I have to buy it!’”
Call it luck or dedication: Shickle wrote back to officially offer Madeline the dress after it was displayed at Dover Street Market. Already overjoyed, she was in for another surprise. “Out of nowhere, Molly Goddard emailed me herself—which just felt like a dream come true, to hear from the designer that you’ve been really into for a long time,” she says. “She emailed me and she said, ‘Madeline, I’ve got a surprise for you.’” Madeline’s brother had purchased the dress for her as a wedding gift—though, “this isn’t a patriarchal thing,” he insisted.
The bride wasn’t the only one in contact with Goddard. “Right before the wedding, Nick wrote to Molly Godard and he asked for a piece of that tulle. She sent him a sample so he could tuck it in his pocket,” she says. Nick also matched Madeline with his orange Hermès ascot, which coordinated with a tulle bolero by Goddard (which she purchased on eBay on a whim, and wore for the reception), and the marigolds that surrounded the couple at their Redwood grove altar.
Melba also coordinated with her mother, who wore a butter yellow ruffled neoprene set from Little Creative Factory. “Her headpiece was actually the only artifact I had from my first wedding. I saved it, but I didn’t know how to wear it myself,” Madeline says. “She put it on backwards.”
The forest floor and campground at The River Electric in Guerneville, California called for a flat shoe. Madeline opted for a pair of flats from The Row with button details on the back of the heel, which she wore to ruin. “They’re just the sweetest shoes. They were absolutely destroyed after the wedding day, which I think is perfect,” she says. “They were just meant to be worn this one day and never again.”
Madeline, a self-described “monster on the dance floor,” made a game-time decision to add an after-party look: a silver fringed dress that she had overnighted from Ibiza. “I found it two days before the wedding,” she says. Another sheer look, she paired it with Eres lingerie she bought the week before the wedding. Madeline abandoned an earlier plan to wear nude underpinnings beneath her dresses. “The women at the lingerie shop were like, ‘Why would you choose nude dresses and then hide your body?’” She took heed: while she wore the bustier and high-waisted briefs for the ceremony, she ditched the bra for the after-party. “It was just more fun to be free,” she says.
