Rachel Scott, the style designer, founder, and artistic director behind the ready-to-wear model Diotima, first met Chaday Scott in September 2021 at an occasion for ConnekJa, the grassroots group, useful resource heart, and protected area for the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood in Jamaica and worldwide that they co-founded and function. The occasion introduced collectively creatives within the Caribbean diaspora to be taught extra about ConnekJa and the work they’re doing on the bottom in Jamaica, over a dinner by DeVonn Francis of Yardy World. “The one means I can describe this primary encounter is love at first sight,” Rachel says. “There was an immediate attraction and magnetism between us.”
After the dinner, everybody went to Le Bain on the Commonplace. “I used to be so confused and overwhelmed by the brand new feelings I used to be experiencing I attempted to slide out with out anybody noticing,” Rachel remembers. “Chaday observed and intercepted me on the door. We exchanged contact data and what ensued was a months-long courting the place we might journey to go to one another, as Chaday was based mostly in Kingston, Jamaica, and I used to be in New York.”
In the summertime of 2023, Rachel was invited to Palm Heights in Grand Cayman to rejoice the opening of a boutique known as Deloris, the place her model Diotima is stocked, and he or she, Chaday, and a gaggle of associates traveled all the way down to Grand Cayman collectively. “Because the weekend festivities had been in full swing, Chaday requested me to observe them as much as our suite for a small shock,” Rachel remembers. “On our balcony, stuffed with beautiful tropical floral preparations, overlooking the Caribbean Sea whereas Grace Jones’s ‘La Vie en Rose’ performed from the seashore, Chaday proposed to me at sundown. [Afterwards,] my associates emerged from the room to affix us and rejoice, and everybody on the seashore cheered from under, associates and lodge company alike.” What was meant to be a Diotima and Palm Heights weekend celebration, additionally turned an impromptu engagement get together. In September of 2023, on the couple’s two-year anniversary, they had been staying in a set on the Rockaway Lodge, Rachel took Chaday as much as the roof and shocked them with a small group of associates—and a proposal again to them.
The couple had a springtime civil ceremony at Metropolis Corridor, with two shut associates in attendance, after which celebrated with cocktails at 9 Orchard and dinner at King. (A a lot bigger occasion occurred earlier this month.) “Planning the marriage was not not like planning a trend present for me, or an occasion for Chaday,” Rachel says. “It was fast and all solidified within the days main as much as the marriage. I’m not very conventional, whereas Chaday is a little more conventional, so we needed to discover a good stability that included the weather that felt vital in the course of the ceremony, whereas nonetheless feeling true to the worlds we’ve each created. The occasion planning group SSA Brooklyn executed all the pieces with such finesse.”
