Who What Wear Weddings: Max Siegelman and Karoline Spenning

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A collage of Max Siegelman and Karoline Spenning's wedding.

Love has a way of making even the biggest cities feel impossibly small. When Karoline Spenning, chief creative director of Siegelman Stable, moved from Norway to New York City, she was stepping into the unknown. She had never been to the city before, knew almost no one, and was starting anew. Yet within weeks of arriving, a chance introduction through her coworker-turned-roommate brought Max Siegelman, chief executive director and founder of Siegelman Stable, into her life, and he turned out to be the man she would one day marry.

Their relationship began during the pandemic with long text exchanges that spanned state lines while Siegelman was temporarily living upstate with his family. When he finally returned to the city, he made an impromptu stop at Spenning’s apartment. “I rode my bike to the gym and thought I’d stop by Karoline’s,” Siegelman recalls. “I showed up sweaty because I had just worked out, but honestly, I would’ve shown up sweaty either way because I was nervous.” Spenning thought it was a bold move on Siegelman’s part but said, “Sure, come say hi.”

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For Spenning, that spontaneous visit became an important moment. The two hadn’t even been on a first date yet, but for her, the ending was already beginning. “It was love at first sight,” she says. “I saw him, and I thought to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is my person.’ I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat.”

The connection was mutual. Three days later, they had their first official date over coffee in Tompkins Square Park, followed by dinner the next evening in the East Village. From there, they were inseparable. Four months later, they moved into Siegelman’s Brooklyn apartment, where they began building not only a life together but also Siegelman Stable, an eponymous fashion label fusing luxury sports fashion with harness racing, which he had launched just months before he met Spenning. What began as a side project quickly became a shared creative pursuit, and the couple grew the business alongside their relationship.

When it came to getting engaged, there was never any question of if—only when. Certain they had found their forever partners, the two took their time before Siegelman enlisted the help of a mutual friend, a jeweler, to source a ring, which turned out to be a vintage cushion-cut diamond that perfectly aligned with Spenning’s appreciation for sustainability and heirloom pieces. While the couple never had a formal conversation about a proposal, Spenning had a good feeling that it was around the corner.

Siegelman told Spenning he had booked a house upstate for the two to visit over the weekend. “Max is very bad at hiding things,” she shares jokingly. “So I knew it was coming.” During a leisurely morning at their Airbnb, the couple lingered over coffee and homemade Norwegian waffles. That’s when Siegelman put his plan into motion. Unknown to Spenning, a photographer was waiting, hidden in the woods, while flowers were arranged around the property. The proposal itself, however, didn’t go quite as rehearsed. “I had this whole speech planned,” Siegelman says. “But when the moment came, I couldn’t get any words out. I just got down on one knee and ugly cried.”