Inside Olivia Palermo and Johannes Huebl’s 10th Wedding Anniversary Celebration in Baden-Baden (2024)

“I love weddings, but I’m not much of a bridal person,” says fashion and beauty entrepreneur Olivia Palermo. “I am much more of a fashion girl—and I am very nontraditional in that sense. I take every opportunity to make something into a fashion moment.”

Olivia Palermo first met Johannes Huebl, who is a model, back in 2008 through a mutual friend at a movie screening in New York City. The two began dating that November, and this year marks their 17th year of being together and their 10th year married. “I proposed to Olivia on New Year’s Eve in 2013 while we were on holiday in St. Barts,” Johannes remembers. “It was just the two of us in an idyllic setting and a very special moment.”

For her civil ceremony in 2014, Olivia wore a custom look by Carolina Herrera that came about after attending a market appointment and falling for a skirt. Using that design as the starting point, she worked with the Carolina Herrera team to explore their archives and put together the perfect custom look. “I wore cashmere with feathers and shorts with an overlay skirt [to my civil ceremony],” Olivia says. “I always think about the setting for any look I’m wearing and making sure it tells a story, so the look just made sense to me for the occasion.” That look ended up going viral, with one popular Reddit thread titled: “The hold Olivia Palermo’s wedding look had over me….”

Olivia’s cashmere sweater, silk faille shorts, and tulle overlay skirt were avant-garde and traditional all at once—an unexpected pairing, yet perfectly fitting for the intimate Bedford, New York, setting. “I never really thought about what the response to it might be,” the model admits. “But I’m always happy to provide inspiration for girls who love fashion.” Their civil ceremony was spontaneous and small, with only immediate family and best friends in attendance. “Going on six months of our engagement with no real break in our schedules in sight, we decided to just get married and worry about the big wedding moment later,” Johannes admits.

That big moment just happened to come 10 years later. “We had always planned to do a wedding—I love weddings—but life was just so hectic at that point in time that we never got around to actually planning one,” Olivia explains. Their recent celebration in Germany at the end of June was the reception they never had. “[It was] like picking up where we left off in 2014,” Olivia adds. “A party with our friends and family that we never got to do, where they could come together and finally celebrate with us.”

The couple worked closely with the events team at the Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa in Baden-Baden, Germany, which is Johannes’s home country. Olivia and Johannes first visited the property for the Gala Spa Awards in March 2012—two years before their civil ceremony—and loved it so much they decided to return for their 10-year anniversary celebration.

Olivia is a self-described “super-visual person,” so the majority of her planning took place via her iPhone photo reel—she notes she made an album of more than a thousand screenshots—and Zoom calls and WhatsApp messages with the Brenners Park-Hotel events team.

On Friday night, guests arrived at the hotel for a co*cktail reception via the path along the Oos River that runs through Baden-Baden. Olivia wore a short pink Simkhai dress for getting-ready photos and then changed into Look 31 from the Giambattista Valli Haute Couture show—the first of three Giambattista Valli dresses that she wore over the course of the milestone weekend.

Olivia chose the designer as she’s a longtime friend and supporter of his work. It also felt fitting that Mr. Valli refers to his creations as “love collections” rather than “bridal collections”; he told Vogue that he feels his designs evoke “the emotion of love and celebrating happy times”—not the formal contract so often connected to the words bride and wedding. This modern, fashion-forward approach felt perfect for a bride who had already pushed the envelope a little with her first wedding look.

Once Olivia and Johannes were dressed and ready, the dinner at the Beaux Arts hotel served as the first official moment to greet their guests—so there were lots of hugs. Friends and family mingled outside before everyone was led into the hotel via a hot pink carpet lined with arches of greenery and hanging floral spheres, flower arrangements in wicker pedestal vases, and lots and lots of draping.

The group then entered the Wintergarten restaurant to find one long rectangular table running the length of the dining room, covered with moss, votives, florals, and cherry-blossom arrangements. More draping overhead created an atmosphere that got moodier as the sun set. “Johannes and I are fond of cherry-blossom trees and loved how much height the centerpieces gave to the room for a dramatic effect,” Olivia explains. As Baden-Baden is a spa town known for its wellness culture, the couple wanted the menu, led by chef Stefan Naatz of the Brenners Park-Hotel culinary team, to stay true to that approach with locally sourced ingredients and lighter but satisfying dishes.

After dinner, guests moved into the adjacent Fritz & Felix restaurant, which had been outfitted to give the feeling of a private members’ club one might find in London. Paradise palms were strategically positioned around the room, with deeper-hued floral arrangements placed on banquet tables to create an old-school vibe. For this late-night portion of the evening, Olivia changed into a Bronx and Banco sequined halter-neck dress that matched the mood. Salmanzars of Bollinger flowed, while DJ Dani Dévényi had everyone dancing until the sun came up.

The next day, guests were escorted to a luncheon at Iffezheim Racecourse, where Olivia wore a candy apple green strapless silk taffeta draped dress with a silk duch*esse belt tied in a bow. “I grew up riding, so this was another special touch for our guests that spoke to something personal to us,” Olivia explains. The Brenners Lounge is a private space above the grandstand that looks out over the racetrack with its own terraces. There, guests sipped rosé while taking in the running of the horses and sampling a menu prepared by executive chef Sebastian Haverkemper from the Brenners Park-Hotel culinary team.

That evening, Olivia and Johannes wanted to treat their guests to another culinary experience, so they held dinner at the acclaimed restaurant Ebanat on the grounds of the Kopp Winery. Chef Stefan Schmidt and the Ebanat culinary team prepared a farm-to-table meal with wine pairings from the vineyard, and for this final event, Olivia wore a sequin-embroidered Giambattista Valli lace bralette and skirt with a tulle-and-silk-chiffon-draped cape. “We gave a second life to our florals from the previous events to be a bit sustainable and help soften the more contemporary architecture of the venue that is so dramatically different to the Beaux Arts architecture typical of Baden-Baden,” Olivia explains. “The views of the vineyard from the floor-to-ceiling windows and outside terrace are gorgeous, and I had grapes used as part of the decor to bring the outside in.”

Reflecting on the weekend, Olivia notes it was the bringing together of all the most important people in her and Johannes’s lives that felt most special. “It was the most amazing finale to a weekend we didn’t want to end,” she says. “It was a beautiful series of events at quite different locations that allowed all our friends and family to come together in the south of Germany for a weekend that was all about love and friendship.”