There were likely no phone calls demanding marriage as on her show (the couple has been engaged since December 2008) but Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan on AMC's "Mad Men," tied the knot with her beau, actor Geoffrey Arend, on Sunday in New York at Il Buco on Bond Street.
That might leave some scratching their heads, but while all the fuss is being made over the couple's platinum wedding bands, it was a piece of Il Buco that helped them seal their bond.
Sure, Il Buco is that rarest of New York restaurants -- high-profile and yet under-celebrated -- however, it is not known for weddings. But the restaurant has illuminated Arend and Hendricks' union from the very beginning. It had once sold antiques from its intimate space as well the high-Italian food it's known for, and though it long ago stopped trading in collectibles, it made an exception for Arend last year.
Hendricks had fallen in love with a chandelier at the restaurant and wanted it for years, according to a story Arend told Grub Street at a screening this summer. Arend approached Il Buco owner Donna Lennard about buying the fixture, which he planned to propose under, but Lennard wasn't interested. Arend would not be dissuaded, however. He approached Warren Muller, who designed the piece, to create another for Il Buco, so that his beloved Mad Men bombshell could be properly lit.
Arend said he had approached Muller saying: "I’ll send you a check, you make a new chandelier, you bless her restaurant with love from us, and then you bring that chandelier back to me, and you bless my marriage with love.” Muller and, apparently Lennard, agreed and Arend took the chandelier to Hendricks home and LA and hung it there.
“I went through this whole ordeal; it was like my own slaying of a dragon,” Arend told Grub Street. “And I finally got it and I hung it in her house, and I proposed underneath it, and it was incredible.”
