What Hilary Rhoda & Sean Avery’s Hamptons Wedding Will Be Like
Change is afoot for Sports Illustrated model Hilary Rhoda and her fiancé, former NHL star Sean Avery. He has launched a new career, and together, a Hamptons wedding is on the horizon.
Hilary Rhoda and Sean Avery are easily the best-looking couple in the Hamptons. She’s a world-renowned model who has graced the pages of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue and appeared in ads for high-end fashion and beauty brands such as Donna Karan, Valentino, and Estée Lauder. He’s the multihyphenate former New York Ranger-turned-Vogue intern, restaurant investor, advertising executive. When the couple announced their engagement in November 2013, all of the East End cheered, eager to get a glimpse at what will surely be one of the chicest nuptials in recent memory.
Now the couple have formed a second union, with a beautiful home in Southampton, the renovation of which inspired Avery to launch his latest company, Avery/Gallanti Design, which remodels then resells moderately priced East End homes. “I’m doing it in a way that I’m calling the ‘new traditional’ home,” Avery says of the company’s current project at 52 Prospect. “The new tradition is about building homes with the materials and colors that our generation is drawn to, like a black aluminum standing-seam roof, but still including cedar shingles for the siding.”
Avery and Rhoda have also partnered with popular local swimwear brand Solid & Striped for a new advertising campaign, which was shot in and around the Hamptons. “Solid & Striped was the perfect situation for us because it’s a collection we can actually wear and enjoy this summer,” says Avery. “It’s for us and everyone else who wants to wear easy, chic, and certainly sexy [clothes], if we are talking about Hilary’s pieces…”
Here, the couple talk about falling in love in Southampton, planning an East End wedding, and the best local places for staying fit.
What are you guys building out East? Sean, you’re posting a lot on Instagram of models and drawings.
Sean Avery: Hilary bought her house in Southampton five or six years ago, and we finally decided to fix it up last summer. One of Hilary’s better qualities is that she’s very frugal and responsible—she likes to plan things out—and I’m sometimes the complete opposite, so instead of getting into a long debate about what we were going to do with the house, I just went ahead and started it. I didn’t tell her because she was working so much, she wasn’t going out to the Hamptons; So essentially, I really kind of redid the entire house without telling her. Luckily, it worked out; she liked it. I enjoyed it so much that I realized that there’s a major gap in the market out here in terms of houses that are not megamansions, so I decided that was what I wanted to do as my new career. I got partnered up with a guy, Chuck Gallanti, who’s been building in the Hamptons for 20 years. He grew up out here, and he has built up an impressive construction business, Charles Gallanti Inc. We’re buying houses and fixing them up, and we’re going to sell them.
Wow, so you’re flipping houses out here!
SA: I am. [Our current project] 52 Prospect is the coolest house in Southampton Village. I am currently building three homes and have two others we will start after we sell a few.
Everything you’ve been posting looks beautiful; I would hire you to do my house out here. Would I have any input, or would you just do it?
SA: That’s a very interesting question. I probably would not be for hire because I don’t know how that would go over. You would have to tell me what you like, and I don’t know how to tell you what you’re supposed to like.
What attracted you to Southampton?
SA: I was attracted to Southampton by Hilary. When I was playing for the Rangers, I was the only guy who stayed in New York during the summers, so Hilary owning a home in Southampton was great because we had a place to go in the summer, which was my off-season and the only time I could ever go away anywhere.
Hilary Rhoda: My first time in the Hamptons was when I was still in high school. I had a job with Bruce Weber for Italian Vogue; we shot at Andy Warhol’s estate in Montauk, which was magical. A few years later I started house hunting and bought a home in Southampton in 2009. I had bought it the summer we started dating, and it was perfect because he was in his offseason, so it gave us time to get to know each other and spend a lot of time together before he had to go back to training camp. We spent most of our summer out here then and continue to do so today!
Have you two modeled together?
HR: Yes, we have for the first time this summer. We did a collection for a swimwear company called Solid & Striped. We shot the campaign for it [out East], and it comes out this summer. It was really fun.
Is Sean a good model?
HR: He is, and he actually was kind of art-directing a little bit, too, on the side, giving ideas for certain shots. It was really cool; it was really fun. Normally if I have a male model with me on set for a job, it can be a little awkward, so it was so nice to have him with me.
You are the best-looking couple I’ve ever met.
SA: That means we’re going to have ugly babies. We’re cursed.
Do you want to have babies, by the way?
HR: Yes, of course.
When is the wedding?
HR: We’re just getting it together now after a year and a half of being engaged. We’re just starting to meet with wedding planners and figure out where we’re going to do it, but we’re aiming for the fall. We are getting married in the Hamptons.
Nice! Why?
HR: We have a house out here. We’ve been spending so much time out here, every summer and a lot [of the rest of the year] too. We were thinking of doing it at some destination, but it really is just so much more personal and also a little bit easier than some exotic island somewhere.
Will there be a bridezilla or a groomzilla?
HR: I think I’m a lot more easy-going, and Sean definitely has a lot more attention to detail. He’s a little bit more specific about his ideas.
SA: I think it’s the complete opposite. At this point, I don’t necessarily think we need a wedding planner. I could set this wedding up in the next couple of weeks, and everything would run smoothly. I have it conceptualized in my head, and we’ve discussed what we want to do. We’re going to have an amazing weekend—all of our friends are going to be here, and no matter what happens, it’s going to be fun and beautiful.
HR: Yeah, actually I agree. Neither of us is the bridezilla and groomzilla type, because both of us are pretty low-key, and we just want a fun party where we can just be with all our friends. We’re not such huge wedding-crazed people.
How did you first meet?
SA: I can say I’m a part of the age-old story—girl walks into a bar and guy says to his buddy, “That’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to marry her.” I had just opened a bar [in Manhattan] called Warren 77, and Hilary came to the opening party with her girlfriend.
HR: I went home alone that night, but he got my number from the girlfriend I had come with and texted me that night when I got home.
Hilary, what attracted you to Sean?
HR: We were both up for anything, and we love each other’s company. That summer we started seeing each other, we were very spontaneous; we saw lots of festivals and concerts everywhere from the Reading Festival in England to see Radiohead perform to going to Tennessee for Bonnaroo and living in an RV for three days.
I met Sean at a party years ago, and you’re both really fun people to see out at events. I remember going to Sam’s with you, and you did a really good job on the pizza, and then we went out for ice cream across the street. I was amazed to see the two of you eat because you’re in such great shape. You guys have insane fitness regimens, right?
HR: I love our dinners at Sam’s—they’re so much fun—but yes, we’re both very fitness-oriented people. When we started dating, he was taking me to SoulCycle, and I started to work out a lot more because he’s a professional athlete; he has to do that for his job, so I got into that mentality about my job, too. We both work out every single day.
Hilary, your fiancé was the bad boy of hockey. What is like to watch him navigate the Hamptons?
SA: I wonder about that sometimes, too, because she’s standing there, and I always end up doing something wrong. She’s such a trouper because she just bites the bullet and gets through it.
HR: Well, I express my anger later to Sean if there’s something that he said that was inappropriate, but he’s handling it pretty well. I suggested the other day that he should take up boxing, because sometimes with the aggression—he played hockey his whole life, and in hockey games there’s fighting—sometimes that can bubble to the surface. I can sense that he needs to get it out, but he’s super calm in day-to-day life.
Who really wears the pants in this relationship?
HR: We’re a pretty good match in the sense that we balance each other out. In certain aspects, I’m the boss, and in certain aspects Sean is the boss.
SA: I would completely agree. There are things that earlier in our relationship I would have been a little more bullheaded about, but it’s a complete collaboration now.
Sean, what’s one thing you love about Hilary that nobody else knows?
SA: Something that people don’t realize about Hilary’s profession is it’s not easy on so many levels. Hilary is the hardest worker and most dedicated pro in her business, and it’s the biggest turn-on in the world how hard she works…. And she has those cute eyebrows.
Hilary, what do you think is the biggest misconception about Sean?
HR: He gets a bad rep sometimes because he isn’t afraid to speak his mind, and I think that’s one of his best qualities. Sometimes it can hurt him because some people don’t understand his humor or they don’t understand that he’s not being totally serious. Some people misunderstand him and think he’s a jerk, but if you know him or you’re friends with him, he’s one of the kindest people and one of the gentlest people. He’d do anything for anybody, and he’s very generous.
SA: The stories about me being a little crazy are true, but I’m also extremely chill and try to be brutally honest always, which sometimes gets me in trouble.
