For a man who has a way with words, Mario, a celebrated poet originally from NYC, admits he may have used the wrong ones when he first spoke to Chanell. A multi-disciplinary artist, she was encouraged to reach out to him as she was looking for a mentor to help her as she planned to write an anthology of poems. They were both single parents, both in Atlanta, and both artists. They had plenty in common. It should have been a smooth introduction.
“An acquaintance told me about this amazing poet named Mario Anthony Reyes and said I should give him a call,” she recalls. “Over the phone he was very much a New Yorker [laughs]. Curt and rude.”
Mario says it wasn’t his intention to come off that way, but he can see how she may have found their initial correspondence a tad off-putting.
“She swears I was being rude,” he says. “I thought I was just being concise; in hindsight, I may have allowed my Bronx demeanor to get the best of me.”
Still, she thought she could learn something from Mario, so Chanell agreed to meet him at the Apache Café in Atlanta where he was set to perform on October 14, 2018.
When they finally saw each other in person, time stopped. It was far from what Mario expected.
“I was beside myself because it felt like a chore. I just knew I would get there, she’d be on her phone the whole time, playing that City Girl role and that wasn’t the space I was in,” he jokes, while also being serious. “I looked at the bar and everyone that I knew there was already gawking at her. I walked over, her back to me and I said ‘Hey.’ I swear it was something out of a movie because she turned around and I was absolutely stuck. All that cool New York stuff went right out the window.”
“I looked up and this giant of a man was standing in front of me with the sweetest smirk,” Chanell recalls from that moment. “His hair was shoulder length and wavy, almost like he just swam there and his skin was a copper color, like someone with a permanent tan. It’s so cliché but I just remember feeling, in the breath of a second, like I’ve always known this person.”
She adds, “I liken the spark I felt to recognizing someone intimately without ever having seen or spoken to them before. There was a knowing and a familiarity before a word was even said.”
The man she thought could be a great mentor ended up being the man in her life. For him, she was the woman he immediately knew he couldn’t do without.
“Life has delimiters, before and afters. Oct. 13th I figured I’d be a single father the rest of my life and would eventually travel the world with a backpack. By the morning of the 15th I wanted to lay roots down in Atlanta and be this woman’s cornerstone indefinitely,” he says.
“I knew the minute my aura interacted with his,” she adds. “I could have been blind and felt this was my person. I don’t know how I knew, I just know.”
Now that’s love.
After three years together, the number three being something of a lucky one for Chanell, Mario took her on a trip to her native Jamaica to meet her father on October 27, 2021. It was, to her surprise, also an opportunity to ask for her hand in marriage.
“Mario proposed with three rings on my 33rd birthday for our third anniversary,” she says, noting that their family members were there to celebrate the moment. “He had my dad get on one knee with a ring of my birthstone, pink tourmaline, representing the past. He booked a flight for his father but because of Covid, he was unable to make it, so his mother handed me a ring made of moonstone to represent the future and our long life together. And finally, he proposed with a 4-carat ring from Brilliant Earth to symbolize our present. I often wear all three at the same time.”
Chanell would get a fourth ring, her wedding band, on another beautiful October day. On October 14, 2023, five years to the day they met, the couple tied the knot in Port Antonio, Jamaica at the Trident Castle.
The day was, as it appeared in pictures, a dream come true. “The entire wedding was magical so it’s hard to choose one part to be my favorite. What truly made it special was the smiles from all of our loved ones,” says Mario. “The best way to describe it came from Chanell’s friend who said, ‘This wedding feels like what your relationship must feel like: filled to the brim with love.'”
Scroll down for the colorful images from their day, which included a fiery red reception gown (to match Chanell’s hair), bridesmaids dressed liked Disney princesses, and a topless dance — by the groom. This and more in this week’s Bridal Bliss!
Chanell is photographed with her beautiful daughters.
A handsome duo! Mario and his son were all smiles on the big day.
Chanell’s theme for the wedding was initially “Goddess in the Forest,” but she changed her mind once she and Mario secured the white-washed Trident Castle in Jamaica (more on her history with that place to come). “Modern Disney Princess,” she says of the theme she chose. “I wanted my best friends to stand out separately as princesses so I had them all wear different colors.”
As she tells it, Chanell’s connection to Trident Castle is a deep one. She used to pass by it daily when she was growing up in Jamaica, on her way to school.
“I had never actually been inside,” she says. “Something I’ve struggled with my whole life was issues around worth and I’ve been open with Mario about those feelings. When we began talking about a venue, I listed a bunch of hotels but purposely never said Trident Castle just because of the price and some unconscious idea from childhood that I didn’t belong there.” When they were looking for a venue, he asked her about that castle. “I think my face must have lit up because he smiled and said, ‘That’s where we’ll have it.’ I tried to talk him out of it because of the remote location it is in and the cost, but he said he knew it was my dream since I was a kid and he wanted to bring that to fruition for me.”
A shot of the outdoor reception area before the whirlwind event.
Chanell made her grand entrance with help from her father.
In addition to the sleek white gown she wore, from Grace Loves Lace, Chanell wore vibrant hair, and managed to find a one-of-a-kind veil that complemented her style. “I have a rule of wearing red hair for all of my art shows and exhibitions. My husband loves the look on me so much we even have a sexy name for this persona every time I change my hair to red,” she says. “I knew I needed something a bit artistic for the ceremony and I had been looking for embroidered veils everywhere. When I found the Mountain Song Veil (from Rue De Seine) I knew it was the one, having the green that complemented Mario’s suit and paired well with my red hair.”
After exchanging vows, the couple locked lips to signify the beginning of this next chapter of life and love.
The couple are overjoyed as they head back down the aisle together.
With nature as their background, Chanell and Mario were captured amid the beauty of their special day.
Now this, my friends, is an outfit change. “I have a love for modern minimalist designs and simplicity, while at the same time craving color and drama,” she says. “The wedding gown was classic and elegant so for the reception gown I wanted to be dramatic and embody a Red Queen. This is poetic in that now the ceremony is over and I am crowned in my castle.”
The cake cutting moment is always a sweet part of the day. As for her favorite moment of all, Chanell says it was the speeches from their kids during the toast. “We have a blended family and our kids have created their own bond and relationship,” says the bride. “It’s so beautiful to witness but when they went up to the microphone and spoke so eloquently, independent of us, doing speeches that they wrote themselves, I think there wasn’t a dry eye in the building. I felt an immense amount of pride and love.”
For Mario, there were also too many moments to pin down one, but he won’t soon forget the performance he put on to retrieve Chanell’s garter. “I have been in five weddings myself and always felt like that was the one moment the groom really gets to shine on a day dedicated to the Mrs.,” he says. “Funny enough, I had no idea how of what I was going to do but Chanell made me commit to the gym leading up to the wedding. The moment I saw her on that chair I became a little Puerto Rican panther and came out of my shirt, crawled like I was on the prowl and lifted her and the seat up. Everyone there just laughed, and one of my childhood friends came up to me and said ‘I got the show I paid for!’”
“I’ll say I knew I met my person instantly because of ‘that’ feeling that I felt. But it was so subtle, so quick, such a glitch in the matrix, that I ignored it as nothing for years,” Chanell says of finding the love of her life. “Looking back now, I can see it for what it really was: two souls in heaven had agreed to come back and find each other, to raise children and do more soul work and the moment we met was eons of planning and ancestral guidance and prayers answered, prayers made flesh, galaxies colliding and time standing still, even if just for a millisecond, so that God could smile in our hearts and it be seen in each other’s faces.” Beautiful.
Vendors
Venue: Trident Castle
Wedding Planner: Claudine Heaven
Wedding Dress and Shoes: Grace Loves Lace
Veil: Rue De Seine
Reception Gown: Pampered Pink Atelier
Photographer: ShootMiaShoot
Hair: Natalia Golding
Makeup: Sue-Ann Gregg
Groom’s Tuxedo: Rex Bespoke
Cake: Kathy Jo Gauntlett-Tait of Treasury of Desserts