Devon Leaver, a daughter of Suzanne and Brian Leaver of Amagansett, and Xavier De Cardenas, the son of Evangeline and Frank De Cardenas of Roselle, N.J., were married on Nov. 9 at Montauk Downs. The Rev. Joe Iadanza officiated.
The bride is a director, producer, and multimedia specialist who began her career at Activision Blizzard and then created videos and podcasts at McKinsey and Company. She is also the founder of Stony Hill Entertainment. Her films have been showcased at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, Sundance 2020, Carnegie Hall, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, the Louis Armstrong House Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, and on HBO, among other venues. In 2023, she won the Marvels of Media Award from MoMI NYC in experimental film. She is a senior associate at RTW Investments.
She graduated from the Ross School and the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
The couple met while working together at Activision Blizzard. “We sat across from each other and were friends for a year before starting our relationship,” Ms. Leaver wrote.
Mr. De Cardenas is now a software engineer at CNN. He began his career in the entertainment industry as an audio engineer, producer, and songwriter at Activision Blizzard, then worked at Bloomberg, and later was a director at Build Series before joining CNN. He is a graduate of Full Sail University in Florida.
On their wedding day, the bride wore an antique gown made of peau de soie silk that has been in the family for three generations. Her grandmother wore the gown in 1957 and her mother wore it at her wedding at the Bell Estate in Amagansett in 1987.
The maid of honor was the bride’s sister, Brenna Leaver of New York City. Her best friend, Chloe Aktas of Los Angeles, was the bridesmaid. They wore black dresses.
The bride’s mother was escorted by Blinky, a bulldog wearing a custom tutu and a collar of pearls.
Joseph Sebring of New York City was the best man, and Austin Welsh of Orlando, Fla., was the groomsman.
The wedding invitations featured a pen-and-ink line drawing of Montauk Downs by Ms. Leaver’s grandmother Eleanor (Chip) Leaver, who had been the first president of the Jimmy Ernst Artists Alliance in East Hampton. The bride’s father, a decorative painter and designer, designed and crafted the cake topper.
After a honeymoon in Rome and Florence, the couple are back at home in New York City.