‘Dieux de la Mer’: NFT and Blockchain Wedding in St Barth

Suki and Alex Mehr feted their friends for three days on the beach at Le Toiny and three nights all over St Barth, showing friends and family from all over the world their favorite island.  

Suki, an interdisciplinary artist and tech founder, met Dr. Alex Mehr, previously a NASA scientist and founder of Zoosk (dating app that sold in 2019 for $258M), while they both were building their startups in Silicon Valley in 2015. After being friends for four years they began dating in 2019. In St. Barth, they celebrated the birth of their first child, Emma Omega Mehr and their union as a couple. Suki and Alex selected St. Barth, a quick flight from their new homes in The Albany Bahamas and the St. Regis Bahia Beach Puerto Rico, and also because St. Barth has become their favorite place to celebrate.

Together the couple started Mehr Capital (a crypto fund), for which Suki is a Managing Director. They build and buy Web3 companies and believe the future economy will be built on the blockchain. 

Suki and Alex are perhaps the first couple to get married on the blockchain. Their metaverse minister Dr. Michael Fischer, a recent Stanford University computer science PhD graduate, wrote the smart contract of their union on the Ethereum blockchain using a programming language called Solidity. They founded the company Wed3.com to allow others to easily create their own unions on the blockchain. Soon the site will allow for flexibility with wills, trusts, and estates to be formed through easily editable but equally immutable smart contracts.

One of Alex’s recent acquisitions through a company he co-founded, Retail Ecommerce Ventures, was haute couture British fashion house Ralph & Russo. The bride and bridesmaids wore Ralph & Russo throughout the French island fete. The epinonimous line has been worn by celebrities including Bella Hadid, Kylie Jenner, Kaia Gerber and Angelina Jolie. Even Ralph & Russo will soon become a Web3 Company.

The weekend themed ‘Dieux de la Mer’, welcomed guests all robed in white for the first sunset in Gustavia Harbor. The ‘Bienvenue en Blanc’ celebration began with a sound healing at the St Bartholomew's Anglican Church, followed by a candlelit dinner and dancing alongside Gustavia harbor at La Petite Plage. The second night themed ‘Ma Vie En Rose’ featured British DJ Henri Bergmann and a rose-tinted dinner on the beach at Gypsea. The final night guests shimmered in ‘bioluminescent formal’ attire, with incandescent floral arrangements and the bride’s bouquet glowing in the night jungle setting of Le Tamarin. Together guests painted in the gardens - the canvas blossomed with a flower eyed oil portrait of which each of the 111 wedding guests will receive a limited edition NFT. Suki also handmade gold and blue moonstone pendants for the guests, inscribed with the name of the event ‘Dieux de la Mer’. A gift from one of Suki’s bridesmaids was an NFT with symbology of their love floating around them, from Alex’s love of chess, to Suki’s These Hands Breathe Light sculpture, to baby Emma swaddled in Suki’s arms, and heart tokens falling from the sky. 

Suki is also an artist, first studying at Brown University then in graduate school at The Rhode Island School of Design. Her large scale sculptures (These Hands Breathe Light) will soon be seen in Mexico, and of course, in the metaverse. Her artwork has been featured in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, including her Burning Man sculpture ‘Wing Portal’, an 80 foot wide LED Phoenix installation built after the wildfires of Malibu burned down her home and art studio in 2018.

In addition to digital art, steel and LED light, Suki’s mediums range from 3D printed resin to AI. In a recent exhibition at Stanford University, Suki and Dr. Micheal Fischer dove into the future of AI rights with their mixed media sculpture, titled ‘United States v. Alexa’. The 3D printed sculpture breathes an eerie humanity into future conversations with AI, exploring the potentiality of law to intervene with this omnipresent, prescient speaker. At the heart of the installation is the current state of AI, programmed with downloads from the future. In the development of this installation, the artists sought insight from thought leaders on AI and governance. Eric Schmidt, Former Executive Chairman & CEO of Google epitomized this sentiment: “I believe in free speech for humans, not robots.” Nicolas Berggruen, Founder of the Berggruen Institute said “AIs as they gain autonomy should use the same free speech standards applied to humans, including cultural and moral norms as if they were our children; the key command when their capabilities exceed ours is that they cooperate with us, otherwise our species is at risk.” Is Alexa’s speech an extension of the programmer, the will of her “owner,” or an expression all her own? Under the light glow of United States v. Alexa, the murky future of speech unattached to personhood is illuminated.

From NFTs to AI to smart contracts, Suki and Alex believe constant creativity is at the heart of all their work and is also what makes their union as a couple immutable.