Claws Star Jenn Lyon Marries Taige Jensen

Claws star Jenn Lyon is married!

The actress tied the knot with longtime love, New York Times video editor Taige Jensen on Saturday at the Astoria World Manor in Queens, New York.

Lyon and Jensen exchanged vows they wrote themselves in front of 120 guests during a ceremony officiated by her father, a preacher, in the Manor’s chapel. The New York City Gospel Choir sang and their friend beat-boxed as the bride walked down the aisle.

“I’m looking forward to saying, ‘my husband.’ I’ve never said it before,” Lyon tells PEOPLE exclusively. I just always said like, ‘This is my boyfriend,’ or, ‘This is my true love,’ or whatever. It’ll be a great feeling, and I just look forward to sharing the rest of my life with him.”

About 200 people — including her Claws costars! — attended the reception, where the couple had their first dance to the Big Red theme song, performed by their friends Nadia and Aaron. Afterward, everyone threw sticks of gum in the air.

“I’m just telling you, everything about this wedding is very ridiculous,” says the Broadway and TV actress, whose past credits include Justified and Army Wives. “The vows are sacred, but the party isn’t.”

Lyon says the venue matched the couple’s “kitschy and weird” aesthetic. During her dance with her dad, fake snow fell over them. And at the reception, guests could get their names carved into pieces of fruit. Dinner included pasta, macaroni-and-cheese balls, fruits, cheeses and crab cakes, and their wedding cake from Brooklyn’s Betty Bakery was topped with golden Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs: one in a top hat, and one in a veil.

The couple met 13 years ago while doing sketch comedy in Brooklyn. They had actually gotten engaged once before, but Lyon broke it off because she didn’t think marriage was for her. “As a little girl, I never dreamed of being married, it wasn’t something I felt was important,” she says. “I actually thought it was kind of archaic. I was like, this is an institution that women no longer need to be involved in and as a feminist I’m not interested.”

But a year and a half later, she found herself more in love with him than ever — and popped the question to him during a trip to New Orleans.

“He was so kind and considerate and loving and let me be exactly the person that I wanted to be and saw me through a terrible battle was eating disorders, saw me through float me when I was doing like theater jobs that didn’t pay anything ,and he just showed up and was like the man of my dreams and he had been there all along,” she says.

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The bride looked stunning in a gown by Venchy Couture Brooklyn, a headpiece by BrooksAnn Camper, earrings by Illona Rubin and a locket by Tree Town Paper with a piece of her mother’s lace dress inside, plus her ring by Van Scoy Jewelry incorporating a diamond that belonged to her grandmother. Mark Antony and Camille Thompson styled her hair (with color by Gloss Brooklyn), and she carried a bespoke bouquet made of old brooches. And no member of the Claws cast would be complete without a pristine manicure, this one by Morgan Dixon at Mad Nails.

(For her wedding portraits, she wore a dress by Temperly London, and Onyx Nail Design handled her nails.)

But Lyon’s wedding look was almost not to be: Her dress was accidentally shipped to a drug store down the street from her home, and a man stole the box, called her and blackmailed her for $150, she says. Lyon called the police, who went with her to retrieve the gown.

“It was harrowing,” she admits of the experience. “It was just very bizarre, but also I’ve lived in New York for like 15 years, and so I just was kind of like, ‘Oh, N.YC.’ I was like, ‘Here we go … it’s just like another New York adventure.'”

She applauds the New York Police Department for their work, and the detectives who helped her ended up being invited to her wedding.

“They were both so great ,” she says. They were like, ‘Ah, I bet you never thought your something blue would be the NYPD.”

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