Make It Happen

Nicole & Brian

Brides have traditionally been the ones left holding the reins when it comes to making wedding decisions. But in this day and age more and more men are stepping up to the plate and giving their two cents. The following is a He Said—She Said account from four couples who shared the planning duties for their Cape Cod and the South Shore weddings.

Brian: When Nicole and I got engaged we knew immediately where we wanted to have the reception. We had been to a wedding at the Red Lion Inn in Cohasset a few years back and fell in love with the place.

Nicole: We are very relaxed and laid back. There really wasn’t any stress in the planning, especially choosing our reception site. The Red Lion Inn is very old and romantic inside, which we love. It was built in 1704 and has a New England country feel.

Brian: After that Nicole and I just slowly tackled a new part of the planning every weekend. I took care of the limousines, DJ, and the tuxes, and Nicole took care of the flowers and decorations. We always went to the appointments together but I stayed on the side and just gave her my approval on choices when needed.

Nicole: I really enjoyed choosing the décor for the wedding. A friend of mine made our invitations and mimicked a Kate Spade look with raspberry pink and lime green. That color theme was incorporated in the bridesmaid dresses, flowers, and cake. I found the bridesmaid dresses at J Crew. They were raspberry colored and a great sexy style they could re-wear. Brian was very helpful and surprisingly opinionated (in a good way!) about making décor choices. I thought it was really cute that he cared! He was even supportive about the raspberry pink and lime green color scheme.

Brian: I really let Nicole choose what she wanted when it came to decorating but I always liked what she chose so that wasn’t a problem between us. I did pick the black on black style tux for the groomsmen and myself. I just wanted to keep it clean and simple.
Nicole: The day I went shopping for a wedding dress was truly exciting. My wedding gown was ivory with tulle and a cathedral length train by Vera Wang.

Nicole: The Red Lion Inn made our wedding cake. It was decorated with a lime green ribbon down the sides and pink gerber daisies and we used a porcelain cake topper that was my great grandmothers. The topper is a bride and groom and the bride holds a beautiful bouquet of calla lilies. It was a very special touch for me because I chose calla lilies for my bouquet, which is a tradition in my family.

Brian: Our wedding day had some personal family traditions that are very special for us. At the ceremony our mothers lit two candles on the altar. Then Nicole and I each took those candles and lit the unity candle. That was symbolic to us because it signified the uniting of our families.

Brian: My favorite part of planning was definitely picking the DJ. Nicole and I had a young group at our wedding with friends we had grown up with and my four brothers and lots of family. The Red Lion Inn suggested Michael Tucker, who was a really relaxed, good guy. We had a lot of ‘80s rock music and a mix of new stuff. During the ceremony we had lots of classical music like the Irish Wedding song. At the reception Nicole and I had our grand entrance to the theme song from the movie “Rocky”, and then went right into our first dance to “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls. That song has always been very symbolic to us.

Nicole: Brian and I are from families that love to celebrate so we celebrated all night long. When I look back on my wedding I know it was a day full of family and friends. It went by so fast. I didn’t want it to end. I had so much fun that whole year of planning I’d do it again.

Kristin & Tushaar

When Kristin Messner and Tushaar Agrawal decided to tie the knot they knew they wanted to get married by the ocean. Thanks to the help of wedding planner Joann Gregoli from Elegant Occasions in New York City the couple was able to incorporate both Christian and Hindu traditions into their elaborate three-day celebration, which took place under beautiful skies at the Chatham Bars Inn in Chatham.

Kristin: We met with our wedding planner back in August, and she helped with all the correspondence with vendors. In the months leading up to the wedding we must have exchanged thousands of emails with her. Because we were open to having our wedding anywhere in the continental US, we had a lot to choose from.

Tushaar: The location was an important decision for us to make. I definitely wanted it to be somewhere on the water. We knew we wanted to celebrate with both Christian and Indian traditions, and we needed to go somewhere that could accommodate all our ceremonies, almost like a destination wedding. We also wanted to have the use of different venues so our guests didn’t get bored of going to the same places.

Kristin: As we narrowed down our choices we liked the fact that Chatham Bars Inn was on the ocean, and it was also within driving distance to New York City, which is where a lot of our guests were coming from. We both went to NYU and the cottages made it possible for all our friends to stay together. kristin and tushaar on beach

Tushaar: We spent a few days at Chatham Bars Inn sampling food and making choices. We were stuffed, but everything turned out well. CBI also helped us get Indian food.

Kristin: The first Indian wedding I had been to also happened to be my own. My mother-in-law gave me a one-page write-up that helped explain the meaning of the different rituals and customs. We actually made a trip to India to go shopping for what I would wear in the Indian ceremony. I wore a wedding lehnga, which is a three-piece outfit that weighted about 40-45 pounds. I also had a good time shopping for my Christian wedding dress.

Tushaar: I also enlisted the help of my mom. Our families are both very respectful of other cultures so we did not have to worry about offending anyone’s beliefs. The most challenging part was trying to conduct all the ceremonies respectfully while balancing the effect the long days would have on our guests. We managed to maintain the beauty of all the ceremonies while shortening them slightly.

Kristin: I had mehndi [when henna is applied to the bride’s hands and feet] done when we were in India but the mehndi wedding rituals were all new to me. But I just went with it. In the interest of time we decided to incorporate the toasts into the mehndi ceremony, which was a bit of an American twist. We invited our 300 guests to take part as well.

Tushaar: Having a wedding website was very helpful. It helped alleviate us having to answer a million questions from our guests about the schedule, dress, gifts, and directions.

Kristin: Anyone who knows me knows that I really like candy. So at the reception we had glass apothecary jars filled with things like Swedish fish, salt water taffy, red, white, and pink M+Ms, Jordan almonds, and chocolate seashells from the Chatham Candy Manor. We ordered all these Chinese takeout boxes so the guests could fill them up with the candy. I am a big fan of the color pink. We had pink candy, pink flowers, and the bridal lehnga that I chose was a hot pink.

Tushaar: It’s nice to add little things that show your personality For example, we served specialty drinks to our guests. Everyone knows us as Red Bull and vodka drinkers so that represented us as a couple.

Kristin: We had a lot of little touches to make our guests comfortable too. When we were in India we bought 200 pashminas and handed them out to all the women because it was a little cool that day. We also handed guests little bags of nuts, which is a traditional Indian custom.

Tushaar: I planned the music. There was piano music during one of the cocktail hours and Indian music at another. We had a harpist and trumpeter play at the Christian ceremony and at the baarat there was a musician playing a dhol, which is a double-sided drum with two sticks that makes way more sound than you’d think. And when we talked to the DJ I knew for sure what I didn’t want played. I’m not into things like the electric slide, the chicken dance, and the Macarena

Kristin: I knew I wanted to have a lot of candid photos and even though the wedding lasted for three days we wanted to have pictures of everything. We ended up hiring two photographers: Tommy Colbert and Anthony Vazquez.

Tushaar: There was this adrenalin going from the Indian wedding into the Christian ceremony and having all the people there to share it with us. Since the day after the wedding was Mother’s Day we said thank you to all the mothers by giving them each a rose before they went home.

Carmel & Wayne

As Carmel and Wayne Sullivan of Marshfield began planning their wedding day they resolved to keep their celebration simple and elegant. The couple said their vows surrounded by friends and family and continued their celebration into the night at Atlantica overlooking scenic Cohasset harbor.

Carmel: We both knew we wanted to be married on the South Shore, preferably on the water. And we wanted our wedding to be casual rather than a black tie event.

Wayne: I don’t really like being in the spotlight that much and neither does Carm.

Carmel: Every single vendor we used was from the South Shore area. It was great to use people who were familiar who could offer us helpful tips and lead us to other vendors.

Wayne: We also went to two bridal events right after we got engaged just to get a feel of things. The website theknot.com also came in handy and within two weeks we had the church, reception site, and the trolley all booked. wayne and carmel

Carmel: Because we chose to have an evening wedding the venue needed to have accommodations available and because we invited 250 people we had to consider the size of the venue.

Wayne: We had attended a couple charity events at Atlantica in Cohasset and everybody had always been very friendly. It’s a very beautiful setting and everybody could stay at the hotel so we didn’t have to worry about anybody drinking and driving.

Carmel: Atlantica also had its own caterer. Wayne and I both enjoy food and we wanted our guest to sit down to a plated dinner and feel like they had a great meal.

Wayne: You definitely don’t want somebody who just slaps the food on the table. We went over for dinner a couple times to try out three of the possible main courses.

Carmel: The one thing I felt strongly about was that my mother and all of my bridesmaids have their makeup done professionally, which I paid for. We met with Christine Lewis from Plimpton and sort of just fell in love with her right away. She has such has a great personality.

Wayne: Some things, like flowers, I wanted Carm to do herself.

Carmel: I wasn’t looking for fancy pedestals but I enjoyed the creative elements of it. There were lots of hot pinks and oranges and various white roses and creams in the bouquet. Our centerpieces were made of wheat grass and then various lengths of gerber daisies arranged to look like they were growing out of the ground. Our florist Jennifer Kahill of the Tangled Web in Whitman was
phenomenal about making it all come to life.

Wayne: When we were choosing a DJ we both agreed that we didn’t want any music with swears in it. No rap, no heavy metal, and no Macarena. The only other thing we requested was our wedding song, “Have I told you lately that I love you?” I’m just a big Van Morrison fan.

Carmel: It was important to have someone who would really keep the crowd moving and dancing all night long. In the end we chose Mark Magilicutty from Quincy.

Carmel: Wayne was also very concerned with choosing the right photographer and while he’s not typically a person who makes fast decisions he and I liked Kjeld and Melissa Mahoney right away.

Wayne: They weren’t pushy at all. And they take really nice photos from a lot of different angles.

Carmel: We decided against getting a wedding video.

Wayne: I asked ten of my better friends what they thought and nine out of ten said don’t do it. In fact nine out of ten said they didn’t even know where their wedding video was.

Carmel: Another important event was going to Konditor Meister for a cake tasting. It’s an interesting and overwhelming experience looking at all the flavors you hadn’t even thought of. Because Wayne and I are sort-of low key so we didn’t want a whole lot of add-ons or doo-dad decorations. Our cake had ivory butter cream frosting and Gerber daisies to continue the theme.

Wayne: Carm was more involved in choosing the cake design and I was into the tasting part of it. We tried 5-10 different kinds of cake and because we were the last people there we got to take home the cake at the end of the night.

Wayne: We met great people during the planning process. It was a lot of fun. In fact, every one of the vendors we dealt with was someone we wouldn’t mind sitting down and having dinner with.

Sarah & Doug

Doug and Sarah Bohaboy met on their first day of college and after many years of dating got married during the fall on the Cape. The couple had a really short engagement of four months, which required some extremely efficient planning. Although they live in New York City, Sarah’s parents split their time between West Harwich and Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and she came many weekends during the summer leading up to the wedding to meet with vendors. A huge Nor’easter, with constant sideways rain and winds of up to 60 mph, ripped through the Cape on the big day. “As everyone kept reminding us,” says Sarah, “a wet knot is harder to untie, so we’re good to go.”

Sarah: When we called people after getting engaged, people asked “where are you getting married?” and “when is it happening?”

Doug: We kept trying to tell people to give us a little time to enjoy this.

Sarah: We struggled about where to get married. Doug is from California. I am from Massachusetts. We met in Chicago, and we live now in New York City.

Doug: So we narrowed it down to Chicago, New York, Cape Cod, or some destination wedding.

Sarah: Yeah, we narrowed it down [laughing].

Doug: Once we went to the Cape, we knew that was what we wanted to do. If we did Manhattan, I couldn’t stomach the fact that guests would be spending a couple hundred bucks a night for our wedding.

Sarah: We wanted people to come and hang out, get to know each other. Guests would be able to have a mini-holiday.

Doug: If we had it in Manhattan, people would be rushing out to visit Times Square.

Sarah: We came out to the Cape for my mom’s birthday in June. It was pouring the whole weekend. We scheduled one visit on a whim. We ended up asking if they had any dates that October, because I always wanted a fall wedding. We’d been told that once you get the ceremony and reception venues signed up the rest falls into place. sarah and doug

Doug: As far as planning, Sarah could’ve done it all. She’s a list maker and a task master, and Sarah would give me a number of tasks. I gravitated toward things I was particularly interested in, like music, the slide show, the transportation, and the registry.

Cape Cod Magazine: Wait a sec. The registry??!!

Doug: I am the chef in the relationship. Anything that relates to the kitchen usually falls on me.

Sarah: I am just the sous chef. I chop when I am told to chop.

Cape Cod Magazine: But Sarah, you were in charge of picking out the bedding, right?

Sarah: Yes [laughing].

Doug: But there was some compromise. For instance, I just wanted one set of dinnerware. I know that if we got china we’d just have it packed away only to use it once a year, and we’d end up shipping it around wherever we moved. In the end, we got two sets and the china is in Sarah’s parents’ basement, so I guess I lost.

Sarah: Decisions have to be made. But you don’t need a year to make your decisions.

Doug: I think with a long engagement you start to overthink. When you’re forced to make those decisions, you just make them. For instance, Sarah wanted a song list, but I related better to the band, and said, “These are laid-back guys. Let them do their thing.”

Sarah: Doug is pretty laid-back to begin with. I started to become a little more relaxed during the process. For instance, the vows were something we took a while to get to.

Doug: Believe me, anything functional we were constantly crossing off our lists. There were many things
I could do from New York City.

Sarah: I was fortunate enough to have summer hours and vacation time saved up. But when I couldn’t be there, my parents were checking out accommodations.

Doug: If there was anything I learned, it was that you don’t need a long time to plan for a wedding.

Sarah: If there was one thing we wished we had done, it was to take the microphone and say thank you to all the guests. Every guest said how wonderful the evening was, but it was all a blur.