Vineyard Weddings: What Can Go Wrong – And How To Make It Right

Martha’s Vineyard Times, Bride Guide & Party Planner 1998-99: “Things That Can Go Wrong – And How to Make Them Right” by Dawn Aberg. (Illustrations by Will Pfluger)

A thinker no less than U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called marriage “an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.” By “our prior decisions” he meant, of course, those of the U.S. Supreme Court.

 The phrase is equally applicable to us mere mortals.  Our decision to marry may indeed be the most noble decision we ever make.  Then we come to the next step:  The Wedding. In the stubbornly optimistic mythology of our culture, the Wedding Day is the happiest of our lives.  But we are a practical as well as an optimistic people.  Inquiring minds want to know: how exactly do we go about organizing this “Happiest Day”?  The question poses particular problems when we want that day to pass on a tiny island in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Massachusetts.

 To answer that question – and plenty of others – scores of talented and experienced wedding professionals now work on Martha’s Vineyard, ready to help wedding hopefuls implement their dreams.   The fact of the matter is, there is a lot that can go wrong on The Wedding Day, especially here.  Prospective brides, grooms, and in-laws-to-be need all the help they can get to remember Justice Douglas’ noble purpose in a Vineyard wedding.

Vineyard wedding advice may be summed up in three key imperatives: start early, be prepared, be flexible.  In order to help you predict the unpredictable, we polled our local wedding professionals for their thoughts on challenges people face in the course of planning a Vineyard wedding.  We hope their generous advice ennobles your big day. (Historical sidenote: Justice Douglas could probably have used their advice, too.)

The Special Quality of a Vineyard Wedding

Do not forget why you wanted to get married here in the first place.  Not so long ago, people chose to marry on Martha’s Vineyard for one of two reasons:  they lived here, or they wanted “that special Vineyard quality” for their wedding.  A Vineyard wedding can be informal without sacrificing quality.  It can be spiritual without being self-righteous, lighthearted without being superficial.  Many wedding clients have become increasingly unrealistic in their expectations for ceremonies and receptions.  “They want to recreate the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria on a sheep pasture,” lamented one wedding coordinator who chose to remain anonymous. If you really want the crystal slipper thing, you should probably go to New York City.

 But if your heart insists on the Vineyard as your wedding site (and it is your heart which should be making these decisions), focus on the special things the Island can offer – views, light, air, grace – instead of the things it can’t.  There are even local traditions that you may want to adopt.  For example, have you ever thought of a potluck reception? There are restaurants and caterers willing to organize and sumptuously present the food your guests bring. Or do you want your black Lab to be your flower girl or ring bearer? Maid of Honor? Be creative: it’s the Vineyard.

 High Tech During the Ceremony

Technology should be invisible in a wedding.  The guests shouldn’t be aware it is even there.  Because of the “creative venues” often chosen for Vineyard weddings (as in the aforementioned sheep pastures), things like sound can be an issue. The ordinary bride and groom are probably not accustomed to working with microphones.  If they are required to talk into a hand-held mike, they will more closely resemble participants in a karaoke contest than people exchanging wedding vows.  Even more distressing is the image of the minister holding the microphone and pointing it toward the bride and groom in turn, as they answer the questions, leaning awkwardly toward the device, twisting away from each other in the process.  More dreaded still is the ear-shattering sound of feedback – or it’s opposite. Dead silence. If it is necessary to amplify voices, a good sound technician can place microphones where they will not be seen, and will not require the couple’s attention as they proceed through what probably should be their solemn vows.

It is more difficult to make the videographer invisible. But a good videographer is a master of the innocuous.  The guests do not want to feel as though they are visitors on a movie set.  The bride and groom should not feel as though they are performing.

Respect the Professionals

Hiring the right professionals is critical to the success of your wedding day.  For a Vineyard wedding, seriously consider hiring a local wedding consultant or coordinator to help you put your plans into action.  It will probably end up saving you money in the long run.

A good wedding consultant combines an in-depth knowledge of wedding mechanics with superb people skills.  Look for a coordinator you feel comfortable with, someone who seems to understand your vision of your wedding. Armed with this understanding, she will match local resources to your needs, something that is not particularly easy here on our Island.  There are scores of mechanical wedding problems off-Islanders don’t even think about.  Trash removal must be arranged. Septic restrictions in some towns require the importation of port-a-potties. The ferry:  guests bringing cars will need advance reservations.  Finding suitable accommodations for your wedding guests is tricky, given the limited number of rooms here (on an island, you can’t simply drive extra guests a little further down the road to the Motel 6 in the next town).

A coordinator will contact the other professionals who will pull your wedding together: the caterer, the florist, the rental companies, the musicians, the photographer — the works.  If you coordinate the wedding yourself, you will be the one to deal with these people directly.  Take their advice seriously. They know what they are doing. And respect them.  These are professional people.  Who but a pro would think to remind you to put the photographer on the dinner list — one way to make sure the pictures look great.

Location, Location, Location

The first thing you need to decide — after your choice of spouse, of course — is where your wedding will take place.  The availability of your chosen site may very well determine your wedding date. The Island has an extraordinary range of site options. The elegance of the Old Whaling Church, the intimacy of Fourway, outdoor vistas of your choice (woods, ocean, hills, fields, streams), or the lighthouses.  Just give yourself plenty of time. And be practical. You don’t want to have to carry Grandma over the sand dunes in a sedan chair.

Money Isn’t Everything

You don’t need tons of money to have a beautiful Vineyard wedding.  Furthermore, throwing money at problems does not always fix things.  Less is definitely more.  Simple can be incredibly beautiful, especially here.

Simplicity applies to the visual presentation as well as the extravagance of wedding arrangements. “A pox on floral tablecloths!” says one gifted local florist. Think of special, personal things to make your presentation unique. One couple, who had together collected old bottles for 30 years, used groupings of these bottles as centerpieces for the reception tables at their daughter’s wedding, with a single flower bud in each “vase.”

The Myth That People Won’t Come

Pay attention to the invitations you send out.  The myth that people won’t come to a Vineyard wedding because it is so far away and inaccessible is just that — a myth.  In fact, it is possible that a higher percentage of invitees show up for Vineyard weddings just because so many people want to come here.  People who have been here before are even less likely to turn down a nice weekend of free food and drink and entertainment on The Island.  Be prepared. Don’t expect polite regrets and a wedding present. Expect wedding guests.  Once word gets out about your Island nuptials, people may show up even if they weren’t invited.

Children and Animals

W.C. Fields wouldn’t work with them, and many wedding professionals know why.  Outside of the weather, children and animals are the wedding variables hardest to script into a clean performance line.  On the one hand, some four-year-old flower girls might last longer in a receiving line than the groom’s 20-something sisters.  On the other, a bored three-year-old ring bearer might just drop-kick the ring pillow straight at the priest’s head during the march up the aisle.

Children are like satellite dishes: they pick up even the most sensitive vibrations in their environments. On highly charged emotional days like weddings, child-vibes are apt to be oscillating at a fever pitch.

If you intend to include children as an active part of the wedding ceremony, plan to put someone in charge of their activities who is not a member of the immediate wedding family. There are professionals on the Island who specialize in keeping children entertained and organized at weddings.  If nothing else, hire a couple of patient and competent baby-sitters who have a clue about how weddings should work, and include them in the rehearsals.

Animals, particularly dogs and horses, are frequent participants in Vineyard weddings.  Whether the animal belongs to a member of the wedding party and has been deliberately chosen to participate (we’re not talking about Sparky’s impromptu run to the outdoor altar), or whether the animal has been hired by the party for a specific purpose (insert scary “flock of dove release behind the minister after vows” stories here), flexibility — and good wranglers — are required in dealing with this element of a wedding.

Realistic Expectations

With a year to plan a wedding, brides have time to read lots of magazines, and to fall in love with lots of pretty pictures of, for example, delicious looking cakes that are in fact made of Styrofoam and shaving cream for the photo shoot. Cakes with real butter cream fillings and edible insides are more prone to disaster in languorous, steamy outdoor summer weddings. Several pros recounted stories of sliding, tipping and falling cakes in response to our queries.

Another unrealistic expectation: native and locally grown flowers for floral displays.  Listen to the florists and gardeners who are honest enough to tell you that they don’t always know six months in advance what will be growing here in June or August or September.  (The converse of course — be a little suspicious of the grower who guarantees months ahead of time the availability of a certain local flower.) Vineyard weather is notoriously unpredictable.  Growers simply do not know from season to season whether the temperature and rain requirements necessary to bring certain varieties to bloom at a particular time will be met.

The same advice applies to requests for locally grown vegetables. There might not be any of those perfect local baby red potatoes around on your Special Day.

Transportation

Lest you forget: Martha’s Vineyard is an island.  If you want to bring a car here, you need a ferry reservation. Do not underestimate the complexity of this process.  It may very well be the trickiest thing you will deal with in planning your wedding, particularly if your nuptials are to take place on a holiday weekend.  Even the people who live here do not understand the ferry reservation and stand-by system.  Many will wisely opt for leaving their vehicles on the other side.  You will therefore need to deal with the issue of how to move guests around once they arrive. 

And do not forget distances.  The Island may only be 20 miles long.  But it is quite a hike between towns.  We have wonderful bike paths, it is true, but old Uncle Henry (remember him?) may not be the biker type.

Taxis and buses are available of course, as are rental cars.  But outside of a couple of last-minute cab calls, these resources are limited and need to be planned for in advance.  Stories abound of real-life mishaps.

One wedding consultant who had carefully arranged for buses to pick up the wedding party and guests from the church boarded the bus to find she recognized no one.  The bus driver had picked up the wrong wedding.  Now she always puts a large sign in the front and back windows of the bus to identify which wedding party the bus should actually be picking up.

Communication

In the absence of clear communication, if there are a million things that can go wrong in a non-Vineyard wedding, two million can go wrong here.  Off-island planners may be unaware of the fact, for instance, that [at the time this article was written there were] two exceptionally talented Island organists named Peter — Mr. Boak and Mr. Hutchings — and may inadvertently hire both for the same wedding.  This actually happened. A wedding party unaware that the sale of alcohol is forbidden up-Island may be faced with disaster when the families of the bride and groom forget to make clear which family was supposed to take care of the wine for the dinner reception. This also happened.

Then there is the particularly thorny issue of Vineyard directions. Although this is not as much of an issue here now as it was in the day (what with the advent of such novel concepts as street signs and house numbers), there is still that Yankee tendency to be vague as to location.  Identifying a critical left turn as the one “next to Bill Honey’s barn” may not work for an off-Island guest or service provider. Be specific. Put up markers and signs of your own. Or else the tent may go up in the wrong yard. (This happened, too.)

Music

A pipe organ, a cello and flute, a string quartet, or a jazz piano for the ceremony.  A jazz band, a rock group, or a DJ for reception dancing.  The music you choose will do more to set the tone for your nuptials than any other single element. (Even non-musicians will tell you this.) There are any number of talented musicians here on the island, but they book up fast for the big wedding months.  One local group currently has more than 30 demo tapes out in response to prospective client calls for next summer.

The musicians you hire should be flexible and respond to your needs. (Although you should not require a solo keyboard player, with 2,000 feet of extension cord in aforementioned sheep pasture to sound like a small string orchestra.)(Especially when aforementioned old Uncle Henry trips over the cord at the house after a couple of highballs, and there is no sound at all.)(Again – this has happened.)

An organist should be able to vamp for an hour if necessary at the church if the bride has had a meltdown and is late.  Bands should listen to you when you tell them to turn it down because no one can hear themselves talking and the police are at the door in response to neighbor complaints. If the bride’s aunt has a beautiful voice and wants to sing a song of her choice for her niece at the reception, or even if her voice is not so beautiful but her niece loves her, the band should be able to accomodate the request.

Be considerate of all your guests when you plan the music for the reception. The bride and groom may very well want to dance their brains out to mind-numbing techno, but there will be guests who don’t want to wear earplugs, and who might actually like to carry on a conversation. And of course, here on our Island, there are more than a few town ordinances to take into account before you implement your dream of rocking the night away.

Don’t Schedule Too Much for the Wedding Day

It is tempting, particularly here, with friends and family you haven’t seen forever and so much fun stuff to do, to try to do too much.  Keep it simple, particularly on the Wedding Day itself.  One wedding professional had to talk the bride out of competing in a tennis tournament the morning of the ceremony. (It had been the groom’s  idea.)  Even bridesmaid luncheons are dicey in the hours before a wedding. Why give yourself extra things to worry about?

Light and Wind

Ah, the Vineyard light. Even on beautiful weather days, things like it (and wind) can affect a ceremony, and not always in positive ways. If the bride and groom exchange their vows downwind of the assembled guests on the beach, no one will hear them. If the wind is strong, as it often is here, things will blow away if they are not attached firmly to a (solid) surface. Food caterers are adept at considering these issues, as are musicians using sheet music in the aforementioned sheep pastures or on the porch of the Harbor View.  Make sure other professionals are aware of them as well.

Remember to think of the importance of light to your photographer’s work. If the wedding party is positioned with the light directly behind them (the beautiful sunset on the beach in Menemsha, perhaps?), all the photographer is going to get is silhouette shots and huge light bursts. Dramatic, perhaps, but you won’t see faces. Plus … the light will be directly in your guests’ eyes.

The Weather

There is nothing more important in planning a Vineyard wedding than having a backup rain plan.  Wedding planners agree: If the wedding and reception are outdoors, you need a tent.  The tent should probably have sides.  Even if it doesn’t rain, you will be surprised how chilly a summer evening can get here, particularly for women in strappy heels and party dresses.

Even the most reputable company’s tent isn’t going to keep your guests dry if it rains eight inches in one day (as it did last June) and water starts bubbling out of the ground. One caterer tells the story of a bride’s father who insisted on going ahead with his daughter’s beach wedding in the face of hurricane warnings.  During the ceremony, with a pounding ocean surf as backdrop, the caterer was horrified to see the back of the tent begin to rise off the ground, then start to collapse. In a flash, she rallied her workers to move the tent siding aslant of the gale, and hold it Iwo Jima-style for the remainder of the ceremony.

One should never question the dedication of this Island’s wedding professionals.