Real Wedding: Erinn & Nathan
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, is a pretty special place for Erinn Sullivan and Nathan Davis.
When they first met, on a Chappaquiddick vacation when Erinn was 9 years old and Nate was 10, neither of them realized that they were looking into their future. In fact, both of them promptly forgot the encounter, though a fortuitous photograph confirms it. But they certainly remember the next time they met, while spending the summer at Nate’s family’s house on Chappaquiddick. Nate and his two brothers were spending the summer working on the island, and Nate’s mom invited her niece Casey to bring a couple of friends and use the guest house. Casey immediately invited Erinn, who’d been one of her closest friends since their toddler days. It wasn’t long before Erinn and Nate were spending as much time as they could together, and when they left the island in late August to head back to their respective schools, it was the beginning of a long-distance relationship that would continue through college and end with both of them settling in New York City.
With so much history tied to the Vineyard, it’s no wonder that Nate chose the island as the setting for his proposal. He’d swept Erinn off for a quick visit to celebrate her 26th birthday, and on a cold and rainy afternoon in early May, he casually proposed. Erinn later found out that he’d planned to pop the question during their dinner at Catch on the Charlotte, but he just couldn’t wait and ended up jumping the gun.
There was no question that they’d have the wedding on Martha’s Vineyard. In fact, the very weekend Nate proposed, he and Erinn started making plans, and the wedding took place just five months later, in October.
Erinn turned to her mom for help. “She was wedding planner extraordinaire through the whole process — I couldn’t have done it without her,” she says.
Erinn and her mom fell in love with a warm color palette that reflected the beauty of a New England fall: lots of rich reds, vibrant greens, and deep oranges that would echo the technicolor glow of the surrounding foliage.
Erinn knew the weather in October on the Cape could be risky, but she and Nate thought the luxury of having Edgartown all to themselves at that time of year made it worth the gamble.
Erinn asked Nate’s cousin Casey, who’d invited her to spend that fateful summer at Chappaquiddick and who’d been one of her closest friends since she was 2 years old, to be her maid of honor, thrilled to finally make her dear friend an official part of her family.
Erinn knew the weather in October on the Cape could be risky, but she and Nate thought the luxury of having Edgartown all to themselves at that time of year made it worth the gamble. Luck was on their side: the wedding weekend dawned clear and sunny, with temperatures in the low- to mid-60s — perfect autumn weather.
The wedding itself was everything Erinn and Nate wanted. They invited both their surviving grandfathers — one 90 years old, the other 84 — to share grace before the meal at the reception, and the delighted grandfathers took their joyful responsibility very seriously.
“Having all our friends and family together under one roof was the highlight of the whole weekend,” says Erinn. “In all the wedding day chaos, it was so calming to look around at all these people from different parts of our lives — childhood friends, college friends, family — and to realize that what they have in common is us.”
Just another reason Martha’s Vineyard will always feel like a special place for Erinn and Nate.