Real Wedding: Tiffin & Mike
Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
Band: Mike Benjamin Band, Cake: Val Cakes, Catering: Truly Scrumptious, Hair & Makeup: Mary Bergeron
Tiffin Pastor probably never imagined that when she met her future husband, he would be wearing a Harry Potter costume, but sometimes love is funny like that. Tiffin met Mike Eisenberg on Halloween night, 2004. Mike was wearing a Harry Potter elf costume and Tiffin was dressed as a butterfly. Although they spent some time together that evening, it wasn’t until the following month that they bumped into each other at a mutual friend’s party and decided to begin dating. Before long, they were inseparable.
Tiffin has always had strong ties to Martha’s Vineyard. Her grandparents built a house there in the 1970s, and she spent every summer there since her childhood. After meeting Tiffin, Mike began spending summers with her there, making it a special place for him as well. During the summer of 2008, Tiffin was just returning home from a trip she had taken with a friend to Thailand and Cambodia, looking forward to seeing her family and Mike, she immediately headed to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer. Her first night there, she and Mike decided to take a long walk along the shoreline and then settle in on the sand to watch the waves. As the couple sat on a towel on the beach, “Mike pulled a clamshell out of his pocket and asked me to open it. One half of the shell read ‘will you’ and the other half read ‘marry me?’” said Tiffin. She could hardly believe what was happening. Mike took out a beautiful ring he had designed himself, and Tiffin, crying, accepted. They excitedly headed home to share the news, and Tiffin was surprised to see Mike’s parents when they arrived back at the house. “He had flown his parents up to Martha's Vineyard to help celebrate our engagement,” she says.
Tiffin and Mike come from differing religious backgrounds, so it was important to them to make their wedding more about their union and their love. They knew there was no better place for them to be married than Martha’s Vineyard, and to further embrace their destination wedding, they decided to expand the one-day celebration into a weekend-long event. Guests arrived on Friday night for a bonfire on the beach. Aware of his bride’s fondness for fireworks, Mike surprised Tiffin with an impressive fireworks show. The next morning, everyone was invited to breakfast in the basement of the island’s Old Whaling Church, and the rehearsal dinner took place that evening.
Tiffin and Mike’s Sunday afternoon wedding celebration was at the Captain Flanders Inn, one of their favorite spots on the island. Because they wanted a small country wedding with only their closest family and friends, the cozy venue was perfect. Tiffin and Mike wrote their own vows, and Tiffin included several of her favorite poems to be read by friends during the ceremony. A close friend of the couple, Bob Nye, performed the ceremony. There was a special connection because Bob and his wife, Whitney, had originally introduced the couple. “We chose Bob to marry us because he started something special and we wanted him to be the one to lead us into the next stage of our lives," says Mike.
The reception was full of personal touches — a signature “Georgia Peach” cocktail for Tiffin, who had grown up in Atlanta, flip-flops in galvanized buckets for any guests needing dancing shoes, and an oyster bar. Tiffin and her father danced to James Taylor, music she had grown up listening to with him. Tiffin and Mike made sure to step away from the celebration for a moment during the evening, something that they both believe was a great decision. “It was just the two of us looking at the beautiful scenery and reflecting. These are some of the moments that I will always remember,” Tiffin says.