WellWed on the Cape

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Location: 

Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

Cake: 

Val Cakes

Caterer: 

Tealane Caterers

Tent Rental : 

Big Sky Tent and Party Rentals

Photographer(s): 

Joe Mikos Photographers

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Planning a wedding on Martha's vineyard from another country was not exactly a scenario that Christen Cheek had envisioned for herself, but since meeting Brad ­Peterson, her life had been full of interesting surprises.

For starters, there’s the way they met. “I never thought I would meet my husband in a bar, but it happens!” says Christen, who met Brad at a bar in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood when he approached her with a charming—and unusual—pickup line. One of Christen’s friends had brought her husband to the bar that night, and the way Christen and her friends were standing made it look as though they were all lined up to talk to him. “Brad came up to me and asked who was this guy that we were all standing in line to talk to,” Christen remembers. He offered to join her in line, and soon after that night they started dating.

Brad wasn’t done with surprises. Christen knew a ­proposal was on the horizon—after all, they’d been ring shopping together and were getting ready to move to Switzerland—but after a romantic weekend at the posh White Elephant Hotel on Nantucket, full of proposal-perfect moments, passed by without event, Christen thought she would have to wait until they got to Switzerland. But she didn’t have to wait nearly that long. When they were packed up and ready to head back to Boston, Brad suggested they take a walk for a farewell view of the harbor—during which he dropped to one knee and asked Christen to be his wife.

Christen had dreamed of getting married on Martha’s Vineyard since vacationing there as a child with her family. The fact that Brad was attending business school in Switzerland, thousands of miles across the ocean, wasn’t going to get in her way. Fortunately, Christen found that the Cape was full of professionals who made long-distance planning easy. “I thought that planning a wedding from another country and meeting the vendors only once would be stressful, but it really wasn’t,” Christen says. “Our caterer and her assistant were fantastic.”

The wedding itself was everything Christen and Brad had hoped for—a warm, wonderful day filled with love, friends, and ­family, some who’d come to the United States for the first time to share in Christen and Brad’s joy. “It sounds like a cliché, but just ­having everyone you love in one room is such a wonderful ­feeling,” says Christen, who loved seeing the little boy she’d nannied during her grad-school days grinning at her from his post as ring bearer as she walked down the aisle. The church was crowded, but as they spoke their vows, Christen and Brad felt as though there was no one else in the world.

Christen honored her late mother through the décor, which reflected her mother’s classic, understated taste. To Christen’s delight, her florist was able to find peonies in exactly the shade of pale pink Christen’s mother had adored. “I felt like my mother had chosen them herself,” said Christen.

Tradition also played an important role in Christen and Brad’s other wedding choices. Because Christen’s dad is famous for his annual jam making, Christen joined him in the kitchen to make jars of strawberry jam to give to the guests as favors. The jam also was layered with honey inside the beehive cake Christen and Brad had chosen because the beehive symbolizes cooperation and luck.

Who knows what surprises lay ahead for Christen and Brad. One thing’s for sure, though—they’ll be diving headfirst into them together.