Real Wedding: Audra & Tripp
For Audra Bodenstab and Tripp Boyle, there was no question where they’d celebrate their wedding: Nantucket was the clear choice. They had met at The University of Massachusetts Amherst in the spring of Audra’s sophomore year, when Tripp was visiting his younger sister, Lizzy, who was also a student. Audra and Lizzy were friends, but she had never met Tripp until she ran into him at a party. Without realizing their shared connection, they spotted each other, introduced themselves, and shared a kiss, all in a few magical hours. “I think I can honestly say it was love at first sight,” says Audra.
As their relationship grew, Audra and Tripp began spending many weekends on Nantucket, picnicking on Great Point, relaxing on the beach, and enjoying the island’s charms. They frequently traveled with friends, but one weekend in August 2006, Tripp insisted they make the weekend just the two of them. Audra, who’d invited Lizzy to come along on the trip, was a little annoyed, but she gave in with good grace when she realized Tripp wasn’t going to back down. They spent Saturday on the beach, and then Tripp suggested they take a picnic out to Great Point that night as they often did, gathering wine, cheese, and other comestibles at the Sconset Market and driving out to the Point in time to catch the sunset. However, this time was different: As Audra and Tripp watched the edges of the sky turn pink and orange, Tripp turned to Audra and asked her to marry him. “Aside from getting married, it was the happiest day of my life,”
says Audra.
Audra and Tripp wanted to put an elegant twist on the classic Nantucket wedding. Audra chose a palette of clean, crisp white so that the look would be more about texture than color. “I love white, but if you want to keep things to just white, you really need to step out of the box, and I think we accomplished that with the details,” Audra says. She found her vendors to be enthusiastic participants in the planning process and was thankful for the creativity they brought to the table in executing her wedding vision.
Audra had a copy of the program from her great-grandmother’s wedding ceremony and wanted to find a way to incorporate it into her own celebration. She asked her aunt to give a reading that her great-grandmother had chosen for her own wedding as a way of honoring her past as she began her new future with Tripp.
The wedding came together exactly as Audra and Tripp had envisioned — a joyous celebration of family and friends in one of the couple’s favorite places. As Audra walked down the aisle toward her soon-to-be-husband, she was overwhelmed with a rush of sheer happiness in the knowledge that at the end of the walk, she would be marrying the love of her life. Tripp, watching her walking toward him, felt just as lucky — he grabbed Audra’s hand during the ceremony and asked his bride-to-be to take a little walk with him, a spontaneous moment that was one of their wedding day’s most memorable for both of them. Even a long and tiring post-ceremony photography session didn’t dampen their spirits: When they arrived late to their own reception, they toasted each other with champagne and quickly shared a few of their wedding appetizers before joining their guests for the wedding feast and later leading them onto the dance floor to the rhythms of their swing band. It wasn’t until months later that Audra knew the cake had been in danger of melting for a short time and that one of the buses carrying guests from the ceremony to the reception had gotten lost.
For Audra and Tripp, their favorite island had just become a little more special.
Audra & Tripp's Advice
1) Be clear about what you want for your vendors, but at a certain point you have to trust them enough to let them take the reins.
2) Don’t let the small things bug you! Your day will be perfect if you don’t waste time worrying about imperfect little things.
{Other Professionals}
Cake: A Piece of Cake
Catering: Nantucket Catering Company
Entertainment: The Sultans Of Swing
Invitations: Black Pearl Press
Tent Rental: Sperry Tents