"We Will Swim To Nantucket If We Have To" - Inside The 34 Weddings On The Island During The Nor'Easter

Isobel Brinkworth had been planning for more than two years to have her Nantucket wedding on Saturday, September 26th at the Sankaty Head Beach Club. So needless to say she was refreshing her weather app in the week leading up to the big day, and her heart began to sink when she saw the forecast: a rare fall nor'easter that would likely cancel all boats and planes was headed for the island.

"It was kind of like my worst nightmare was happening," Brinkworth said. "This huge storm is coming. I wasn't sure people were going to get there, or what anything would look like."

Brinkworth and her now-husband, Michael Phillips, were one of at least 34 couples with weddings planned on Nantucket last weekend as the nor'easter churned up the East Coast. The weather left them scrambling to adjust their plans and venues, find alternative travel arrangements and accommodations for their guests and vendors, and adapt on the fly to the wet and windy conditions.

"We reconfigured an entire wedding we've been planning for two years, basically in three days," said Brinkworth's wedding planner, Aisling Glynn, of ACKtivities.

The Current spoke to a handful of brides, caterers, photographers, and wedding planners about their experiences over the weekend and how they made the best of it under difficult circumstances. Nearly universally, they said the weddings turned out beautifully despite the weather, but not before a lot of stress and scrambling.

"Honestly, it was the best weekend ever," Brinkworth said. "But of course, at the start of last week, we were very stressed. I honestly thought we were going to have to cancel. I just didn't know if we would have any guests."

While most ferries were canceled on Thursday and Friday leading into the weekend, the Steamship Authority leaned on its new freight vessels, the M/V Aquinnah and the M/V Monomoy, to continue shuttling passengers and vehicles back and forth between Nantucket and Hyannis before shutting down all operations on Saturday. That allowed many guests and vendors to make the crossing to Nantucket. While some of Brinkworth's friends and family, including her grandfather, were unable to make it to the island, ultimately 130 of the couple's 164 invited guests got to Nantucket for the wedding.

"So a lot of our guests were just like, 'you know what? We got this. We will swim to Nantucket if we have to'," Brinkworth said. "They were going to do anything to get there. I know people were flying in. People were taking the ferries. Even when they were taking the ferries, some people didn't get on, but then some random people were like, "Hey, jump in my car! We'll take you over.' So it was actually amazing how our guests got there."

Meanwhile, Glynn and her team had made the decision to move the wedding from the Sankaty Head Beach Club to the Sankaty Head Golf Club's clubhouse due to the weather. It meant a lot more work for her team, but given the forecast, they made the call. But that didn't mean they had avoided all the curveballs the weather was going to throw at them.

As Brinkworth and Phillips' guests settled in for the rehearsal dinner at Straight Wharf Restaurant on Friday night, Glynn was notified that a sailboat had broken free of its lines and was threatening to strike the dining establishment.

"And for the first time ever, I had to call the Coast Guard," Glynn said with a laugh. Station Brant Point's crew did indeed respond to the end of Straight Wharf to make the save.

Then there was another snafu: the wedding band's equipment had arrived on-island, but the band itself was stranded on the mainland. Knowing that was a possibility, Glynn had already started making calls to put together a local band. She was able to piece together a group that included members of the Nantucket band La Tulipe, who joined forces with guitarist Tim Pitts and trumpeter Kelly Emery to form an impromptu, all-star wedding band on the fly.

"She (La Tulipe member Nicole Miller) got them all together late, late Friday night for a rehearsal, and again early Saturday morning," Glynn said. "They learned all the first dance songs, the parents' dances, and they absolutely killed it. They were unbelievable."

Glynn shared this video of the musicians playing for the wedding last Saturday:

Meanwhile, wedding planner Maggie Stewart was dealing with a similar set of circumstances for her couple, Ashley and Jonny, and their wedding at the Nantucket Golf Club. Despite the conditions, the decision was made to keep the tent up and use it for the reception. But there was one problem.

"The wind was so wild that the drapery whipped around unless someone was holding it taut," Stewart told the Current. "So to still have a reveal moment before the reception tent opened to guests, a team of nine from Nantucket Golf Club, APAD (Advanced Production And Design) and my crew stood in place for the full 90 minutes of cocktail hour, literally just holding drapes. That's just one of countless stories of people doing things this weekend that weren't necessarily their jobs, but needed to get done to give the client their vision."

"Weekends like this are always a nightmare, and it takes an incredible team of vendors to pull them off," Stewart said. "Everyone came together to give their clients as close to the original vision as possible. Island Kitchen lent a box truck to the planner at The Wauwinet so she could store furniture for her pivot. The planner at The Nantucket Hotel was a godsend, tracking everyone's flights. Donald at Event Rental Co. made countless edits and deliveries in the pouring rain. I know the Chicken Box opened their doors for someone, and Sultans of Swing had band members come over early or fly in on crazy little charter flights. I can't even imagine how much hairspray Lindsay at RJ Miller went through this weekend, but as usual, her brides all looked impeccable."

For Nantucket's wedding photographers, the challenges were also immense. They too had to pivot from their original plans for images, find the brief moments when the rain let up to do outdoor shots, and keep their gear as dry as possible during the deluge.

Photographer Rebecca Love was shooting the wedding of Julia Wise and Mitch Pitkin, and said they handled all the changes "with incredible grace," and came away with some memorable candid images in Sconset that the couple will treasure.

"Their ceremony was originally planned to be outdoors in Sconset, but as the weather made it clear that wasn’t going to be possible, they quickly began searching for another space," Love said. "The Chanticleer graciously opened their doors and somehow transformed the main restaurant into a beautiful ceremony space - after serving lunch there just an hour or so before! Their chuppah miraculously fit perfectly, and it ended up being such a beautiful setting for their ceremony."

In addition to 40 guests who couldn't make it to Nantucket for the wedding, it was also unclear whether their band, The Sultans, could make the voyage to the island. By Saturday morning, it wasn't looking promising, Love said.

"But the morning of the wedding, the band chartered a private plane and landed just in time," she said. "I’m not going to lie - we weren’t very hopeful they were going to make it, so everyone was very happy to see them arrive! We all cheered as they walked into the Casino."

Another band that made a harrowing journey to the island for a wedding, Beach Nights, chronicled their journey in an Instagram post in which it described "Wedding Chaos." They left for the island three days early and got the last spot on the boat. But when the tent company canceled, the couple was left with no place to put 150 guests and the band. "So we called in a favor," the band said, showing a photo of The Chicken Box, where they had played before. You can see more in this post:

For island photographer Katie Kaizer, the nor'easter wasn't her first rodeo capturing a wedding in rough weather. But when she saw the forecast, she knew she had an advantage:

"When it comes to predicting the weather, I call on one of my biggest supporters and my go to meteorologist: my father, Capt. Pete Kaizer," she said. "For my entire life I have been lucky to know that he is just one phone call away. He’s been working and living on the water for his whole life and has that sixth sense about the intricacies and nuance of Nantucket’s weather that only a local fisherman can have."

Kaizer's wedding was at the White Elephant on Nantucket Harbor, where some of the most obvious impacts from the storm were present.

"Mother Nature is the boss in these situations and when we saw opportunities to go outside, we went for it," Kaizer said. "I had studied the wedding timeline ahead of time compared it with all of our weather apps, and then had my colleague, Cary Tozer, checking the latest radar updates constantly. We knew after the family formals we had a moment to pop outside in between downpours, and I am so glad we did." 

"We had two weddings over the weekend and they both went amazing," said Island Kitchen owner Patrick Ridge. "All the vendor teams definitely had to step up a bit because of the weather and it made for a really special evening for both couples. A few guests didn’t make it over but the vast majority of them did and at this point, I honestly believe that sometimes the weddings are actually more fun in bad weather!"