Beachy Blues Stole the Spotlight at This Martha’s Vineyard Estate Wedding

September 21, 2019
Private Estate
Tisbury, Martha’s Vineyard

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

THE STORY

Alexis Ferraro and Tom Callahan first crossed paths in 2012, when they shared a class at Babson College. She caught his eye, but they didn’t talk right away. “I’d seen her in class and didn’t know who she was, but I wanted to figure out a way to talk to her,” Tom says. As luck would have it, not long after Tom first noticed her, his hockey team and Alexis’s tennis team happened to be throwing a mixer together, and on the night of the event, he made sure to start up a conversation. “I was looking for connections to make and things to talk about, and it came up that she spent her summers on the Vineyard. I played hockey with someone from the Vineyard, so I just threw out, ‘Do you know so-and-so?’ and it just so happened that she’d just broken up with him after a two-year relationship,” recalls Tom, who was also newly single. “Here I was thinking I was making a good connection.” Despite what could have been an awkward interaction, the two actually instantly bonded over their respective breakups. They continued to run into each other over the following weeks, exchanged numbers, and later started to date. “We took it slow. We didn’t want to rush into another long-term relationship,” Alexis says. “But it just went from there.”

After college they eventually settled in Boston, where they lived with roommates until they moved in together in 2017. Before Tom actually popped the question in December 2018, he’d long known that he’d one day propose. The thought initially occurred to him during the couple’s first trip to Miami to visit Alexis’s family. “There was a specific moment one morning where we’d done a workout and were bringing breakfast out onto the patio, and I remember thinking, ‘I can really see myself marrying this girl,'” Tom says. “Ever since then, I knew that patio was where I would propose.” So he decided to ask for her hand while the two visited the city for Alexis’s dad’s annual Christmas party, and invited his family to Miami to surprise Alexis, too. The night before he planned to propose, though, the couple attended another celebration at Alexis’s dad’s office, where they chatted with his secretary over cocktails. “We were talking and she said, ‘Oh, Tom, that’s so nice that your parents are coming for the party tomorrow night,'” Tom remembers. “I was standing there wide-eyed like, ‘No they’re not.'” Despite Tom’s denials, Alexis knew something was up. Later, to try and salvage the surprise, Tom asked Alexis’s step-mother to pretend that she had planned to surprise both of them by bringing Tom’s parents there as a Christmas present. To Tom’s delight, Alexis bought the cover up. And the next morning, after they worked out and whipped up breakfast, Tom proposed out on the patio just as he’d planned. “I felt so bad that he had to go through such a stressful time, but it ended up being perfect,” Alexis says.

Long before they’d even gotten engaged, both Tom and Alexis knew that their eventual nuptials would take place at Alexis’s dad’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. “It’s my favorite place in the world, and as soon as Tom started going there, it became our favorite place,” Alexis explains. So once Tom popped the question, they got right to planning a September wedding with a blue, green, and white palette that would play up their seaside setting. On the day of the celebration, after an oceanfront ceremony officiated by one of their closest friends, they enjoyed cocktail hour by the pool (which the couple and some of their friends later jumped into during the afterparty), followed by a grand tented reception in the yard. “We really felt like we got to enjoy everything, and I felt like I was on the dance floor all night,” the bride recalls. “And at two or three in the morning, as we were on our way back to our hotel, we were able to see the tent still lit up with all the arrangements and walk through just the two of us. We were like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe it’s all over.'”

THE DETAILS

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

Alexis and Tom wanted to recruit primarily local vendors, enlisting Maidenwood Press’s Emily Galligan for their invitation suite. She designed the couple’s wedding crest, which later inspired other decorative elements on the big day such as their ceremony arch and signage.

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

Alexis found her Anais Anette frock at Ceremony. “I felt really comfortable and happy in it,” the bride recalls. “Ceremony was the first [of several shops] we went to, but I just kept going back to that dress and ended up picking it.”

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

The first look, which took place on the home’s widow’s walk, was one of the couple’s favorite moments of the day. “We had a feeling it’d be a really special moment between just the two of us before the craziness began, and it was,” the bride says. “We both cried, but it was nothing too dramatic.”

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

Alexis kept the couple’s welcome sign, designed by Maidenwood Press, as a keepsake after the wedding. It now sits in her bedroom at her dad’s house on the Vineyard.

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

The wedding ceremony was “quick, intimate, and personal,” the bride says. “People were laughing and crying. It was perfect and it was overlooking the water, which was beautiful.”

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

Circular arrangements of greenery that echoed the couple’s wedding crest hung from the top of their reception tent. “We loved how that turned out, and it tied everything together,” Alexis says.

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

Given the home’s beautiful setting, “We knew we didn’t need to do too much for our [reception décor]. We wanted very natural, simple table settings with nothing too dramatic or overdone,” Alexis says. That vision called for white candles and locally grown flowers such as dahlias, cosmos, and garden roses in cream and blue hues.

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

The bride and groom had their first dance to “Forever Like That” by Ben Rector. “I have a public playlist of sweet love songs that I didn’t know Tom had been listening to. After I added that song to the playlist, he listened to it and said, ‘That would be a great first dance song,'” Alexis says. “I had been thinking the same thing.”

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

In addition to a naked, milk chocolate-raspberry cake by local vendor Val Cakes, Alexis and Tom also served desserts and doughnuts from Scottish Bakehouse and Back Door Donuts—their favorite Vineyard haunts.

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

Alexis and her best friend Kristina first spotted the MV PhotoBus at a fair on the Vineyard the summer before Alexis and Tom got engaged. “It was blue, which is my favorite color, and Kristina said, ‘When you and Tom get married, you have to have this at your wedding,'” the bride recalls. 

Photo by Danielle Margherite Photography

“We both did a great job of really being present and enjoying the party and everyone there with us,” Tom says. “The day goes by in a flash, but we felt so much happiness and love throughout the entire weekend.”

THE FILE

Band The Sultans
Bride’s Dress Anais Anette, Ceremony
Cake Val Cakes
Caterer The Kitchen Porch
Ceremony Music Matt Roy
Desserts Back Door Donuts; Scottish Bakehouse
Flowers Tea Lane Farm
Groom’s Suit Alton Lane
Hair Cesar DeLeon Ramirez; Sea Spa Salon
Signage/Stationery Maidenwood Press
Makeup Sea Spa Salon
Marquee Letters/Rentals Big Sky Tent and Party Rentals
Photo Booth MV PhotoBus
Photographer Danielle Margherite Photography
Planner KG Events & Design
Transportation Stagecoach Taxi
Videographer Veiled in Motion

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