Love Changes Everything! A Dapper Real Wedding at Holly Hedge Estate

1.       How did you and your partner meet?

John and Robert met on a dating app called Hinge in spring 2021. In this case the app seems to have lived up to its tagline, which is, “the app that’s designed to be deleted.” This is presumably because it actually helps you find your person. After they matched and set up a first date, John drove into New York City from Raritan, NJ to meet Robert at Rise Bar in Manhattan, where he was living. It was raining that day and Robert tried to cancel, but since John was already passing through the Lincoln Tunnel by that point, he braved the rain and the cold to meet John. Drinks at the bar turned into dinner, dinners turned into trips together, and the two have been together since that rainy day in New York City.  

2.       Tell us about the proposal.

Robert and John are avid travelers. John had never been to Japan before 2023, and Robert happens to speak fluent Japanese because he lived there when he was young. To show John that chapter of his life and show him various parts of the country, Robert took John to Japan. This was in February 2023, during Japan’s large winter festivals. In addition to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, they attended different winter festivals in Hokkaido and Tohoku, including Sapporo’s Snow Festival, Oga’s Namahage Sedo, Kakunodate’s Hiburi Kamakura, and Yokote’s Kamakura Festival. Afterwards, they went to a beautiful hot springs town called Ginzan Onsen in Yamagata Prefecture. It was there in the snow, by a little bridge over the river running through the town, that John asked Robert to marry him. Afterwards, they celebrated with a flight of sake at one of the restaurants in town. 

3.       What was your experience in planning your wedding?

We had a great experience planning our wedding. We knew we wanted to get married in Bucks County and started very early. Even still, there was only one Saturday available in autumn 2024 at the venue we wanted (autumn is popular), and it just so happened to be the Saturday before Halloween 2024. We decided to lean into that fact, and create a wedding full of elegant Halloween whimsy with inspiration from a variety of things like the film Practical Magic, Hogwarts during Halloween, and our own touches. 

4.       Tell us about your venue.

Holly Hedge Estate is one of the best venues around. We were so impressed with the Events Office team, not to mention the venue itself, and the food. We could not have worked with a better venue. Gabbi and Michelle of the Events Office are absolutely awesome people. 

5.       What was the best memory or moment from your wedding day:

We tried to be very thoughtful about our ceremony and ended up writing it ourselves. To actually take the vision that we dreamed up together and worked so hard on and make it a reality for our guests was such a beautiful thing. A favorite moment was being overwhelmed with joy just before walking down the aisle and seeing family and friends together in a space that we all worked so hard to create together. After everything was finished, we were both so excited by the whole day that we just wanted to wake up and do everything again! We’re deeply grateful to the vendors who helped make it possible, with extra special shoutouts to our florist House of Blooms in Raritan, NJ, our photographer Nicole Coridsco, our videographer Chris Pelley Films, Boyds Philadelphia, and HollyHedge Estate. 

6.       What advice can you give to couples planning a wedding: 

Rehearsal is very important. Take it seriously. We had a few moving parts to our ceremony and it helped to practice it a few times with the entire wedding party and make small last second changes as needed. 

7.       What was your experience like working with your vendors? 

We loved working with our vendors and found consistently that small boutique businesses provide a customized experience you might not get elsewhere. It was such a good team of people, and we found that each of them truly cared about the wedding we sought to create and made it as important to them as it was to us. 

Folks who attended are still telling us months later how truly incredible our flowers were, and we owe that to House of Blooms in Raritan, NJ. We had a few meetings with them, and they were just fantastic at translating vision on paper into reality on the day. We could not have been happier with their work. 

Our photos have caused more than a few people close to us to cry (happy tears!) when we gave them access to the photo library, and we cannot thank Nicole Cordisco and her team enough for capturing our wedding day so beautifully. 

Simply Sweets by Lauren of Hillsborough, NJ, created our wedding cake from scratch. We chose Lauren’s shop and were so glad we did. We went back and forth on a few ideas, and got the sense that getting it perfect was a top priority for her — we really appreciated that. And indeed, the cake she created for us was perfect, as were the macaroons that supplemented it.

Photographer: Nicole Cordisco Photography