“I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride…so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep,” reads a poem by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, describing a love of no surprises, just connection. A love like Kailee Joudrie and Pearse McCarron. It was the perfect choice, then, for a reading at their intimate, 150ish-person wedding, held in the summer sun on the Prince George Hotel’s terrace. After a chance meeting and five years of dating, McCarron proposed on a walk as the two visited his hometown in northern Ireland. The big questions of wedding planning (like venue, dress and photographer) were decided almost right away by Joudrie, who suggests a struggling bride should make a handful of big decisions early to get the ball rolling. “We had a hard time managing the guest list—like, how do you keep it from spiralling to 500 people?” McCarron says. Their solution? Choose a dream location and work backwards from its maximum occupancy limit. Other ways the couple added personality to their big day? Keeping a slightly more casual dress code (no tuxedos) and swapping traditional bible verse readings for personally meaningful poetry. Call it the word according to Neruda, patron saint for those in stomach-flipping, head-over-heels love.
Cake Micheline Briand
Flowers Chelsea Lee Flowers
Dress Tatum’s Bridal
This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2016.
