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| When Laura Price married Rob Bowen in September 2006, they brought family and friends together for a beachside celebration that captured the spirit of Cape Cod. |
My friend Laura Price has always been known for her sense of style. When it came to her wedding, family and friends knew it would be an event to remember. From a clambake wedding feast to a surprise fireworks display and a visit from the Good Humor man, Laura and her husband, Rob, went all out to create a wedding that shouted Cape Cod.
Laura was born at Falmouth Hospital and raised in Yarmouth.
She is a lover of the beach, wearer of seersucker and flipped-up collars. Rob Bowen is South Floridian through and through. He rode horses as a child and grew up on the shores of West Palm Beach. After serving in the Air Force, Rob moved back to South Florida, taking a job at a marina in Palm Beach Shores. When Rob met Laura, a vivacious brunette who was working as the marina store manager, sparks flew.
From dates roaming the Keys to a proposal in Palm Beach, the pair lived life in the sun to its fullest. Still, Laura missed fall in New England. She longed to show Rob a snowfall on Seagull Beach or a true Cape Cod summer. The couple decided to leave the Sunshine State behind and move north. As they started planning their September wedding, Rob began to see the Cape through Laura’s eyes, appreciating as much as his fiancée did its beauty and sense of spirit.
“Our idea was to recreate a day at the beach. I wanted everyone to remember being a little kid and all the things they loved about going to the beach, from playing games to an ice cream truck,” says Laura. “I wanted our guests to feel relaxed and enjoy it in their own way. We hoped everyone would feel free to explore the property, take a walk on the beach, or just sit and talk. It wasn’t just our wedding. We wanted a day for everyone to enjoy their families and friends.”
Since the bride had worked for years at Islands clothing store in Hyannis, she already knew a network of local talent. When it came time to hire a caterer, she remembered one of her regular customers, Bob Oldsman of White Caterers, who would be just the right person to create a wedding dinner clambake. The flowers, provided by Steven Savelli of Positively Floral in Dennis, were perfectly imperfect arrangements of green hydrangeas, Gerber daisies, and beach grass, tied with whimsical polka-dotted ribbon.
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Clockwise from left: Dotted lemon cupcakes by The Cake Lady of Yarmouth were as charming as they were tasty. For the wedding dinner, guests feasted on a decadent lobster clambake. Winsome centerpieces evoked a seaside feel. |
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“We wanted the wedding to be relaxed. I didn’t want to do the traditional hydrangeas in Nantucket baskets,” Laura says. “I wanted to show my view of having grown up here.”
For the relaxed setting the couple had in mind, they decided to rent a North Chatham home with its own private beach. “I loved the old feel of the house and the rustic, open yard,” says Laura. “It wasn’t a perfect, manicured lawn. It had so much character, sandwiched between a salt marsh and the ocean, like its own island.”
The groom enjoyed having a place to bring everyone together. “It was great to have the house, because it gave us a good base for having all our family and friends over,” says Rob. “Laura had a girls’ night there before the wedding. It felt very comfortable.”
For the late afternoon ceremony on the beach, guests gathered by the shore where a heart outline was created in the sand out of shells and sea stones. The aisle was a well-worn boardwalk lined with wands of starfish and ribbons blowing in the wind. The private beach, secluded but for boats passing in the distance, was the ideal setting for an intimate exchange of personal vows.
After the ceremony, guests mingled on the expansive lawn and under a white tent, where starfish hanging on a net were actually place cards for guests to take. After friends and family wrote their well-wishes for the couple on seashells, they feasted on a classic clambake, complete with chowder, lobsters, steamers, and corn on the cob. As the sun began to set, lights twinkled in the trees around the tent, while children and an adult or two took turns on a swing hanging from an old oak tree. By the light of torch flames, rousing games of bocce and croquet unfolded on the lawn. The guests toasted, laughed, and enjoyed themselves as the September evening grew cooler and the dance floor heated up.
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"Rustic Cape Cod, with a splash of preppy," says Laura, the bride, of her vision for the wedding. Clockwise from above, left, Jillan Scahill, who wrote this story, escorts the bride's cousin Austen and 9-month-old boxer puppy, Lily, down the boardwalk aisle. After dinner, the bride and groom treated guests to a surprise visit from an ice cream truck. The groom's niece, Kristine, was one of three bridesmaids. Starfish wands with polka dotted ribbons lined the boardwalk to the beach. Below, the couple exchanged vows inside a heart-shaped circle of stones and seashells, inset, for the ceremony on the beach. |
Instead of a traditional wedding cake, the couple chose fanciful polka-dotted cupcakes created by The Cake Lady, Dottie Lovely of Yarmouth. It wouldn’t have been a true day at the beach without an ice cream truck, so the couple arranged for one to surprise their guests, who were able to choose their favorite frozen treats—served up by the newlyweds. Once the ice cream truck had gone, there were more surprises in store. With cupcakes and ice cream in hand, guests followed the bride and groom toward a glowing path of luminaries lining the boardwalk to the beach, where a fireworks display provided an unforgettable finish to the perfect beach day. Clustered on the shore, guests were wide-eyed and smiling as they watched the colors light up the Chatham sky.
Salt air, a day at the beach, family and friends. It was exactly the wedding this couple had hoped for—perfectly Cape Cod.
