Though they both lived in New York City, Lauren and Ian met at the Jersey shore. Ian was visiting a mutual friend whom Lauren happened to be sharing a beach house.”We had met the night before and while I was surfing in the ocean the next day she took my cell and put her number in it,” recalls Ian. “I loved that about her. She took action.”
Two and a half years later, Ian was the one to take action. When Lauren arrived home to the couple’s Manhattan duplex from work one evening, Ian called her upstairs. Surrounded by candles and rose petals, Ian asked Lauren to be his wife. She called her parents, whom she believed were at home in Kansas, and told them it was the perfect night – the only thing that was missing was being able to share her joy in-person with them. But little did she know that Ian had flown her parents into Manhattan and they were playing along for the surprise. In just hours they would all be together. In fact, Ian had also brought his own parents into town, along with some other family and friends.
“That night we went to our favorite Italian restaurant for dinner,” recalls Ian. “I had been there several times earlier that week putting together a personal menu.” When Lauren and Ian arrived, their friends and family were already waiting, enjoying some appetizers Ian had planned in advance. “It turned into an entire weekend of celebrating with family,” he says.
The family became a major theme in the planning of the wedding. Lauren and Ian chose to have their wedding and reception hosted at his parents’ Cape Cod home. The ceremony was interfaith and performed jointly by Father Walter Cuenin of Brandeis University and Rabbi Karen Landy of Brookline, MA.
Attention to detail was also important to the couple, as they are both used to it in their careers – Lauren as a vice president at Ruder Finn, a major Manhattan PR firm, and Ian as an Emmy award-winning producer for the Rachel Ray Show. “In my line for work we focus on the little things because people do notice them,” says Ian. “So there were a lot of small wedding details we wanted to pay attention to.”
All of these small details kept wedding planners Connie Clark owner of The Perfect Plan, and Angie Montale, senior planner, quite busy. “The couple took a lot of time to personalize their wedding,” says Clark. “They had a lot of very creative, out-of-the-box ideas.”
This included table assignments that were printed directly onto clamshells that had been clammed by Ian’s father, Ian and his groomsmen coming to the ceremony by boat wearing knee-high clamming boots! Perhaps most impressive were the multiple tent flips that happened throughout the night – the most that The Perfect Plan has ever done in one evening. The ceremony tent flipped into a buffet tent for dinner, and then into a dessert station and scotch bar and then finally to an after-party tent that featured mini grilled cheese sandwiches and homemade Cape Cod kettle chips. Late that night the nearby reception tent also made a flip into a brunch tent for Sunday morning.
It was bittersweet moments when the wedding weekend came to a close after so much time spent planning. Clark says she genuinely misses Lauren and Ian as they came to feel like family. And while the couple could hardly believe how fast their wedding went, they say they did everything they could to take it all in. “People always told us: ‘Take the time to stop and look around at your wedding as it’s happening’, ” says Ian. “We did that and it was amazing!”
