There are fantastic movies to adequately describe my plight in life such as 27 Dresses, the Wedding Date, My Best Friends Wedding but somehow those features end with the beautiful bride scooping up the handsome groom and I’ve either ended up with a hangover, or a dress I am totally never going to wear again. That’s why I am featuring a series on Destination Weddings over the coming weeks and I hope my stories will inspire couples to plan their dream wedding with pleasure.

Suffice it to say I participate in my fair share of weddings and I store a baggie full of bobby pins to prove it. I’ve experienced the highs and lows of each celebration and I’ve silently whispered to myself and maybe others around me which couples I deem worthy of staying power and those likely headed for divorce court.

This is why I am single.

Weddings are exciting. They are symbolic of something greater than the love between two people. They represent goodness and hope in the world and it’s an honor to be an attendee and a privilege to serve as an attendant. It’s also a time when friends and families come together for a joyous occasion. A wedding guest list tells the tale and the history of the couple. When I spend time talking with neighbors, old boyfriends, best friends from grade school or college, former work colleagues, new friends old friends, cousins I begin to piece together a narrative of the couple’s life I may not have known.

The stories warm my heart and make me laugh but they also explain the person standing before me today.

The Whaling Museum, Nantucket, Massachusetts

Emily and Joel met in 2012 at a birthday party of a mutual friend in New York City and they married atop the Whaling Museum on Saturday, September 26, 2016 with the sun setting, wind gusting and a rooftop of guests applauding their love. Their decision to marry on the Island of Nantucket was an easy one. Emily considered Nantucket a second home. Her sister married on Nantucket and her parents discovered the allure of the once sleepy island early in their marriage eventually buying a home and spending summers on Nantucket as a family. I most enjoyed an enthusiastic reading by friends providing an overview of the couple’s ancestry.

Tips: Spend at least four days visiting Nantucket. It’s easy to stay short term or long term but be careful, you may never want to leave. You can rent a home for a month, find a special bed and breakfast within walking distance of the town or rest your head at one the hotels scattered around the island. It’s a great place for families or for those searching for solitude. I spent my days eating fudge at Aunt Leah’s Fudge, getting my licks in at the Juice Bar (Don’t miss the Green Monster) and tasting lobster roles every opportunity I found. I rented a bike at Young’s and each morning I peddled with purpose but without direction admiring the ocean views, vast areas of natural reserve and beautiful homes with pitches roofs, weathered gray shingles and blue and pink hydrangeas fading for the season.

When you arrive, you will be on island time, buy some cashmere sweaters for the ladies or Nantucket “reds” for the men, walk the cobblestone streets in the town, shop for antiques, admire the boats in the harbor and the clouds ushering in changing weather.  Slow your pace, decompress, smell the saltwater, feel the warmth of the sun on your back and the wind on your face.

Nantucket is a great place for a destination wedding because it’s a vacation spot. You can fly from Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Providence or take the ferry from Cape Cod, Harwichport or Martha’s Vineyard.

After the wedding, I crawled to Black-Eyed Susan’s for some eggs and grits. I would say that was a sign of a good time and a fantastic wedding.

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