Cailey & Noel

Noel saw Cailey at a day party in freshman year and did absolutely nothing about it. He kept his distance, worked out what he might say, and never said it.

They ended up in the campus canteen later that day over cheesesteaks, where a friend invited Cailey and her friend Kellie to a party that night. That's where they were finally introduced, properly this time.

After that the party may as well not have been happening. They talked and kept talking while their friend Mikey waited nearby and let it run. Just before the police arrived to shut the place down, Noel kissed her at the bottom of the stairs.

The following year he rented that house. By September of sophomore year, after Cailey let him wonder about it for a while, they were official. They came to Curaçao with most of the same people still around them.

Most of the planning ran through Cailey's mother, Kelly, while Cailey and Noel were working and moving between states. She hired us, and she stayed steady through every version of the plan.

Cailey was clear about one thing from the start: she did not want a beach behind her. On this island that counts as a decision, and it shaped everything that followed.

So we used the Octagon Plaza at Avila, with the Octagon Museum itself as the ceremony backdrop. Architecture rather than scenery, and quieter for it.

The palette had always been soft, light yellow, light blue and light green. What it needed was a direction, and that arrived late, after we'd seen what Cailey's wedding party brought to her events back home. Bridgerton, with the island left in. Romantic and formal without going stiff about it.

A mirrored welcome sign at the entrance. Small clear bud vases down the tables holding blue, yellow and white, with votives between them. The tables themselves were laid out in an octagon, echoing the building they were sitting in front of, with a flower fountain at the centre of it, an actual fountain, as the thing everyone walked toward. Hundreds of fairy lights ran outward from there, and once the sun went the whole plaza read as a garden.

Then the parts that were entirely theirs. Tequila shots with the wedding party the moment the ceremony ended, which is one way to start a reception. A steel band through cocktail hour, then a DJ, who had also played them down the aisle. Drink stirrers and dog-head sticks. Coconut margaritas and rum punch. A funnel, which both of them drank from, in front of everyone.