The Jennifer Morrissey and Kyle Stevens Wedding

It was a mutual love of the Christmas season that brought this couple together two years ago at SantaCon, an annual event where participants dress up like Santa Claus and celebrate in bars around Manhattan. Their paths crossed during this lively festivity, and Jennifer, feeling an initial spark, boldly put her number in Kyle’s phone. Kyle got in touch with her the next day to plan their first date.

“I knew right away that this was the man I was going to marry,” Jennifer says. In fact, things progressed very quickly for them, because “when you know, you just know.” They moved in together shortly afterwards and began talking about getting married right away.

Just a few months into the relationship, they took a trip to Boston together. While out to dinner at the famous Union Oyster House in Faneuil Hall, Kyle gave a very impromptu proposal—sans ring, because he was in the process of designing a band to go with the diamond that Jennifer had inherited from her grandmother’s engagement ring.

“When it came to the planning, we dug right into it,” Jennifer says. “I had done a lot of research online and knew that I wanted a venue that only had one wedding at a time, as well as nice architecture and views of the water. The day we went to visit the Mamaroneck Beach and Yacht Club, we booked it on the spot, because it had all the components we were looking for.”

They went with a theme of black-and-white damask with a pop of purple. The bridesmaids wore black knee-length dresses and purple shoes, and Jennifer wore a special pair of glittery purple shoes with six-inch heels.

“My wedding dress was the second dress I tried on,” she says. “I went to Kleinfeld’s with my mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, and two girlfriends, and when I paraded around the room in my Ann Barge/Blue Willow sweetheart neck asymmetrical dress with crystal belt, we all knew I had found my dress. It clearly was the perfect one, because even when I came in for my fitting, absolutely no alterations were needed.”

During the whole wedding process, Jennifer admitted that she was “a little OCD with checklists and online searches,” noting that “everything was booked by last summer.” But by booking everything over a year in advance there was lots of time to focus on all the finishing touches.

They had a short, but intimate ceremony overlooking the water on the deck of the Mamaroneck Beach and Yacht Club, which was exactly what they had envisioned when their plans originally began.

Jennifer surprised Kyle with a groom’s cake of all of the things that are important to him. It had golf cart (because Kyle works as an assistant golf course superintendent); a dog (that looked exactly like their border collie/black lab rescue dog, Nala); a Yankees hat (for his favorite baseball team); and last but not least a Santa hat (because of how they met). There were also chocolate-covered Santa-shaped strawberries as another reference to their meeting.

They also had a photobooth that could easily fit 10 people in it at a time. By the end of the reception, all of the pictures that were taken in the booth were put into a scrapbook that everyone signed like a guestbook.

The day was filled with more special touches: up-lighting that changed colors in time with the music; a cigar roller who gave out cigars during the cocktail hour, which guests enjoyed along with a selection of single malt scotches and cognacs; his-and-her speciality cocktails (a pumpkin pie martini on a graham cracker-rimmed glass and a coconut mojito); and a special dessert bar with everything from cheesecakes and black and white cookies to tiramisu. Upon leaving, their guests were given bottles of red and white wine from a winery up north with custom labels printed on them, along with a wine bottle topper.

“I always thought I would get married in City Hall, because it was never a big deal for me,” Jennifer says. “But I told my parents that if I gave them a wedding, then I wanted the honeymoon of my dreams. I’m so glad everything turned out the way it did. All of the vendors were so amazing. In fact, the whole process was so easy and enjoyable that I was never stressed about anything through it all and that was all thanks to the wonderful people that helped me; most especially Sheldon and his amazing staff at the Mamaroneck Beach and Yacht Club.”