Danielle Seaton and John Shea Wedding
June 19, 2010 | Saybrook Point Inn & Spa, Old Saybrook | Photography by Carla Ten Eyck, Hartford
He stood there waiting for his bride to come down the aisle. He waited, for 15 minutes, uneasy. Would love come crashing down here at the altar, in front of all these people?
No. It was just a late bus, filled with guests too important to miss the ceremony, which began promptly as soon as they were seated. That was the only hitch in an otherwise perfect wedding day for Danielle Seaton and John Shea on June 19, 2010.
“Everything else came together so easily,” says Danielle, who is in her second year at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. “My mom kept me sane,” she adds, “and I lucked out with all the other people, too,” beginning with Candice Coppola of Jubilee Events, a wedding- planning service in Cheshire. She and John, an account manager with Google, loved “the French feel of one of the weddings on their website,” Danielle says. “When we met Candice, there was an instant connection. I knew everything was going to work out.”
Danielle says she had no idea how many decisions there were to make, so many ways to do things. “There were 17 different cakes and wedding dresses galore,” she exclaims. But she learned to have confidence in her own instincts. She and John wanted a place with a “Connecticut feel,” and when they visited the Saybrook Point Inn & Spa in Old Saybrook, “it was like Kismet,” she says— “the clear winner.”
Danielle immediately knew the right dress when she saw it, too: a Melissa Sweet tea-length ivory confection puffed with gorgeous rosettes that she found at White Dress by the Shore in Clinton. “I went for the whimsy and wonder. My dress made me look like a giant cupcake and that’s what I wanted,” she says.
“She was the most beautiful cupcake,” enthuses Cheshire photographer Carla Ten Eyck, adding that “Danielle is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, in every way. She’s stunning to look at, but also a warm, welcoming person. Her dress was out of the box and she was gorgeous in it.”
Danielle wanted her wedding flowers to mimic her dress, so she chose “big, bright, puffy flowers,” in white and off-white, for her own bouquet, magentas and pale orange for her bridesmaids, and large, graceful centerpieces, all arranged by Elisabeth Zemetis of Blush Floral Design in Madison.
Guests danced the day away to music provided by Rob Alter Productions of Westfield, Mass. (Disc jockeys “never mess up a song,” says Danielle.) The day ended and the couple was off for three days in Charleston, S.C., then a longer Caribbean honeymoon in February.
Ten Eyck sums up the day this way: “The wedding had energy and emotion. Danielle and John are so clearly in love, the toasts were touching, the family was happy. Even Danielle’s 90-year-old grandmother was dancing and having a good time.”
Danielle Saeton and John Shea
