Perfection Ten Years in the Making

What we’ll remember…
Stephanie Prince and Ryan Coffey were married on Nov. 16, 2013 at Wildwood Golf & Country Club. The reception was held immediately following the ceremony at the Club.
Stephanie recalls…
Ryan and I initially met in 2003 through mutual friends. The proposal occurred in 2005 at my first son’s baby shower. I was eight months pregnant and ready to pop and I was completely shocked! After that, we had a very long engagement, saving up for our wedding that we would eventually pay for completely on our own. We basically said that if we had to wait ten years to get what we wanted, then that’s what we would do and it worked for us.
The staff at Wildwood Golf & Country Club really went above and beyond to make the day exactly how I imagined it would be. That’s what I think is special about living here and planning a wedding here in Cape May County. There’s that small town honesty and empathy. It becomes less about money and more about making sure the day goes off without a hitch. Anywhere besides Cape May County just wasn’t an option.
For the ceremony, I decided to do what would make me most happy and went outside of tradition. I actually had two maids of honor, both of which have been my best friends my entire life. Our wedding party included six girls, seven guys, our youngest son, and a flower girl. The girls wore plum and charcoal dresses and the guys wore charcoal tuxes with plum vests underneath.
I walked up the aisle in my Wedding Belles dress to Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years”, as my brother played it on guitar and our DJ’s wife sang. My aunt made my bouquet for me out of all vintage brooches.
My uncle, Pete Byron, married us and I was really glad he was there at the altar with us. He said to us, “This is your wedding day. Enjoy this moment, standing here and taking these vows.” It enabled us to savor the moment and put the nerves aside.
We also chose to do a hand tying at the ceremony. It’s an old Celtic tradition that we wanted to incorporate to honor our Irish backgrounds. We made it our own by having my maid of honor, Cheyanne Pepe, read “These are the hands” and having a close friend of ours perform the tying. It was beautiful and one of our favorite parts of the evening. We also loved having our children involved. It was just as much their day as it was ours!
For us, we had already been in this relationship for ten years. Our wedding day was just cementing what we already had. People say that marriage is just a piece of paper, but I can honestly say it’s so much more than that.