The Insider’s Guide to Beach and Lighthouse Weddings
Story by Tom Flynn
Photos by Amy Vanneman, Miguel Fairbanks, Peter Simon, Wayne E. Chinook
John Alley of West Tisbury wears many hats: chairman of the county commissioners, vice chairman of the airport
commission, officer of a post office substation. He’s a cemetery superintendent and – pretty much – its opposite: a
justice of the peace.
The hat he wears as the marrying man is always a top hat. He’s been donning that and a tuxedo since
he started doing weddings more than a quarter century ago. Adds a bit of class, you have to admit. He used to wear formal
black leather shoes. But not since the wedding that took him to the end of a pier at high tide.He started slipping and sliding and worried that he might go right off the side.
“I don’t swim,” this native Islander pointed out, with some real fear in his voice. So now he wears only grippy shoes for weddings.
Over the years, John has hitched thousands of couples on Martha’s Vineyard. They come here from all over: England, Canada, South America, and just about every state in the union, to be united on Martha’s Vineyard. He estimates he does about sixty a month when it’s busy.
“I’ve married ’em on boats, on airplanes, on ferries, and of course on the beaches.” John says beach weddings started in the ’80s. Now they are as popular as church weddings, especially here, where you can have a view of a sunset over the ocean or a lighthouse, or boats bobbing in the harbor.
As far as ceremonies on sand, he says, beachcombers leave the wedding parties alone, for the most part. Although one story he likes to tell is about the Menemsha ceremony of an Oregon couple.
As the bride and groom walked onto the beach, a trumpeter started playing “I Love You Truly” and other tunes that worked wonderfully for the ceremony. Then a sax player joined in for the recessional.
Afterward, John complimented the couple on their choice of
musicians. They looked at him in complete surprise: “We thought you got them!” No one had arranged for the music at all.
Just a gift from the Island. As for the rumor that a couple married on the nude beach, it is confirmed. John had thought
this would be quiet forever, but did admit that he officiated for an unclothed couple about ten years ago at the nude
beach in Aquinnah.“I was set up for this one,” moaned John. The bride had called John’s wife and asked if it would be okay if they didn’t wear clothes. She said, “Sure.” But she neglected to tell John that part. So as the couple walked across the beach, they both dropped their kimonos.
“My mouth felt like it was filled with beach sand,” he says. But he did complete the wedding at the ocean – in top hat and tails . . . of course.
John isn’t the only JP on the Island though. For an engaged couple, it’s one-stop shopping at the town clerks’ offices. Not only is that where you go to apply for a marriage license on the Island, but most of the time you’ll also find a town clerk who’s a justice of the peace.
Town clerk Deborah deBettencourt Ratcliff and her assistant, Laura Blaine Johnston, are hidden away through a cellar door in the Oak Bluffs Town Hall. Laura enjoys the beach weddings and Deborah has officiated in the gazebo at Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs, but Martha’s Vineyard has another special option: the lighthouses. You can get married on the beach or lawn next to the old structures, or even inside.
Deborah recalls a fall wedding on a chilly afternoon at the Gay Head Light. “It was so cold that we went inside the lighthouse itself,” she says. Only the couple, the photographer, and she could fit, and it was indeed warmer. But the venue came with a built-in hazard: They all had to duck each time the light swung around.
“We had to duck four times before we finished,” she says.
The most beautiful wedding Laura was a part of wasn’t about the beautiful oceanside setting. It was late last summer, and the couple had just met in June. She was 37, and when she met him, she knew he was the one. So she proposed to him. What made this wedding so special, says Laura, was “they just stood the whole time looking at each other. Most of the couples look at the officiant. They just looked deeply at each other. You could feel their love for each other. When I made the pronouncements, they said, ‘Thank you.’”
