Real Weddings: Grace & Kieran
Event Lighting: Matt Murphy Event Lighting
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When you're a chef, you notice what people order. And what Kerry Heffernan noticed about Grace Koo was
that she had some pretty strict dining habits.
When one of Grace's colleagues introduced her to Kerry, then
executive chef of Danny Meyer’s renowned New York City restaurant Eleven Madison Park, he recognized her as one of the restaurant’s regular lunch customers—and knew that she always ordered the same seafood salad and unsweetened iced tea. Ordering the same thing repeatedly was a sure sign of a serious person, Kerry thought, but he was also pleased to notice that every now and again, Grace would tack on a side of pommes frites to her order.
Life continued to throw them together, both at the restaurant and at functions for various charities they supported, and as Kerry began to learn a little more about Grace, he was delighted to find that she was more relaxed than he’d originally thought. He was also excited to discover that Grace had grown up fishing with her dad on Long
Island, since he himself was an avid fly-fisherman. Finally, one evening when Grace approached Kerry about
the possibility of catering a reunion party she was planning, Kerry popped the question: Would Grace go fishing with him the following Saturday morning?
Grace accepted, but the date was postponed a day thanks to a passing hurricane. When they met on Sunday, the windy, blustery weather was hardly conducive to good fishing, but it proved to be a chance to get to know each other better. Watching Grace cast her own line competently and confidently, Kerry thought, “Now this is an independent woman.” When Kerry offered to carry Grace over the enormous puddles on the beach so she could keep her feet dry, Grace thought, “Now this is a gentleman.” Neither one caught a single fish, but a second date
was pretty much inevitable.
In fact, that first date went so well that Kerry and Grace can’t actually pinpoint the moment they decided to get married. “Getting married was a conversation that came up from time to time, and we just decided to make it official at some point and went out to buy a ring together,” Grace says.
The proposal might have been spontaneous, but Grace and Kerry knew they wanted to create a memorable wedding. They immediately thought of the Hamptons and their second home in Sag Harbor, where they had enjoyed spending time for years. They also spent a lot of time planning the food, which they knew they wanted to serve family-style to create a more casual dining experience and encourage interaction at the table. With Kerry’s
career in food—he is now the executive chef at South Gate in the Essex House—and Grace’s obvious strong tastes, the couple knew food would play a big role in their wedding. They chose Tom Colicchio’s acclaimed restaurant Craft to cater their wedding, and Grace and Kerry agree that the amazing food—some of which was prepared by their chef friends—was one of the highlights of their wedding day.
Grace wanted a wedding palette that would blend with the lovely gardens of the Longhouse Reserve, so she opted for organic colors and styles that would really play up the splendor of the surroundings. Long, country-style tables helped create the warm, welcoming feel of an Italian kitchen.
Their wedding was everything they had hoped for, and seeing all their favorite people—friends, family, and colleagues—together in the same tent, eating, drinking, and dancing, was definitely the highlight. Not even the unexpected presence of Hurricane Hannah could put a damper on the wedding celebration—after all, their first date had been drenched by a hurricane, too, and that had turned out pretty well.