Real Weddings: Kaitlin & William
It all started on the train to East Hampton . Kaitlin Thanhauser was on her way to one of her favorite summertime
destinations with a small group of friends when she spotted a friend from college. The friend invited Kaitlin and her
companions to a barbecue at the house he and some friends were renting in Southampton. There, as luck would have it, Will Flynn was manning the grill. Kaitlin and Will clicked instantly and began dating not long afterwards.
When an opportunity arose for Will to take a job at his company’s Hong Kong offices, Kaitlin encouraged him to seize the chance. Will was equally supportive when Kaitlin got accepted to a competitive graduate program at Duke University. But after a year apart, Kaitlin and Will knew that they belonged together, and she packed up to join him in Hong Kong. Together, they traveled all over Asia, culminating in the perfect moment when Will proposed in their Hong Kong apartment.
As they began planning their wedding together, East Hampton was the obvious choice. Not only had they met in the Hamptons, but Kaitlin, who grew up in Philadelphia, had always spent summers with her family in East Hampton. For her, the Hamptons were full of memories of swimming in the bay, strolling through town, and barbecuing on the beach. The simple, intimate loveliness of East Hampton provided exactly the tone Kaitlin wanted to set for their wedding. “I love the quiet beaches, the old friends, the simple get-togethers—it was exactly what I wanted our wedding to feel like,” she says.
Though much of their wedding was traditional, Kaitlin and Will added their own touches. She anchored the ribbon around the waist of her wedding gown with her grandmother’s diamond brooch, for example, and had her bridesmaids’ skirts made from gorgeous Thai silk she’d brought back from Asia. Each skirt was slightly different, and Kaitlin encouraged her attendants to choose their own tops to wear with the high-waisted skirts. Kaitlin eschewed the traditional bouquet toss, and in place of a traditional wedding cake, the couple served a Fudgie the Whale ice cream cake from Carvel.
Kaitlin and Will also managed to make it through their first dance together with aplomb, after months of practicing and not quite getting it right. As they moved across the dance floor, their friends laughed and cheered—though not exactly about the couple’s smooth moves. “Upon rejoining our table, we discovered the source of their delight was a napkin stuck to Will’s shoe,” Kaitlin says. “Dragging around the dance floor, it looked like a piece of toilet paper.”
Kaitlin and Will had to laugh, too. Why not? Surrounded by a small group of their closest friends and family, there was no reason not to enjoy themselves on the day that marked the culmination of their happiness and the beginning of a new life together as husband and wife. In fact, that’s exactly what Kaitlin encourages other brides to do: “You have spent so much time, so much energy, and so many resources on this event,” she says. “Take it in
and have fun.”
A week of heavy rain before the wedding left the field where the reception was to be held completely soaked, but thanks to the seamless efforts of the wedding planning team, nobody even noticed. Lyndsey Hamilton Events quickly transformed an unfortunate muddy pit near the restrooms into a little oasis of bucolic charm with a liberal application of wood and hay. “It was incredible!” Kaitlin says. “Everything was gorgeous.”