They got engaged eighteen months ago, at a restaurant in the West Village where Owen had arranged with the staff in advance for a specific moment at the end of the meal. Claire posted about it on Instagram within the hour. The ring was very good.
The engagement was followed, immediately and inevitably, by a series of deeply involved conversations about the wedding. Where, when, how many people, what kind of food, what kind of flowers, what aesthetic. I was not directly involved in these conversations because I was not the maid of honor — Claire had a college friend named Becca who held that role — but I was kept informed, in the way that family members are kept informed, through our mother’s updates and through the occasional call from Claire herself.
The venue question consumed them for about four months. Claire had a vision that her budget — meaning Owen’s and her combined budget for this event — could not fully support. She wanted something that felt like a country estate, with grounds and a certain old-money atmosphere, without actually paying for a country estate. She found Willowmere Hall through a wedding blog she followed, and she described it to me in breathless terms: a restored nineteenth-century property in the Hudson Valley, with a barn venue and a garden ceremony space and a bridal suite that looked like something from a period drama.
She also mentioned the price.
“It’s ninety-six hundred for the weekend package,” she told me, “and Owen and I can cover about half of it, but I don’t know how to make the math work on the rest.”