Shakespeare Couldn’t Have Written a Better Wedding

The brides eschewed tradition, creating a unique celebration modeled after the Bard’s five-act comedies.

When we ask newlyweds to think back on what they wanted most for their big day — and we’ve interviewed hundreds of them over the years — the most common response is “For it not to feel like a wedding!” Gathering with old friends and eating mini grilled cheeses in formalwear to celebrate love feels more special these days than ever, even downright miraculous. And the betrothed have never been less attached to the old wedding handbook — or the need to please their great-aunt. So in a flurry of pampas grass and perfectly mismatched-to-match bridesmaid dresses, how do you pull off a non-cookie-cutter affair? For the answers, we decided to interrogate the cool couples whose weddings we would actually want to steal, right down to the tiger-shaped cake toppers.

Here, we spoke with playwright and screenwriter Grace McCleod and actress Emma Maltby, who are based in Los Angeles. A sense of theatricality and an aversion to the traditional led them to refer to their celebration as a “love soirée” and to create a five-act format for the affair based around their shared love languages. The party last September on Shelter Island kicked off in a shiny blue Cadillac and ended with sweaty guests jumping into the Sound.

Grace: We met during our first year in college. I saw her in a play and was like, Oh my God, who’s that? I was a fan first.

Emma: A mutual friend was in the show with me, so I met Grace in the theater after. She was from New York and I was from New York, so you know how you size each other up a little bit?

Grace: We went on a first unofficial date in the dining hall. It was supposed to be lunch and it turned into a four-and-a-half-hour meal.

Emma: I fell in love with her immediately.

Grace: We met when we were so young, but I really just knew, like, Emma. Emma is the one.

Emma: We did the U-Haul thing, let’s just say that. I had never met anyone who was so excited to make art. She had taken a gap year before college and spent it making a short film. She seemed so sure of herself. I was inspired by her spirit and her brilliance.

Grace: I knew I wanted to propose in New York. We went home for the holidays in December 2021, and all of my plans kept getting thwarted because it was peak Omicron time. Plan B, plan C, slowly down to plan J, when I realized it would have to be outside.

Emma: I love the holidays, and it was going to be a whole week of holiday things — The Nutcracker, Jazz at Lincoln Center — that ended up getting foiled.

Grace: I proposed on Pier One at Riverside Park at sunset. A bunch of family and friends were hiding further down the Hudson River to greet us with Champagne and cake. It was literally 15 degrees. It would’ve been a lot more romantic had it been bearable outside.

Emma: Everyone said to us, “Make sure you get married on a warmer day!”

Grace: We knew we didn’t want to call it a “wedding.” We wanted a celebration of our love that felt unique to us. So we called it a “love soirée” and decided we wouldn’t use the traditional wedding format exactly.

Emma: I’ve been to some weddings where it feels like people are almost waiting to go home. It’s an obligation. That was the last thing I wanted.

Grace: We’re both theater people, and we thought we could model it after Shakespearean comedies, which are five acts that always end in a wedding.

Emma: Each was structured around a love language. As a queer couple, we wanted to shirk a lot of the more heteronormative conventions. That was how we constructed things: “How do we make this the queerest possible event and the most fun party?”

Grace: My best friend, Jess, is a theater director, and she said, “A traditional wedding is theater. But if you’re going to do something that doesn’t follow the traditional ceremony-cocktail-hour-dinner-dancing format that’s programmed into everyone’s brain, then you need to hold their hand and teach them how to interact with the night.” So we created a five-act structure and had announcers for each act.

Emma: We’d talked about getting married at Sunset Beach for a really long time.

Grace: Growing up, my family would take the ferry from Sag Harbor to Shelter Island one night a summer. We’d have dinner at Sunset Beach and play mini-golf afterward at the Whale’s Tail. I would count down the days until Sunset Beach. I associated it with being the ultimate treat.

Emma: Sunset Beach Hotel is very much a 1970s vibe. André Balazs, who owns Chateau Marmont, also owns this hotel. It’s very colorful with a party vibe. During the summer, people dance there until two, three in the morning. All the decks and hotel rooms face the sunset.

Grace: It feels like you’re in St. Tropez in the ’70s. I love that it had this really fun party energy, and the food is amazing. We loved the aesthetic, so we didn’t need much. The big thing was that my little sibling, Jane, is a farmer in the Hudson Valley and grew all of our flowers from seed.

Emma: Jane and their partner, Theo, spent all winter growing the seeds in their house because it was too cold to bring them outside. Then they transferred them to their garden, then brought them all in buckets to Long Island and arranged them. They were the most gorgeous flowers in sunset colors.

Grace: I knew before we were engaged that I wanted to wear a pink suit, a hot-pink suit. I wanted to make pink the “white” of this event, so we put “please no pink” on our invitations because I just wanted to pop. I worked with Ronald Delice of Ron and Ron — they’re twin brothers — and it was a double-breasted pink linen suit, and I added white leather saddle shoes. I had two shirts and changed into another.

Emma: I got close to the day and didn’t know what I was going to wear. Everyone around me was like, “What do you mean you don’t have a dress?!” I wasn’t getting anything custom-made, so I was like, I can get it a week before and it’ll be fine.

Grace: I was very invested in my outfit for this. Emma was more, Lemme see what inspires me and take a poke around.

Emma: My best friend from high school and I went to Bergdorf Goodman. The first thing I tried on, I said, “Oh, this is it.” It was a Jason Wu dress with a massive tulle skirt and corseted bodice. It’s not something I would traditionally wear — I’m not high femme most of the time — but I felt this was my one time to have a princess moment.

Grace: Emma got her hair and makeup done; I’m not a makeup person, and I was in the ocean two hours before I was supposed to be ready. I brushed my hair. We weren’t hiding from each other in any way.

Emma: The first act was “Games.” It was cocktail hour. Sunset Beach has an area called the Sandbox, and we put in cornhole and giant Jenga.

Grace: Games is one of our primary love languages. We do the crossword together every single morning at breakfast. There were all manner of outdoor beach games and then specific games we love, like Rat-A-Tat Cat.

Emma: We had designed crosswords based around facts about us, which became a running bit. Throughout the night, people would go up to each other, like, “Did you get seven across?”

Grace: When people arrived, they got a box with their name on it and inside they had a personalized pin: “Best Friend From College” or “Cousin of Honor.” The idea that you’re all part of the wedding party. There were also programs outlining each of the acts, so people could know what was going on. We put an insert in each of the programs with a little note about language and why words are so important to us, and why the words used at this event might be different than what you expect.

Emma: While people were playing and getting cocktails, we arrived. A week before, we didn’t know how we were going to arrive, and Grace at one point said we should come in on Jet Skis. I was like, “Absolutely not. Are we wearing wetsuits?!” We decided on a vintage car in a similar aesthetic to Sunset Beach. The day before, our planner, Emily Monus, found this bright-blue Cadillac, and we drove up as they played “Drive My Car” by the Beatles.

Grace: Emma’s sisters were the Act I announcers and they announced our grand entrance. It was very cute. Then my friend Jess did Act II, our next love language, which was “Food.” Everyone followed her upstairs to the multiple patio decks of the restaurant, and then it was basically dinner. There was not much inventive about dinner except — my dad passed away in 2019, and he loved Sunset Beach. He was a big wine person, and at dinner we had two wines from a winery called DuMol that was very special to him.

Emma: A Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay, and they were absolutely delicious and perfect. There was a halibut with succotash, a chicken-something, and a sweet-potato dish for our vegan option that was absolutely incredible.

Grace: There was a gorgeous shrimp pasta. Also tuna tartare, and a crudités platter the size of my torso. The next act was “Words,” because obviously written or spoken words is a love language for us. We didn’t want to do toasts in the traditional sense, so we asked our parents to select text from a book, movie, TV show, anything that spoke to them.

Emma: My mom half-sang, half-spoke “Being Alive” from Company. All of my friends from theater were singing along with her. My dad did a selection from the Book of Ruth, “Wherever you go, I will go.” There’s a bit of a sapphic undertone, so that was nice.

Grace: I told my mom she could give us words from herself and words from my dad. She read Harold and the Purple Crayon — she’s a children’s TV producer — and from my dad, she actually read one of the last scenes of one of my own plays.

Emma: It’s called The Communist Revolution, a Ninth Grade History Presentation.

Grace: No —

Emma: Sorry, Grace!

Grace: It’s The Communist Revolution: A Ninth Grade History Presentation (There Will Be a Practical Demonstration).

Emma: Yes, exactly. It’s a father-daughter play that Grace wrote a few years ago that was really for her dad. He never got to read it before he passed. The last speech in it is a father talking to his teenage daughter about what he wants for her future, and all the beautiful things he wants for her. There was not a dry eye in the house.

Grace: Then Emma and I led everyone down into this courtyard area with a firepit and a disco ball, and under the disco ball we spoke “declarations of love” that were essentially vows.

Emma: Everyone was still sobbing. Grace loves a rom-com, so hers was all about rom-coms and how we have a real-life rom-com. Her last line was from Legally Blonde, “What, like it’s hard?” We turned the firepit off so people could start dancing.

Grace: Act IV was “Music.” We asked our dear friends Jack Staffen and Eliza Callahan, who are in a band together, to play a small set. We each chose a song; Emma’s was “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones, and I chose “(You Drive Me) Crazy” by Britney Spears. That was sort of our first-dance moment, and then everyone joined. We worked with Sunset Beach’s house DJ.

Emma: He knows how to get people on the dance floor, so a lot of pop, some oldies. All the parents were dancing all night. It was definitely a sweaty evening, when you look at the pictures. It was also the last day of service for the whole summer, so that was fun because everyone who works there was letting loose with us.

Grace: Act V we called “Treats.” Treats is honestly our primary love language. We live life treat to treat. Emma’s favorite dessert is gluten-free, dairy-free cake, so we had it from By the Way Bakery. My favorite dessert is French fries, so we served fries alongside cake and some other options.

Emma: We didn’t, but a lot of people went swimming.

Grace: The dance party went pretty late. My little sibling and their partner went in the ocean at one or two in the morning. The weather that night was so humid. From Shelter Island, you could see that it was raining on the South Fork and supposedly on the North Fork as well — everywhere around us but magically not on the island. It felt like it was going to storm, and it never did. It felt electric.