A South-Meets-East Coast Nautical Maine Wedding

A Southerner and a Yankee walk into a bar. So began Matthew Mills and Joshua White's relationship, but it quickly became clear that their connection was no joke. After just two weeks, the Washington, D.C.-based duo—Tennessee-born Matt works at a law firm, Maryland-bred Josh for the Department of the Treasury—were a couple, even adopting a dog together.

Seven years later, the pair invited 14 friends for a week in a rental house on Cape Cod, a region where Josh's family vacationed when he was a kid, for Josh's birthday. One evening Matt surprised him with a proposal, and their guests—including relatives who had come for dinner—with an engagement party. Fifteen months later, on October 11, 2014, the boys were back on the shore, this time at the Newagen Seaside Inn in Maine, to exchange vows in front of 108 loved ones.

The wedding was a coastal affair, with a serene blue-and-white palette and a rehearsal dinner at a classic waterfront joint. But it also had a South-meets-East Coast theme, with everything from the foliage on the chuppah to the welcome bags honoring the grooms' upbringing. After a civil service that incorporated Jewish, Christian, and secular texts came cocktails and appetizers (including biscuits and Benton's country ham, cured in Matt's hometown). Then everyone stepped into a tent for a meal of roasted squash soup, fried green tomato caprese salad, and a surf and turf of smoked beef brisket and lobster rolls. Next came a dessert buffet of the grooms' favorite childhood treats, including black-and-white cookies for Josh and a hummingbird cake for Matt. The pair's first dance was to "Fools Rush In," made famous by Elvis Presley, which fit the speed of their romance and the event's theme (the King lived in Memphis).

The dance floor stayed packed until around 10 p.m., when the band asked everyone to gather on the lawn, where the unsuspecting crowd was rewarded with fireworks over the ocean. "We wanted to end the wedding with something our guests would never forget," says Josh. They accomplished that, and—much as on the night they met—once again made sparks fly.