Their day, their way
The couple wanted a wedding that looked to the future
Final installment in an occasional series about a couple enamored with each other - and with good design.
CAMBRIDGE - It was the day they'd been waiting for.
On Saturday, 14 months after Brad Schuller proposed to his college sweetheart, Gabrielle Deifik, the couple exchanged wedding vows in the MIT chapel before 120 friends and family members. It was a perfect June day; the music, courtesy of the Nashua Flute Choir, was soft and ethereal. Sunlight from the chapel's low, almost invisible windows danced on the ceiling.
For Deifik and Schuller, who are both 27 and live in Cambridge, the day was also the pinnacle of a quest to do the wedding their way: to forgo conventions and create an event that reflected their sensibilities and their love of modern design. The Globe Style section followed the couple: reporting on the bride's dress, the invitations, the reception. On the big day, much of the magic was to be found in small, meaningful touches.
Near the end of the Catholic Mass, a friend of the couple read a passage from the children's classic "The Velveteen Rabbit." After exchanging vows, Deifik and Schuller each placed a calla lily from their mothers into a single vessel by the altar, to symbolize the couple's shared future. The recessional, "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" by Edvard Grieg, was suggested by Deifik's father, a longtime member of the Nashua Flute Choir.
The day's most prominent supporting star, though, was the chapel, one of Deifik and Schuller's favorite places. Built in the 1950s by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, the chapel has a spare interior and softly curving brick walls. Deifik, an architect at Payette Associates Inc., had studied the chapel as a student; she and Schuller, a medical physicist at Boston Medical Center, both loved its modern yet timeless feel.
And as they stood under the chapel's soaring skylight on Saturday morning, the cascading, bronze sculpture glinting behind them, the couple was undeniably the focus.
In planning the wedding, the chapel was the element on which the others hinged. Deifik's simple, classic, champagne organza dress shimmered with gold metallic threads that reflected the light. The wedding programs, adorned with a copper-colored depiction of the hanging metal sculpture, ended with a short history of the chapel and its significance to the couple.
The chapel's warm tones carried into the reception at the Lobdell Memorial Dining Room, just across the lawn in the school's student center. Sculptures of twisted copper strands stood at each end of the head table, while square copper plant pots served as the tables' centerpieces. White napkins tied with copper ribbons held each place setting as well as a single peacock feather to symbolize fidelity and longevity.
Deifik and Schuller chose to hold the reception at Lobdell to make the event as relaxed as possible for their guests, some of whom had driven long distances to Cambridge.
By Saturday afternoon, the room had been transformed into an elegant reception hall, tables covered with white cloths with a gold organza overlay, and the stairways to the mezzanine draped with ivory tulle. Sunlight streaming in from floor-to-ceiling windows and the soft strains of the flute choir lent a summery, garden-party feel.
Guests helped themselves to fruits, vegetables, and cheeses set out on a long table, while servers from MIT Tech Catering circled with samosas and bruschetta. In lieu of a towering wedding cake, an assortment of smaller cakes and cupcakes was set out behind the head table.
"This is different from any wedding I've been to. I can't say exactly how, but it's something," said John Highstreet, a friend of the couple.
And that, perhaps, was just what Deifik and Schuller were going for: an event that captured their personalities and tastes, but was not different merely for the sake of being different. The couple did not dispense with tradition altogether: The bride was escorted into the chapel by her father to Bach's "Air," and the couple danced the traditional first dance at the reception - to Ingrid Michaelson's "The Way I Am," played on an iPod.
It was a sweet finish for a courtship that began seven years ago with a viewing of a Led Zeppelin DVD in a College of the Holy Cross dorm room.
"I didn't expect it to be this amazing," Deifik said, sitting at the head table. Her husband agreed. 