This Carnegie Hill Wedding Was a Love Letter to the Neighborhood the Bride Grew Up In
Andrea Whittle and Ben Cutler’s courtship started as a summer flirtation. Ben is one of four brothers, and Andrea went to boarding school with the two oldest, Josh and Peter. “That summer, their ages all added up to 100, so they threw a ‘Cutler Centennial’ at their family home in Maine and piled all of their friends into the house for a week of tennis, sailing, swimming, and chaos,” Andrea, who is the features director at W magazine, remembers. The two didn’t get together until the following summer though, when Andrea rented a cabin down the road from their place for the month of June.
Three years later, Ben proposed with a sapphire ring in the same kitchen in Maine where they’d had their first kiss. “He picked the stone because the color reminds him of the ocean,” Andrea says.
The wedding was on May 4, and there were three locations spread across East 91st Street in Carnegie Hill. “It was a love letter to the neighborhood I grew up in,” Andrea explains. “And because the first two parts were held in what used to be grand turn-of-the-century private homes, a friend referred to it as a ‘Gilded Age block party.’”
The wedding ceremony and cocktail hour took place in the garden at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Next, guests walked across the street for dinner and dancing at the James A. Burden House. And then, at 11 p.m., a saxophone player led the group across Madison Avenue for an after-party in the bride’s family home. “We hung a disco ball from the dining room ceiling and our friend Jason DJ’ed until 4 a.m.,” Andrea adds.
The entire event was put together in just eight months. “At first, we thought we wanted to get married in Maine, since it means so much to us and has played such an important part in our relationship,” Andrea notes. “But since so many of our guests were coming from Europe and the UK—I’m half Italian, Ben is half English—it just didn’t make sense from a logistical perspective. So we opted for New York, where we live and where I grew up.”
Andrea never pictured herself having a city wedding, so she wanted it to feel as close to a backyard affair as possible, while also being connected to the energy of Manhattan. “A hotel ballroom or a plug-and-play event venue just didn’t feel right to me,” she says. “Both the Cooper Hewitt garden and the James A. Burden house didn’t quite make sense on their own for what we wanted to do, but together they worked perfectly—they made for a gracious and fun transition from ceremony to cocktails to seated dinner to dancing.” (Ending the night at home meant they would have total control over the end of the night, making sure nobody would be kicked out when the party was still going.)
For the food, Andrea knew from the start that she wanted to go with Acquolina Catering. “The founder, Yolanda Garetti, is an old friend of my mom’s, and they have been an important part of so many family celebrations over the years,” she explains. “I knew we could trust them to put together a delicious Italian feast that felt elegant and festive but not fussy. And they really delivered—everything was beyond, from the fried sage leaves during cocktail hour to the DIY affogatos after dinner.”
The bride booked all of the venues herself, but was having trouble finding a wedding planner who understood her vision. “I asked the Acquolina team if they had any great planners to recommend, and they pointed me in the direction of Alexandra Maione Events,” she remembers. “We connected immediately. She was totally on board for the roving-block-party concept, and she helped us pull together all of the nitty-gritty details that I never would have thought of but that were essential to a great party.”
Andrea is a big second-hand shopper, so from the very beginning, she had her mind set on wearing a vintage piece on her wedding day. “Funnily enough, the dress I ended up wearing was served to me in a 1st Dibs Instagram ad,” she admits. “I tracked down the seller and found out that it was a vintage showroom in Midtown. It was the first thing I tried on and it fit me perfectly—no alterations necessary! It’s an unlabeled ivory silk gown from the ’90s with a ’40s-style cut. A real moment of kismet for the social media age.”
Because the dress was so simple, Andrea wanted another element of her look to be a bit more of a fashion moment. “At our engagement party, our friend Lillian Dilustro, who is an incredibly talented designer and a Lesage-trained embroiderer, mentioned casually that she would love to design my veil,” Andrea says. A couple of weeks later, the bride sent Lillian a note to ask her if she was serious, and they started brainstorming. “She sourced this incredible array of antique lace on Etsy in shades of pink, ivory, silver, and gold, and then spent many, many hours creating these beaded layers and appliqué lace flowers,” Andrea continues. “A couple of days before the wedding, we added a layer of ivory tulle for a little extra drama, and she sewed the whole thing onto a headband from Zitomer.”
