A Winter Wedding in the Colorado Mountains Where the Best-Laid Plans Changed Last-Minute
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In the days leading up to Wallis and Peter Whitcomb’s wedding, the world suddenly became a very different place. “The President held the first major press conference addressing COVID-19,” Wallis, head of partnerships at the children’s brand The Dopple, remembers. “All major sporting events for the year were cancelled. And companies began strongly urging their employees not to travel. Peter and I drove up to Aspen—where we were having our wedding—from Denver on that Wednesday morning, and we knew there would be some last-minute fall-out. But over the course of the next 72 hours, our wedding went from a confirmed 140 guests to 64. We spent Thursday and Friday fielding non-stop calls from friends who couldn’t believe it, but they weren’t going to be able to make our wedding.”
Wallis and Peter, the chief of staff and head of partnerships at Trove Recommerce, met at Colgate University. He was a year older than she was, and they knew each other but never dated during school or the years following when they were both living in New York City. “The first time we met my freshman year, Peter introduced himself at a party, and when I told him my name was Wallis, he shared with me that his younger sister’s name was originally Wallis—but later it became a middle name and now her first name is Isabel,” Wallis remembers. “I think we had a distant appreciation of each other for a long time.” They eventually reconnected in the spring of 2018 after not having seen each other for over 12 years.
The two dated long-distance for nine months before she moved to join him in Seattle in January of 2019. Peter proposed in July in New York City, the place they’d once called home and still continue to hold dear, though Wallis says she never looked back. “I was and am so in love with Peter, that I apparently cut whatever part of my identity was tied to New York—something prior to meeting Peter I never thought would happen,” she says. “That being said, it was hard to visit New York after moving to Seattle. Seattle never became a place I felt at home in. The natural beauty is absolutely incredible—and yet, there was something about Washington State that I couldn’t completely give myself over to. All of this to say, I think Peter’s intention in proposing in Central Park in New York last July was so that we could celebrate in a place that we both have a wonderful connection with.”
They chose the Colorado mountains—a place of similar significance—as their wedding location soon after they became engaged. Peter is originally from Denver and spent a lot of time skiing, hiking, and climbing in the mountains with his family. Peter’s grandfather was actually the first doctor in the Aspen valley area. Peter’s father grew up in Aspen, and it’s where Peter’s parents, Katherine and Michael Whitcomb, met and were married.
The couple didn’t want a summer wedding, and waiting until the fall of 2020 felt like too long, so they decided on a late winter wedding, with the idea that their guests could enjoy a ski vacation while attending. “We chose the weekend of March 14th due to daylight savings being just the week before on March 8th,” Wallis explains. “So the light at the time of the ceremony would be incredibly beautiful as the sun descended behind the Elk Mountains.”
Hopes like that began to feel naive as they headed into their actual wedding weekend, and the reality of the pandemic’s global scale and impact became more and more apparent. It turned out the natural light at the time of the ceremony was one of the few things that went according to plan.
The couple’s original venue cancelled 20 hours prior to the wedding. “Suddenly all I had done—all of the details—completely slipped through my fingers so fast I couldn’t really feel it,” Wallis remembers. “We went through three different venue changes on Friday afternoon before finally confirming where our wedding reception would be held mid-way through our rehearsal dinner.”
In the absence of a ceremony venue, Wallis and Peter decided to say their vows outdoors in a snowy meadow that their photographers had scouted. The day was sunny and crisp, but not too cold, and the guests gathered to create an aisle. “There was an odd absence of music, but we proceeded down the aisle to applause and smiles,” Wallis recalls. The bride wore a crisp ivory long-sleeve dress in a double-face silk charmeuse by Thakoon, who she once worked for. There were three fittings in New York in two months, and the designer attended each one. At the last minute, he convinced the bride that she had to have a veil, so they made a rush order from Jakob Schlaepfer in Switzerland for a few yards of gossamer silk and had it delivered to Sheila Milne at Aspen Stitchworks, who turned around a beautiful classic veil in 48 hours. “It was light as air and took flight with the slightest breeze, contrasting so nicely with the heavier double-face silk,” Wallis says. She finished off the look with vintage Navajo turquoise earrings from Ralph Lauren and light grey velvet Manolo Blahnik BB pumps.
Peter wore a Hugo Boss tuxedo for the wedding with a silk charmeuse bowtie from Charvet. Wallis used the remaining fabric from her dress to make monogrammed pocket squares, which she then gifted to her dad, Peter’s father, and Peter on the morning of their wedding—and they all wore on the day of.
“There was an incredible sense of unity and solidarity amongst everyone on both sides [at the ceremony],” Wallis remembers. “Everyone in attendance had seen how the wedding evolved, or devolved, over the last two days. I’ve been to many weddings—almost all of which went seemingly according to plan and beautifully—and this just felt so honest and real. It lacked any facade, which allowed everything, except for our essential reason for being there, to fall away. That moment in which we finally said ‘I do’ was so strongly felt by us—what we had gone through in the last 72 hours, and in the 15 years since we had first met, all of it officially behind us. I think Peter and I were both relieved to be at the finish line, to be actually almost married and then married—not 72, 36, or 24 hours away from that moment and dealing with constant fall-out. For that 20 minutes, everything was still. There was just laughter, smiles, and the first happy tears in three days.”
