Immediately after matching on Bumble, Amelia Green-Vamos and Stephen Donnelly had their first date in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston and continued dating long-distance between Massachusetts and California. After four months together, they bridged the distance when Amelia moved to San Francisco.
Two-and-a-half years later, Stephen surprised her with a proposal during their dream vacation to the Amalfi Coast in 2019. “It was perfect!” Amelia gushes about the entire day, which featured a vintage car ride along the winding coastline and a secret photographer in tow.
As they began planning their wedding, they knew the location would have to be near Boston to stay close to their families and pay homage to where the couple first met. While scouring for venues in the Berkshires, Amelia came across The Mount in the Vogue article, “The Custom of the Country: Vogue Re-creates Edith Wharton’s Artistic Arcadia.” Wharton, the trailblazing author of The Age of Innocence, owned the estate in the twentieth century. The destination was both earthy and immersed in nature—as per Stephen’s wishes—and also historic and artistic—as per Amelia’s.
From there, the couple was inspired by The Mount’s classic architecture and romantic gardens. “We really embraced this idea of bringing people back to a time of Gilded Age garden elegance and aimed to weave it throughout the entire wedding weekend experience, as well as my wedding weekend looks,” Amelia notes. She turned to Claudia Hanlin for wedding design and styling. “Claudia’s expertise was instrumental in bringing the old world restrained glamour of the Berkshires aesthetic to life and making sure it shined throughout our wedding.” They enlisted Belathée Photography to document every romantic moment of the day.
Amelia and her team thought of each “major moment” of the wedding as a different chapter in a book. “For example, to immerse our guests into the aesthetic, they first entered the courtyard in front of the stately mansion and were greeted with Champagne with edible flowers served in champagne coupes and farm-fresh lavender-infused lemonade, along with parasols to shield them from the sun as they enjoyed a pre-ceremony cocktail,” she says about the day’s vignettes. The cocktail hour in the Italian gardens further transported guests, as fashion artist Deanna First sketched their likenesses.
“I was most excited about the actual ‘getting married’ part of the wedding,” Amelia confesses. “But, curating my looks for the wedding weekend was a close second!” Roses were a recurring theme in her outfits. To take a few pre-wedding weekend portraits at The Blantyre, the bride-to-be wore a feminine Emilia Wickstead ballgown skirt and long-sleeve set.
For the rehearsal dinner and welcome party, she donned a head-to-toe classic Chanel runway look. “My twin sister had previously been a buyer at Chanel, which had only expanded my love and appreciation of the house,” Amelia adds. She, her sister, Chloe, and the Saks Fifth Avenue Chanel team even sourced the exact double strand of pearls worn on the runway with this set. To truly complete the outfit, she held onto a bespoke Olympia Le-Tan clutch.
On August 28, 2021, Amelia slipped out of her Happy Isles vintage dressing gown and into a finely detailed Oscar De La Renta silk faille wedding dress. “It was adorned with appliqué embroidery silk roses in a floral motif all throughout the dress; the team at Oscar told me it totaled 145 hours of work!” she shares. Amelia also worked with Jin Wang to create a custom tulle watteau with hand-sewn embroidered leaves and roses to cascade behind the bride down the aisle. Erica Martell and Renee Russo applied her natural, rosy pink beauty look and styled her sleek bun.
After crossing the linden tree-lined aisle as the sun peeked out behind her, the bride met her groom all decked in a bespoke Tom Ford tuxedo with a black silk grain de poudre fabric lapel. Mark from the Tom Ford team at Bergdorf Goodman asked to see a photo of Amelia’s dress to ensure Stephen’s outfit would complement hers. SpeechLess Strings provided the beautiful accompaniment of “A Grand Finish.” The heartfelt Christian ceremony was led by the couple’s family friend and pastor.
Amelia never intended on a reception outfit change, but a look at a Rodarte fashion show image changed her mind. The models donned florals woven in their hair, and Amelia was inspired. The florist, Nectar & Root, sourced 30 perfect cream roses for Erica and Renee to attach on a wire and quickly intersperse through Amelia’s hair after dinner and toasts. Even after all of the dancing that night, not a single petal fell. To complement the updo, she wore a Victorian-inspired gown with dramatic ruching at the hips. “The team at Danielle Frankel was incredible and made one custom for me, as the dress had been part of the latest collection and they hadn’t even made patterns for it yet,” Amelia notes. Celebrity fashion sourcing expert Gab Waller, “who is part fashion fairy godmother and friend,” Amelia adds, found the sold-out Amina Muaddi Begum Glass Slingbacks for a princess-worthy finish.
The outfit change set the tone for the rest of the night. Stephen and Amelia snuck through the garden in the dark to make their grand reveal during the cake-cutting while guests watched on from the terrace balcony. The reception was a blur—so much so that Amelia can only guess what song the first dance was set to. “I think the musicians accidentally played the wrong song,” she laughs. “It was so funny!” Nevertheless, the couple did not skip a beat and danced their way through. As the party drew to a close, the catering team, Swell Party, brought out grilled cheeses and s’mores.
When the newlyweds made their exit, they were greeted by sparklers and their illuminated friends’ and families’ smiles. An antique white Rolls-Royce sat in the driveway for their spectacular bon voyage.
