Our Wedding at Boston Light
At 9:31am on October 1, 2023, Molly received a phone call from Sally Snowman to give us the final update: tide: most ideal, winds: variable, waves: good, swells: okay, and everything was a Go. Our wedding was going to happen.
These are photos from our private wedding ceremony at Boston Light, the first and oldest lighthouse in the United States.
We greeted our families at the Hull Yacht Club and parted ways to board a small Coast Guard Auxiliary Patrol Boat at Pemberton Point. As we journeyed out to Boston Light, our families tailed us in a lobster boat to witness our ceremony from a distance. The pier at Boston Light was difficult to dock at, but after three attempts, we successfully tied up to the ladder and climbed onto the island.
Word got out about our secret operation onto the restricted property and some of our friends sailed by to give us their blessings.
The wedding ceremony was officiated by Sally Snowman and witnessed by Molly’s father—John Struzziery—both are in the US Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Boston Light, the first and oldest lighthouse in the nation, has had seventy keepers; the first sixty-nine were men, and the seventieth was a woman: Sally Snowman. Sally retired a couple of months after our wedding, and not only is Sally the final lighthouse keeper of Boston Light, but she’s the last one in the United States.
Boston Light has been off-limits to visitors for several years. Due to that and Sally’s planned retirement, no public announcements could be made about our wedding ceremony until 2024.
We laughed, we cried, and because Molly is married to me, we climbed. In her wedding dress, Molly climbed 76 steps inside Boston Light’s narrow, circular, iron staircase to the balcony, and then she had to ascend two steep ladders to the chandelier’s platform. Definitely one for the books.
Boston Light overlooks the Atlantic Ocean from Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor. Its foundations stem back to 1716 making it the oldest continually used and last staffed lighthouse in the country. Boston Light stands at 89 feet/27 meters, and its light beam can be seen from over 25 miles/40 kilometers away.
What an honor and a privilege it was to be amongst a handful of people to have gotten married at Boston Light in its 307 years of service.