I have been dating my now husband for just over six years, and it’s been exactly two months since our wedding on Cape Cod. Our wedding was planned and designed with the help of our amazing wedding planner, Kate Murtaugh Events & Design. I’m here to tell you how KMED helped to make all of our wedding dreams came true!

Preplanning

Let’s rewind. In 2020, my now husband and I bought our first home in the seaside town of Scituate, MA. After our move, I started my Instagram page @athomesouthshore to share my favorite local findings with our new community. I first came across the work of Kate Murtagh & Beach Plum Floral from an installation they do for Mother’s Day at our local coffee shop, Lucky Finn.

After following them on Instagram, I noticed that Kate not only plans beautiful events & installations for our local community, but she is an accomplished wedding planner & designer. Before I was even engaged (I suspected that it might happen soon!), I was bookmarking Kate’s wedding designs on Instagram. I hadn’t thought much about my future wedding, but I knew that when my time came, I wanted a unique and customer space that really felt like “me”. I was using Kate’s posts as inspiration, or better yet, I might find a way to work with her and her team myself!

FINDIng my Dream Team

Fast forward about a year – After our picturesque engagement at The Spit in Scituate, it was time to plan our wedding! First step, find & book a location. I knew that I wanted to be close to home and that it needed to be by the ocean. Cape Cod was the perfect fit. We toured many Cape Cod venues, but the best fit for us was The Popponesset Inn in Mashpee, MA. I loved that it was right on the water, that it felt exclusive to just us and our big day (as opposed to other venues that have multiple weddings happening at once), and most of all I loved that it was a blank slate in the form of a white tent with the ocean as it’s backdrop.

Step two, decide if I want, need, or could afford a wedding planner. What are the pros and cons? What are my options? I had no idea (yet)! My deciding factors ended up being: Do I want to spend a lot time and effort doing things like wrangling vendors, DIY-ing designs, & fussing over a timeline? Or, do I want someone else to take the load off and take care of those things for me? I was leaning towards outsourcing, it my budget would allow it.

I learned that there are many different kinds of wedding planners – full-service planners, partial planners, month-of coordinators, wedding designers, and more. I scheduled an introductory call with Kate Murtaugh, while looking longingly over her other designs and crossing my finger that it would work out. It turns out that she offers all combinations of the above options, and we settled on Partial Planning & Design.

Kate & Beach Plum Floral are a design match made in heaven, and with Rebecca Love Photography nailed down for photography – I had found my dream team!

WEDDING Planning with Kate Murtaugh Events & Design

I chose Partial Planning because, frankly, it fit better into my budget (and the type of wedding I was having) than full-service planning did. The choice to enlist KMED for Design was a no-brainer for me, as that was my primary interest. I didn’t spend years drooling over Kate’s designs for nothing! I wanted the aesthetic of my wedding to me unique to me, and I was confident that Kate could make it happen. I wanted (specifically) coastal modern, while not being nautical or preppy, with a slight bohemian flair – and Kate understood the assignment.

Initial Planning conversations centered around nailing down vendors and getting “Save the Dates” sent out. As far as vendors, for the ones I hadn’t already booked myself, Kate has a full list of personal recommendations from her years of experience working in the Cape Cod area (and beyond). After nailing down vendors, there isn’t a lot more “planning” to do until a lot closer to the wedding.

As far as the design element, our first step was to have a conversations with Kate to describe or show examples of our ideas & style – a vision dump, if you will. She then comes back with a full design deck complete with a color palette, a floral “vision board” and example rentals with the ceremony, cocktail hour, & reception. I then provided feedback, and let her do her design thing!

The Details

Once we get a month or two out from the wedding, this is when the fun starts!

One of my favorite parts about having a planner was that I was able to just send Kate and her team all of my vendors’ contact information and let them take it from there. This includes handling all things timeline, setup, questionnaires, etc. Kate provided me with a full wedding day timeline, including everything from hair & makeup times for my bridesmaids, to our first look, to speech schedules,.

The design was the fun part. We had already pre-ordered some of the rentals (farm tables for my long head table, chairs, etc.), but this is when we started finalizing floral design & nailing down linens and smaller rentals that really ended up making our ceremony and reception look beautiful and unique.

Lastly we decided on things like seating charts, table numbers, menus, & the welcome table, and I didn’t have to lift a fingers – Kate and her team ordered (and eventually set up) everything.

When we got to the final month, we had weekly calls with Kate & Lauren, Kate’s Events & Operations Manager. Every week I rattled through a lost list of questions that I had been compilling since our previous call, and they had the right answers to each one. These calls put me at ease that Kate & Lauren had everything under control.

Let’s Do this!

After all of our prep, I honestly wasn’t stressed at all going into our wedding day. I had the full schedule that Kate & Lauren had provided me with that outlined every step of the day from the moment I woke up until our arrival at the After Party. I trusted them completely to know that everything would go smoothly, and knew I had a team to fall back on if it didn’t. Lauren from KMED was on site all day and night.

I had rented a beautiful Airbnb in New Seabury for my bridesmaids & I to get ready in. Lauren checked in on us, and made sure all of the final details were in the right location.

After we were all prepped, Lauren was at the venue making sure all vendors were set up correctly, ensuring that the guests arrived and were welcomed to their seats, and keeping an eye on all of the moving parts.

And most importantly, as you’ve seen in the pictures throughout this post, the ceremony & reception space was absolutely stunning. It came out perfectly, and I have Kate’s beautiful and unique designs tailored to my requests to thank for that. I am always told that none of the guests will notice the linens, florals, etc., but let me tell you, my guests noticed! And they are still talking about it!

Everything went off without a hitch!

Looking back, I am so glad that I decided to work with Kate Murtaugh & her team, and my wedding experience wouldn’t have been the same without them.