When we ask newlyweds to think back on what they wanted most for their big day — and we’ve interviewed hundreds of them over the years — the most common response is “For it not to feel like a wedding!” The betrothed have never been less attached to the old wedding handbook — or the need to please their great-aunt. So in a flurry of pampas grass and perfectly mismatched-to-match bridesmaid dresses, how do you pull off a non-cookie-cutter affair? For the answers, we decided to interrogate the cool couples whose weddings we would actually want to steal, right down to the tiger-shaped cake toppers.
Here, we spoke with New York–based couple Rachel Hudec, who’s in nursing administration, and Ashley Hudec, who works in events for NBC Universal. Thorpe’s tool kit for event production — with a heavy focus on setting a vibe — came in handy when plotting their May 2024 wedding, a rock-and-roll-themed celebration in the legendary music town of Asbury Park, New Jersey. The weekend included a party at a penny arcade Bruce Springsteen had hung out in a few nights before, piles of pasta and pizza, and a smoke gun shot out over their rowdy crowd.
Ashley: Our families have music blasting at every party. You can’t even talk. You’re walking in the house giving hugs and kisses and yelling over the bass. We really wanted to emulate that.
Rachel: It’s something we really connected on from the beginning. Both of our families are into classic rock.
Ashley: Our dads are both musicians. We love the Sam Cooke song “We’re Having a Party” — the version by Rod Stewart — and that was the impetus behind the whole thing. The first thing people saw when they opened their invitations was “We’re having a party!”
Rachel: I met Ashley in Palm Springs in 2017 at an event called the Dinah.
Ashley: We call it the lesbian Coachella, but it’s like a pool-party weekend.
Rachel: I knew instantly that I loved her and was going to marry her. That’s crazy to say, and I know she didn’t know for quite some time.
Ashley: I was a bit slower of a burn for sure.
Rachel: It was her energy. The first time I saw her, she came into the room singing and I turned around and was like, “Who is that person?” I was just magnetically attracted to her.
Ashley: We just had a crazy amount of fun together. I said this in our vows, but it just felt like the universe was clapping every time we hung out. We got engaged in April 2023. I’d had a feeling it was coming because Rachel bought me these Uptowns [Air Force 1 sneakers] but wouldn’t let me wear them until this day.
Rachel: I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I’m not good at hiding things. It was in Brooklyn Bridge Park. She knew — because she brought a ring with her that day and wound up proposing right back.
Ashley: I felt like I got to be the one with the big surprise that day.
Rachel: We went back and forth on whether we even wanted a wedding at first. Ashley is very creative and knows how to put an experience together. She’s like the creative director of our lives. I follow her lead when it comes to setting the scene.
Ashley: We wanted a huge party where we’d exchange vows. However, we wanted it to be as easy as possible for everyone, so we wanted it all under one roof without moving from one location to the next.
Rachel: Ashley’s originally from Chicago, so we wanted it to have a little bit of a destination feel for the people who were flying to see us. It was nice to have it in a little beach town.
Ashley: We really love going down the shore. Rachel has done that her whole life; she’s a city kid. Asbury Park is a big music town, and we’ve gone to concerts there.
Rachel: I’ve spent time in every town from Belmar to Long Beach Island, but ironically I wasn’t the one who “found” Porta, though I had been to Porta plenty of times. Ashley did her research and sent it to me, and I was like, Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that place. It was the perfect size.
Ashley: I honestly just Googled myself to death. I knew a restaurant vibe would be it. When I found the space, saw the disco balls, and saw from the reviews that the food was incredible, we decided to go see it.
Rachel: If anyone should be getting married under 40 disco balls, it’s me and Ashley. When we visited the venue, we both started crying, like, This is the place.
Ashley: One of the other reasons we loved it was everything is in-house. You have one point-of-contact, and they handle the flowers, food, bar, sound, cake. We dropped off our décor, and they set it up. It was a one-stop shop, and you don’t find that with a lot of places.
Rachel: The only vendors we brought in were the DJ and our photographer. I got a custom suit made by this designer Watson Ellis, which Ashley found on Instagram. I wanted a suit jacket, with a statement piece on my neck, but didn’t want to wear anything underneath. I was obsessed with it. The material was a hammered wool and silk, and it was gorgeous. I wore that with black pants and Louis Vuitton loafers.
Ashley: I wore a really simple V-neck dress with a keyhole in the back by Jenny Yoo. The dress was never the thing for me; I was really excited by the accessories. Since the through-line was rock and roll, I knew the accessories would take me there. I found this vendor on Etsy from London who handmade the veil with all these little glittery stars. I found an incredible pair of red leather boots. And we changed later on and I did a really fun glittery dress with sunglasses and kept the boots on.
Rachel: Friday night, we bought out the Silverball Retro Arcade. We also had Madame Marie, the boardwalk tarot-card reader, who came in and read people’s cards, and set up a bar with a bartender and had boardwalk snacks in the back. Everyone was running around playing arcade games, from my younger cousins to my parents’ friends, and it was so fun.
Ashley: From the second you walked in, there were lyrics to some of our favorite songs [in the décor]. The first they saw was from Taylor Swift, “Baby, let the games begin.” We had little bottles of Tajín on the bar for people to take, and they said, “Funny how it’s the little things in life that mean the most,” by Zac Brown Band. One sign from the wedding actually still hangs in our house: from Jay-Z’s “H to the Izzo,” it said, “You could’ve been anywhere in the world, but you’re here with me, and I appreciate that.”
Rachel: On the wedding day, we got ready together. Ashley and I need each other’s opinions on absolutely everything, and this was no different. We rented a house in Asbury Park and had our small bridal party and other people who mean a lot to us come by throughout the day.
Ashley: It was like the party before the party. We had our dog there and our moms came and it was a really emotional, fun morning. Then we had a trolley come pick us up and we went to take pictures. We chose each of our oldest friends to officiate.
Rachel: I’ve been friends with Jessica since I was 5, and she knows me the best. Same thing with Ashley’s friend Courtney. We gave them a framework to follow: It was about me, then it was about Ashley, and then it was about us as a couple.
Ashley: We had two couples do readings, a pair from Rachel’s world and a pair from mine. They read song lyrics and said, “And now, a reading from the book of Springsteen” and “from the book of Fleetwood Mac.” That got a laugh from the crowd.
Rachel: It was Springsteen’s “If I Should Fall Behind” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird.” I liked writing our own vows because we’ve worked really hard both personally and together to get where we are today, and we’re both proud of that. It was important, I think, to acknowledge where we’ve gotten to in front of a room of everybody that we love.
Ashley: We got married right in front of the DJ booth. It was a pretty quick ceremony and then it transitioned into cocktail hour; as our guest, you walked in the door and you didn’t leave again until 11 o’clock. We obviously said “hi” to everyone, hugs and kisses, but we had people on the dance floor right away.
Rachel: We had a signature cocktail, an Aperol Spritz named the Sadie Spritz after our dog. Hors d’oeuvre were walked around: rice balls, eggplant crostini, fried ravioli, roasted shrimp, lamb-loin skewers.
Ashley: Rachel’s from a big Italian family, and food was super-important to her. She’d wake up in the morning and be like, “I really think we’re going to need more food at the wedding. Let’s add this on.” I’d be like, “We really don’t. You need to relax.”
Rachel: There’s a video of me at 24 hours old, and my grandmother is holding me in her arms and looks to my mom and says, “Is she going to eat with us?” One day old at the table with my family. It’s ingrained in me to make sure everybody is fed.
Ashley: There were breads and cheese and olives, meatballs and salad and pasta and cutlets and pizza. The food didn’t stop. It was amazing. Porta put all the leftovers in boxes and bags for people to take home. Everyone left the wedding with plates of pasta or full pizzas.
Rachel: Our first dance song was going to be Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Only Want to Be With You” but when Cowboy Carter came out, Ashley stayed up until midnight to listen to it. I rolled over at 6 a.m., and Ashley is bright-eyed, like, “Beyoncé’s going to win Album of the Year, and also there’s this one song …” By 6:30 a.m., we are listening to “II Most Wanted” with coffee at volume 70.
Ashley: She asked, “Do you want to switch the first dance?” I wasn’t going to say it! But we did and we were so happy. It was just a great moment.
Rachel: I felt strongly about the DJ, Michael LiConti. I’ve known him my whole life, and he’s excellent. We played Romy’s Mid Air album, just smooth vocals over a light house beat, during dinner, and then he took it from there. We sent some inspiration — meaning we wanted him to play Taylor Swift and Beyoncé — but otherwise he knew what to do and I trusted him.
Ashley: Our table numbers were on tambourines, which ended up being a huge party trick because everyone was on the dance floor with them. During our father-daughter dance to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” we surprised our dads with a saxophone player who came out to play the bridge.
Rachel: We didn’t leave each other’s side on the dance floor. We were there the whole time. Our photographer tried to pull us over for cake cutting, and we didn’t wind up going, which is the only thing I regret from the day. We were just having so much fun. For dessert, we had Porta’s signature Nutella pies, cookies, and cannoli platters.
Ashley: At the end, the DJ brought us CO2 air guns, and we were shooting them off like crazy. Have you ever been to a club and all of a sudden the smoke comes out? That’s usually from a CO2 gun. There wasn’t a wind-down of the night; the lights came on while we were dancing. We went home, changed into sweats and sneakers, and went off to Georgie’s, a gay bar that does karaoke on Saturday nights.
Rachel: Ashley, as I said earlier, has tremendous vocals. We sang — well, she sang — Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” onstage. Then we left and told everyone to come back to our rental house, and we had the after-after party there for a couple of hours.
Ashley: “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” was absolutely another peak high of the night. Just so fun. Just the best night ever. As someone who was almost convinced I didn’t need a big wedding and was down for city hall and a dive bar, I’m so happy we did this.
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