Some places bring their own story to the table. 

Cohasset is definitely one of them— and also one of the best New England wedding locations you’ll find. Not because it’s grand or exclusive, but because here, the most iconic setting is often the one you already live in.

When you choose to marry in Cohasset, you’re not just choosing a location; you’re choosing a landscape with opinions. The coastline has its own way of guiding a wedding: the wind, the light, the slope of a lawn that forgets where yard ends and ocean begins.

The wind decides how high a stem can reach before it bows. The light acts as a brushstroke that will determine how every color reads in real time. Both act as editors, shaping the day in ways no design deck ever could.

When Golden Hour brought me on for Linda and Roger’s at-home coastal wedding, that’s what struck me first: this wasn’t a property you designed over. It was one you designed with. And some of the most striking New England wedding locations aren’t venues at all — they’re backyards shaped by seasons, shoreline, and history.

Here’s the secret of many New England wedding locations, especially along the coastline: the more you lean into the land, the more the land invites you in.

Vendors | Photography: Andrea Lynne Photography | Design & Production: Golden Hour | Catering: H Cole | Sweet Treats: b.wild Baking Co | Lighting: Drape Art Designs | Linens: Reverie Social | Tent and Rentals: Peak Event Services

Designing a Coastal Wedding That Listens to the Landscape

Some weddings give you the freedom to invent, to spin a story from scratch. Coastal weddings ask you to listen— really listen— to the tale the land is already telling.

The ceremony unfolded at the edge of the backyard, the water shimmering behind it in that quiet, glassy way Cohasset does so, so well. I built a meadow-style ground arbor — low, sculptural, meant to frame rather than transform. It acted as a a soft ribbon of color and texture to echo the living grasses adding height behind it.

This installation was never trying to be the focal point. It was simply trying to belong.

How Seasonality Shapes a Coastal Wedding on the New England Shoreline

Golden Hour had been nurturing a small patch of flowers on their property, and they were absolutely smitten with a golden-peach zinnia they’d grown. Those zinnias became the north star that we designed everything else around.

They grew some. I grew some. Cross Street Flower Farm filled in the rest. It was an agricultural collaboration in every sense of the word.

And suddenly the color palette wasn’t a palette anymore— it was a time of day. Warm peaches, soft apricots, sky blues, grasses that moved at the coastline’s beck and call. 

The flowers didn’t sit and play nice. They drifted. They lifted. They played.

Seasonality in coastal wedding flowers isn’t a trend; it’s a conversation. And in Cohasset, it’s essential.

Design That Can Withstand (and Even Welcome) the Wind

Coastal weddings always come with a small gamble. You don’t know what the wind will decide to do. On Linda and Roger’s wedding day, it decided to have a personality.

Programs fluttered. Linens billowed. Glasses had to be set on their sides to avoid more chaos than we already had in hand.

The movable ground arbor (read: the one I’d planned to repurpose) became very much not movable. But it stayed beautiful, because it was designed for motion. The zinnias nodded, the delphinium lifted and dipped, the cosmos trembled at their edges, and the grasses swayed in long, slow arcs — every stem doing exactly what it was grown to do.

The wind wasn’t a problem. It was a co-designer.

When you’re planning an at-home Cohasset wedding, the fact of the matter is that you simply have to embrace the wind. Build pieces that can flex. Use centerpiece vessels with weight. Choose stems that dance instead of collapse. Don’t be afraid to let the elements lead a little. 

This is the gift of at-home weddings in coastal New England: the land becomes part of the design team.

Why Your Own Backyard Reception Can Be One of the Most Iconic New England Wedding Locations

Inside the tent, the design found its softness. Golden Hour layered the space with rattan pendants from Drape Art Designs, striped linens from Reverie Social, and natural textures that felt as if a warm-weather garden party had drifted up the coast and settled comfortably in Cohasset— airy compotes tucked with peach zinnias, delphinium, cosmos, and grasses resting between woven chargers and light-blue napkins.

The long tables were some of my favorite parts of the day. Long tables require intention— too much and they feel overworked; too little and they fall flat. Here, the compotes did the heavy lifting — light, airy bowls of golden-hour zinnias, sky-blue delphinium, apricot dahlias, and wild grasses that kept everything feeling fresh instead of formal.

The candles stayed unlit (the wind had opinions there too), but the rattan lamps above the tables created a kind of warmth that felt more true to the setting anyway.

Everything about the design existed in conversation: flowers responding to texture, texture responding to space, space responding to the sea.

Casual Isn’t the Absence of Design, It’s the Presence of Ease

Roger kept saying, “We want it casual.” And sometimes I think couples underestimate how much intention that actually requires.

Casual weddings demand clarity. They demand trust. They demand a willingness to let a house, a season, and a coastline finish the sentences you start.

Nothing about Linda and Roger’s day was over-styled, but everything was considered. While the flowers weren’t necessarily trying to impress, they still had to be intentionally crafted to belong to the landscape, to the home, to the sea.And that belonging is what sets backyard weddings — truly at-home weddings — apart from even the most beautiful traditional New England wedding locations.

Here, in your own backyard, the location isn’t curated. It’s lived in.

At-Home Coastal Celebrations Belong Among the Best New England Wedding Locations

Cohasset doesn’t need spectacle. It needs sensitivity — to weather, to season, to texture, to the kind of quiet luxury that comes from choosing what not to add.

And sometimes the most iconic New England wedding location isn’t a venue at all. It’s your own backyard.

Let the land speak first. Let the flowers answer second. And let the design feel like an extension of the life already happening inside the home.

If you’re building a wedding that you want to feel effortless and rooted in place (and in alliance with the wind), I’d love to create florals that feel like they could have grown there all along.