Photograph by Chris Moore/Getty Images
I was 16 years old when John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were married on Cumberland Island in 1996. I can still see their photo on the cover of People, him kissing her hand in front of the church, her beaming as she faced him. In those days, American culture coalesced around a few key media outlets. People was one of them. Everyone was buzzing about the wedding, including my friends and me, who decided that Carolyn’s dress was perfect. (Actually, I had already decided that anything she wore was perfect.)
On July 16, 1999, they were gone. I was visiting a college friend in Tallahassee, and we sat glued to her living-room television in our pajamas the entire day. Surely there was some mistake. We waited for the breaking news of a miraculous ocean rescue. It never came.
Almost two decades later, in 2017, I found myself traveling to Cumberland Island on assignment for Atlanta’s sister publication, Southbound. I remember walking up the front steps of the Greyfield Inn for the first time and thinking, John and Carolyn stayed here on their wedding night.
The inn’s owners, Mitty and Mary Ferguson, remembered the couple well; Mitty’s sister Gogo was John’s close friend who almost single-handedly planned their wedding. A few days into my stay, Gogo—who lives part-time on the island—invited me to her house. One of the most surreal experiences of my life was sitting in her book-strewn living room while she told me how she pulled off the nuptials. (One tidbit: Her husband, Dave, is a pilot, and he surreptitiously flew the couple from the island to the mainland when they left for their honeymoon.)
I’ve been to Cumberland three times now, and with each visit, I gain a better understanding of the kind of people John and Carolyn were. They could have been married anywhere on earth, and they chose a remote Georgia island where all the roads are dirt and speckled with the “marks” of wild horses. A place where the nights are so pitch black, you need a flashlight to see someone who’s standing right in front of you.
The couple could have kept it simple and held their ceremony on the beach nearest the inn, but instead, they piled everyone into the beds of pickup trucks and drove them 20 bumpy, sandy miles to a one-room church with no air-conditioning that could barely fit them all. I never understood that decision until I read Bronwen Dickey’s stunning feature on page 46 of this issue.
Thirty years after their wedding, John and Carolyn continue to fascinate me. (Binge-watching Love Story recently only fueled the embers.) I realize I know just snippets of their lives from second- and thirdhand accounts, but it’s enough to make me feel a connection to them. I’m also aware that by remembering them, I remember myself—who I was and how I felt when their celestial-like shadows eclipsed my skies. It brings me back to when I was 16, and her dress was perfect, and the fairy tale still seemed possible.
This article appears in our August 2026 issue.
