The Bride Wore a Lily of the Valley Dress and Her Mother’s Veil for Her Backyard Wedding in Bellport

Charlotte Diamond and Jim Palmer first crossed paths while students at Princeton University. But it would take a few years—and a graduation—for them to have their first conversation as young 20-somethings in New York City. Sparks flew, yet nothing happened at first. However, it turns out neither of them could get the other out of their heads. “Almost a year after conversation number one, we started seeing each other in October of 2020 and fell hard fast,” says Charlotte. “Luckily the ease and joy of our first conversation was replicated tenfold.”

Jim, the chef de partie at The Foul Witch Restaurant in the East Village, proposed in June 2023 while on a walk through Prospect Park. Picking a ring that would please Charlotte, a former jewelry editor at Vogue, was no easy task. Yet he knew his future fiancée almost better than she knew herself, pulling out a vintage diamond cluster ring from Ashley Zhang Jewelry.

The two held a late September wedding the next year in the Long Island town of Bellport, New York. “My family has been going to Bellport for over 30 years, and Jim and I knew that Bellport was the only place in the world we’d want to celebrate our love and life together,” says Charlotte. They held their ceremony and after-party at Charlotte’s family home and the reception in their neighbor’s backyard.

The night before, they held their rehearsal dinner at The Bellport Restaurant, where Charlotte’s family has eaten every Friday night for the past three decades. (“Literally every Friday,” Charlotte says, laughing.) She and Jim hand-decorated every place card while his sister and mother arranged flowers from Early Girl Farm down the road. “The Bellport isn’t a large restaurant, and Jim and I knew it was going to be tight and loud, but we had a dream of the party naturally spilling out the front door and onto the sidewalk like a London pub in the summertime. It delighted us to see that dream come true,” she says. The bride wore a vintage Roberto Cavalli gown from Skof Archive.

They married on September 21 in the bride’s backyard—the last day of summer. Charlotte knew she wanted to wed surrounded by blooms. “Flowers are one of my favorite things on this earth,” she says. Yet she didn’t just mean in terms of decor: The couple asked their guests to wear “flowers and colors”—and no one took the dress code more seriously than Charlotte herself, who wore a green-and-white Lily of the Valley dress by Monique Lhuillier. She accessorized with colorful jewelry to match green tourmaline and diamond earrings from LA–based jewelry brand Retrouvaí, an Irene Neuwirth ring, a signet ring from Kinn Studio, as well as her grandmother Jackie’s amethyst cocktail ring. The final fashion touch? “My mom’s veil that she wore when she married my dad over 33 years ago,” says Charlotte. Waiting at the end of the altar was Jim in a white suit and a 1944 Patek Philippe watch that his grandfather and father also wore on their wedding days. “It was the most vivid 30 minutes of my life,” Jim says of their ceremony. “When I close my eyes I can still feel my feet on the grass and the sun on my face and Charlotte’s hands in mine.”