Where did JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette get married? Seeking privacy on their special day, the couple chose to marry on an island off the coast of Georgia that is accessible only by ferry.
In doing so for their wedding on September 21, 1996, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette followed in the footsteps of the Carnegies and the Rockefellers in gravitating to Cumberland Island, Georgia, a nearly 20-mile-long refuge of moss-draped oaks, wild horses, and at the time, no telephone lines, no paved roads, and no accommodations other than a handful of rooms at the Greyfield Inn, where the couple held their rehearsal dinner and reception.
“It was wonderful to have no press around,” one of John and Carolyn’s roughly 40 attendees at their wedding told The New York Times back in 1996. “We were so excited to have fooled everybody.”
John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette in 1996, just a few months before their wedding.
Bettmann/Getty Images
For such a public couple, privacy was John and Carolyn’s chief aim with their wedding, held a little more than a year after they got engaged over the Fourth of July 1995. Caterers and staff at the reception signed confidentiality agreements. Guests were not invited until September 17, The New York Times reported, just four days before the ceremony itself on the 21st.
“Cumberland Island feels both magical and wonderfully untamed,” Mary Ferguson, co-owner of the Greyfield Inn, tells Glamour. “It’s wild in a deeply restorative way—a place where the rhythms of the tides, the shifting marsh light, and the quiet presence of the live oaks set the pace of the day. For those who have never visited, it is not a place of crowds or constant activity. It’s a place to reconnect—with nature, with loved ones, and often with yourself. There is a rare kind of quiet here.”
Inside John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette’s secret Cumberland Island wedding
Cumberland Island was home to only about 35 people in 1996. One of its residents, Carol Ruckdeschel, lived in a house next to the First African Baptist Church, where John and Carolyn exchanged vows. It wasn’t until the Kennedy family began arriving that she learned that a celebrity wedding was afoot. “I took my bowl of popcorn and a beer and a milk crate and sat out there in the horse barn and watched,” she told The New York Times. “I just thought it was interesting. I said, ‘I’m going to kick myself later if I just go in and read my book.’”
John and Carolyn landed in separate private planes on September 19 at the tiny airport in nearby St. Mary’s, from which most visitors took a ferry to Cumberland Island. John had traveled to Cumberland Island several times in the past—he was a friend of Gogo Ferguson, a resident of the island (and sister-in-law of Mary Ferguson), who also designed John and Carolyn’s wedding rings. Gogo was in attendance at the small ceremony, calling John “a dear friend” while speaking to Garden & Gun in 2025. Mary tells Glamour that John had previously “brought Carolyn to stay as well” on the island.
First African Baptist Church, where John and Carolyn exchanged vows
Andrew Cebulka/Courtesy of Greyfield Inn
“We could give them one precious thing, and that was their privacy,” Gogo said.
As for their rings, “They both wanted something very, very simple,” Gogo explained, adding that Carolyn “loved simple designs, and she didn’t need much because she was so beautiful.”
Gogo is not a fan of doing “just a plain wedding band,” she told Garden & Gun. “That’s not adventurous at all.” For John and Carolyn she designed matching gold rings cast from the rib of a rattlesnake, inscribed with their initials and their wedding date.
The ceremony was held at the island’s First African Baptist Church.
If you’re wondering, where did JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette get married, a tiny church on the island filled the bill. Following a rehearsal dinner on the porch of the Greyfield Inn on September 20, the next day John and Carolyn married at the First African Baptist Church, a secluded, remote church with eight wooden pews and no air conditioning. After Carolyn walked down the aisle to the hymn “Amazing Grace,” the couple married by candlelight in a brief Catholic service. As the couple exited the church and walked down its steps, photographer Denis Reggie snapped the now iconic photo of John kissing Carolyn’s gloved hand.
“It was an incredibly magical moment,” Reggie told Vanity Fair in 2021. “I saw it as it was unfolding, almost in silhouette. It was virtually dark outside. John reached for the hand of Carolyn; she was caught off guard. I’m walking backwards in the light rain at dusk, and John does this amazing gesture, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips.”
“I was really moved by it and Carolyn’s surprise,” he added. “I adored her expression—it says it all. The way she flowed in her beautiful dress, moving at full pace, coming down the steps. It was happening in real time and not in any way posed or arranged. It was a really special photograph.”
Wearing a silk slip dress by her friend Narciso Rodriguez, Carolyn accessorized with a long tulle veil, sheer gloves, and crystal-beaded Manolo Blahnik shoes. Her blonde hair was put up in a bun, pinned and held by a clip that had belonged to her late mother-in-law, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Carolyn’s bouquet was arranged by Bunny Mellon, a friend of Jackie’s.
“I’ll never see anything more beautiful than that,” Rodriguez said of Carolyn, as quoted in Elizabeth Beller’s 2024 book Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
The First African Baptist Church “is simple, sacred, and deeply peaceful,” Mary Ferguson tells Glamour. “There is a quiet presence inside—a sense of history shaped by years of prayer and gathering. Its beauty lies in its humility. It feels timeless and profoundly meaningful.”
Both their rehearsal dinner and the reception were held at the Greyfield Inn.
At the reception back at the Greyfield, the newlyweds’ first dance was to Prince’s “Forever in My Life,” and John’s uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, gave a toast that brought everyone to tears, People reported. Guests enjoyed a three-tier white wedding cake. “Greyfield is intimate, peaceful, and profoundly grounding,” Mary says.
Getting married on Cumberland Island was John’s idea, according to his former assistant RoseMarie Terenzio in her 2024 book JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography. “They wanted to be somewhere that had some kind of connection to them—a place that had meaning,” she said.
The Greyfield Inn, where Carolyn and John had their reception dinner on the veranda
Peter Frank Edwards/Courtesy of Greyfield Inn
After visiting the island, Carolyn fell in love with it, too, and John insisted on getting married at the First African Baptist Church specifically. Gogo helped the couple plan logistics, with Terenzio saying, “John just thought, ‘As long as it’s on Cumberland, it’s going to be amazing.’” At the rehearsal dinner, Ted told his nephew of John’s late parents, “John, your parents would be so proud of you for choosing this place to be married.”
“It was so moving,” Gogo said in JFK Jr.
Stylist George Kyriakos did Carolyn’s hair on her wedding day—while Carolyn did her own makeup, according to Terenzio. As they drove the bumpy path to the church, “there was a reporter who had tried to sneak on the island, but he was literally going through alligator-infested swamps, and he just surrendered,” Kyriakos said in JFK Jr. “He put his hands up and he surrendered because he was so fucked up from going through the swamp. He just said, ‘Please just arrest me. I need to get outta here.’”
Cumberland Island offered “the exact feeling of solitude John and Carolyn were looking for,” Mary tells Glamour.
There was “a general exuberance on the island”: How Carolyn and JFK Jr. pulled off their secret wedding
Gogo remembered that Carolyn had provided little straw fans for all of the guests at the ceremony to help combat the oppressive heat, and Bibles were placed on every seat with the date of the wedding on them. The room applauded after they said their vows.
Carole Radziwill, a close friend of John and Carolyn’s and the wife of John’s cousin and best friend Anthony Radziwill, wrote in her 2005 memoir What Remains of the wedding weekend, “There is a general exuberance on the island, and we’re all proud to be conspirators. They have pulled this off, and no one yet can believe it. We have dinner on the veranda and toast the future, the women in sundresses, the men in shirtsleeves, and after dinner we walk down for a bonfire on the beach.”
A suite at the Greyfield Inn, where guests stayed for Carolyn and John’s wedding
Peter Frank Edwards/Courtesy of Greyfield Inn
After the ceremony, Radziwill recalled, “We take open-topped Jeeps back to the inn for the reception. It starts to rain, and we laugh as we get soaked.” The party danced to music from a deejay for the rest of the night under a small tent in front of the inn.
After spending the night of September 21 on Cumberland Island, John and Carolyn headed off for their honeymoon in Turkey. “I remember John standing in the doorway of the plane, and he just said, ‘This was absolutely extraordinary,’” Gogo said. Later, while in Istanbul, John called Gogo and said, “I don’t know why I ever left Cumberland Island.”
Mary tells us she believes “the natural charm, seclusion, and authenticity is what appealed to them most.” Cumberland Island, she adds, “is protected and removed from the world in a way that allowed them to celebrate this magical weekend completely away from the public eye.” Just as they wanted.
