6 aisle to isle Sarah and Jackson need a minute to think about the question. "What kind of wedding did you imagine the moment you were engaged?" They exchange the quick, wordless glance of people who already know their story has a few versions. “That’s a great question,” Sarah finally says. “We had a lot of discussions before we committed to anything.” Those early talks happened everywhere — over late- night take-out in their Tennessee kitchen, while scrolling through venues on a phone screen, driving home from a friend’s wedding where the cake looked too perfect to touch. Their lists always circled the same ideas: a beautiful setting, a weekend people would remember, something joyful rather than solemn. Fun, they agreed, was non-negotiable. Yet every time the conversation drifted, one word pulled them back: intimate. It’s a deceptively simple word. It means candlelight and small tables to some couples, mountain cabins to others. For Sar- ah and Jackson it meant presence — being surrounded only by the people who had shaped their love since high school, the ones who had seen every chapter. They didn’t want grandeur, but a closeness that felt effortless. Beaches Turks and Caicos, a resort of six hundred suites at the time (plus a new Treasure Beach Village now) is full of families, laughter, and the constant music of ocean breeze and splashing water park rides. Hardly the pri- vate island fantasy most people picture when they say intimate. But the longer they talked, the more sense it made. “Looking back, our wedding at Beaches was meant to be,” Sarah says now, certain. Because intimacy, they realized, wasn’t about silence, it was about connection. And on this island, connection is the air you breathe: grandparents holding tod- dlers in the surf, couples sharing cocktails at sunset, strangers exchanging smiles over breakfast buffets. The energy is generous. It invites you in. For more than forty years, that’s what the Beaches experience has been built on, togetherness made easy. For Sarah and Jackson, it would become the perfect setting for a wedding that felt both wildly alive and deeply personal. When they first floated the idea, it sounded almost too easy. If everyone was going to travel anyway, why not let the journey be the gift? “A lot of friends and family would need to travel to where we live in Tennessee,” Jackson explains. “If our guests are going to travel, we might as well invite them to a tropical para- dise so they can have the vacation of a lifetime.” That logic turned out to be contagious. Within weeks, confirmations began to arrive — one, then ten, then dozens. Seventy-seven people in total. Each RSVP felt like an exclamation point and a vote on the concept: it was happening. The couple laughed at how the hardest part of their planning was deciding what not to plan. Sarah built a small mood board — florals in muted blush, sand and cream tones, a few images of table settings glinting in sunset light — and sent it to the Beaches wedding team, who would handle bringing every detail of her mood board to life. Then she exhaled. “They made our dream a reality,” she says. “I just had to describe how it should feel, and they built the rest.” By ROBERT STEPHENS Photos by LAURA DEE SEE OUR STORY Two high school sweethearts bring their stunning love story, and seventy-seven guests, to the Caribbean in search of intimacy. Tennessee Takes the Tropics Sarah and Jackson BEACHES TURKS AND CAICOS Providenciales, Turks and Caicos beaches turks and caicos
