It was the most secretive celebrity wedding of the 20th century – John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette slipping away to a remote Georgia island to tie the knot in front of fewer than three dozen of their nearest and dearest.
The president’s dashingly handsome son and his sylphlike blonde bride were such an intensely monitored couple that just one slip in their security would ruin the day as the paparazzi would gather and potentially disrupt the nuptials.
So, everything had to go according to plan. No-one, not even John and Carolyn’s closest friends, could know anything.
No photographs could leak out. No details could be known in advance. No chance could be taken that one of that tiny band of friends and relatives might let slip that the most famous couple of their time were getting married on Saturday, September 21, 1996.
‘We all pulled off the coup of the century that weekend,’ Carole Radziwill, the wife of John’s cousin and best man Anthony, previously told the Daily Mail.
‘John Kennedy Jr, the most famous man in the world got married on a pastoral remote island off the coast of Georgia and no one knew.
‘Not a paparazzi in sight.’
Interest in the charismatic but ultimately doomed couple has surged again thanks to the FX miniseries Love Story, which has introduced their whirlwind romance and their tragic end in a 1999 plane crash to a new generation of fans.
John F. Kennedy Jr had the look of love in his eyes as he danced closely with bride Carolyn Bessette when they took to the floor on the night of their wedding. She wore his jacket to keep out the evening chill
‘We all pulled off the coup of the century that weekend. John Kennedy Jr, the most famous man in the world got married on a pastoral remote island off the coast of Georgia and no one knew. Not a paparazzi in sight,’ Carole Radziwill told the Daily Mail
Real Housewife Carole Radziwill married Anthony Radziwill (right), John’s cousin, in 1994. They were the closest of friends with John and Carolyn
As recounted in the series, John, then 35, and Carolyn, 30, were married in the First African Baptist Church on Cumberland Island, Georgia, with the reception at the Greyfield Inn.
‘There were wild horses and wildflowers. It was untouched and bucolic,’ recalled Radziwill, 62, who was Carolyn’s closest friend and went on to become a Real Housewife of New York City.
She recalled the down-to-the-last-detail planning that went into making the wedding such a success.
The guests, culled from dozens of family members and friends, were not told the wedding location beforehand. They were simply instructed to pack for a weekend trip and keep their schedules flexible.
Many thought they were attending a small gathering or party, not a wedding.
They were flown on private charter flights from Boston and New York to Brunswick, Georgia, a small coastal airport about 15 miles from Cumberland Island and chosen deliberately to avoid any potential media attention.
Each one was given a coin – a special Indian nickel – which they had to present upon landing on the island. Those who could not would be ‘quickly escorted off,’ said Radziwill.
‘It was the most famous wedding of the year – the decade,’ she added.
It was less than three years after their wedding that they were killed when the private plane John was piloting plunged into the Atlantic Ocean as they were on the way to the wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy
The tiny church was illuminated by candles after the wedding ran late. It was almost past sundown when the Reverend Charles O’Byrne was ready to start the ceremony – but the church lacked electricity so it was getting worryingly dark
Guests celebrated the night before the ceremony at the historic Greyfield Inn on Cumberland Island
‘And no one but the 32 close friends and family who arrived, knew.’
Like any couple, John and Carolyn wanted a record of their big day. But a professional videographer would have risked word of the ceremony leaking out.
So they got Billy Noonan, John’s closest childhood friend from Hyannis Port, to tape it on a mid-1990s style camcorder
The footage was first seen in JFK Jr & Carolyn’s Wedding: The Lost Tapes, a 2019 TLC special.
‘I know that organizing a Kennedy wedding is not like invading Iraq. But it seemed that way,’ Noonan said in the documentary.
The wedding was ultimately a success but nothing went entirely as planned, according to guests.
The rehearsal dinner was held the night before the wedding outside at the Greyfield Inn, with JFK Jr’s uncle, the late Senator Edward Kennedy, toasting the couple and acting ‘very much the patriarch,’ Noonan recalled in the Lost Tapes.
The couple exchanged vows at the tiny First African Baptist Church on Georgia’s remote Cumberland Island
‘Most of all we want to thank the Bessettes,’ Senator Kennedy jokingly told Carolyn’s family, ‘since you’re not just getting a son-in-law but gaining 75 Kennedys.’
‘He was the only adult there from John’s family,’ Noonan told viewers in reference to the older Kennedy generation, since John’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had died two years earlier.
In the dim, shaky video taken during the rehearsal dinner, JFK Jr can also be seen addressing the small group of guests that included his sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who also served as Carolyn’s matron of honor, and two of his closest cousins, Anthony Radziwill who was his best man and Timothy Shriver.
‘Carolyn and I owe all of you a great debt of gratitude,’ Kennedy says, thanking friends and family for helping keep the surprise ceremony hidden from the media.
‘We realize that we imposed certain conditions upon this event, and they may at the time have seemed extreme.
‘But what was really important for us was to be able to have a collection of people who we really love, who make our lives interesting and meaningful, and to give both of us, in our relationship going forward, a sense of connection with the people in our lives and in our families.’
‘So many people have gone through great efforts one way or another… Everybody here – too many to mention – has really extended themselves in ways that, for this quiet occasion, have meant the world to us,’ he said.
‘We are so happy that you all could be here. In some ways, with you all doing this – having all of you as integral parts of our lives – I look forward to getting to know Carolyn’s family more.’
‘My wife has changed my life in a way that I never thought was possible,’ he added.
Anthony Radziwill hugs Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy on her wedding night in September, 1996
The RHONY star described the close bond between Anthony (left) and John Jr (right): ‘They were the odd couple. John scattered and impulsive; Anthony methodical and sensible. They couldn’t live without each other, and they didn’t’
Carolyn posing on back of a car with a friend. ‘My wife has changed my life in a way that I never thought was possible,’ John said after the ceremony
Carole’s late husband Anthony Radziwill on John’s wedding day in 1996. Anthony was John’s closest friend and best man
‘Today she has made me the happiest man alive.’
The following day – the actual wedding day – was more challenging.
Carolyn, her twin sister Lauren and Carole Radziwill organized the flowers for the wedding. ‘We spent hours cutting the stems off of dozens of big Alaskan white roses that afternoon, arranging them in silver buckets for the dinner tables,’ Radziwill told the Daily Mail in 2019.
‘John came by at one point, just to hang out. He felt obligated to weigh in, though, on the buckets. “Three per table,” he said. “Hey, I know what I’m doing. I got this.”
‘It was a wild guess.’
‘It was that kind of carefree day.’ added Radziwill, whose husband Anthony died just three years later from cancer – a month after John and Carolyn’s deaths.
‘We were all happy to be there, we had a wedding that night. John was flirting with his just hours-away wife. He shrugged at our eye-roll, she giggled at his charm.’
‘There were wild horses and wildflowers. It was untouched and bucolic,’ recalled Radziwill
JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette were one of the most photographed couples of the 1990s
Carole Radziwill also recalled the moment of panic that set in as the time of the evening wedding got near.
‘All of us overdue at the small chapel and waiting on him, he ran panicked to our room.
‘”I can’t find my shirt. Anthony!” He was accusing. “Where is it? What’d you do?”
‘It was their childhood summed up in five frantic minutes, three decades of hi jinks and pranks between two men with an unshakeable bond.
‘Anthony didn’t hide John’s shirt. John didn’t know where it was. Anthony found the shirt.
‘They were the odd couple. John scattered and impulsive; Anthony methodical and sensible. They couldn’t live without each other, and they didn’t.’
Guests had to be ferried to the tiny wooden church in the woods by pickup trucks that careened down dirt paths.
But the church had not been opened up and cleaned for years, which took time – and then both JFK Jr and Carolyn were late.
Kennedy’s friends say he was notoriously forgetful and absent-minded and known for being tardy. The missing shirt added to the delay.
But Carolyn also turned up late, because there were last-minute problems with her now fabled slip wedding dress by Narciso Rodriguez.
It was almost past sundown when the Reverend Charles O’Byrne was ready to start the ceremony – but the church lacked electricity so it was getting worryingly dark.
Candles were located at the last minute to illuminate the proceedings.
The video’s rough quality was perhaps because Noonan, who had been part of Kennedy’s tight-knit circle since their teenage years in Hyannis Port, was a stockbroker by trade at the time and not a videographer.
Noonan, played by actor Nathan Kohnen in Love Story, later wrote about the friendship in his 2006 memoir, Forever Young, and released the long-guarded footage as part of the 2019 TLC special.
Today, the man who filmed that fleeting moment of happiness lives quietly on Cape Cod at age 67 and appears reluctant to revisit the past.
‘He’s kind of a recluse,’ his brother John Noonan, assistant recreation director for the town of Barnstable, told the Daily Mail.
‘He’s become a shell of himself in recent years. I’m not even sure where he is.’
When reached by phone, Noonan made clear he has little interest in revisiting the past or discussing the renewed fascination with Kennedy and Bessette.
‘He wasn’t ‘John-John’ to me – he was just my friend John,’ he said.
