Similar to the rest of the world, Kat Fearey and Brian Bissell fell in love with pickleball when its popularity boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Once the pair was engaged and planning their late September 2024 Island wedding, they knew they wanted to incorporate the sport in some way.
Already members of the Edgartown Yacht Club, which has four pickleball courts on the property, Fearey and Bissell invited their wedding guests to participate in an afternoon filled with light competition.
The goal, the couple said, was to offer their guests a chance to get to know each other in a casual setting before the ceremony and reception. “We thought it’d just be a fun way to get everyone introduced,” Fearey said. Plus, they thought, pickleball is such an easily accessible sport, that even those who had never played before would be able to participate.
Wedding planner Sandy Brooks-Kovacs utilized a drone to capture Kat Fearey and Brian Bissell’s pickleball party from a unique vantage point. Photograph: Sam Brooks
When Fearey and Bissell initially sat down with Island wedding planner Sandy Brooks-Kovacs, of Timeless Event Planning, the couple told her that they wanted to make sure their guests, many of whom were travelling to the Vineyard, had a full schedule to entertain them beyond the big day. Brooks-Kovacs was completely on-board.
“People are coming to the Island and they’re paying so much money to get here, so you really want to treat your guests and make sure that they have a whole amazing experience,” Brooks-Kovacs said. “It’s [also] really fun to show special things on the Island that are meaningful to [the couple].”
With Brooks-Kovacs’s help, they reserved the yacht club’s pickleball courts for Friday afternoon. Fearey and Bissell sent out an email in the weeks leading up to the wedding to see if those arriving early might be looking for something fun to do before the official festivities kicked off at the welcome party Friday night.
Sam Brooks
Around thirty guests came to play dressed in all white, per club rules, while others stopped by to watch and mingle. People were paired up randomly, solidifying the couple’s intention of having guests meet each other before arriving on the dance floor at the reception. If players weren’t on the court, the yacht club had an outdoor wooden seating area where they could relax, chat, and have a few beverages while still enjoying the competition.
The light popping sounds of pickleballs echoed across the asphalt courts as some participants swung customized paddles designed by Fearey. While Fearey doesn’t have a design background, she searched online for inspiration and worked with Brooks-Kovacs to bring her vision for the paddles to life. On the front were the couple’s initials in cursive script inside their blue wedding crest framed in flowers. Light-blue stripes on the back of the paddle added a finishing touch to the DIY design that matched the overall theme of the wedding.
Though the wedding weekend was held in late September, the pickleball party was still a taste of summer on the Vineyard. With the weather in the low seventies and the height of the summer season slowly starting to fade, Fearey felt it was the perfect time of year to get married on the Vineyard.“Edgartown is such a special place for that reason, where you really feel like you’re on vacation as soon as you get there, so it was just a fun entry into the weekend,” she added.
To capture the revelry of the pickleball party, Brooks-Kovacs and her team took pictures from above with a drone. Her husband helped her operate it, while Brooks-Kovacs’s sister, Island photographer Sam Brooks, edited the drone photos in addition to the images she captured from the ground.
“Whenever you can, for cool events like this, definitely try to get a drone,” Brooks-Kovacs advised. “I feel like getting those above shots are...just so unique.”
Fearey appreciated getting to relive the pickleball party again through the photos, especially because the weekend was such a whirlwind. “Looking back at the pictures, I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh, this was so cool that we got to do all this,’” she recalled.
Fearey encourages anyone who may want to organize a similar event as part of their wedding weekend to just go for it, saying there are many ways to approach the planning. While Fearey and Bissell took the casual route, she said the most important factor was that everybody had a good time and the event was a low-stress, easy way to welcome loved ones to an important weekend in their lives.
