This Couple's 3 Wedding Events—a Shabbat Dinner, Football Field Welcome Party, and Garden Ceremony—Told the Full Story of Their Relationship

Sophie Beren was a University of Pennsylvania freshman in August 2013 when she texted her roommate for help when she needed to move a few heavy items up the four flights of stairs to their shared space. Her roommate couldn’t pitch in, but she did the next best thing: suggested Sophie ask a fellow roommate she had never met, Eli Cehelyk. “Sophie cold-texted Eli and he met her at the lower quad gate to help a stranger,” says the couple. “We then became best friends over the course of our first two years of college, starting to date during our junior year, and the rest is history.”

A decade after their first meeting, Eli set up an elaborate proposal that took Sophie on a tour of multiple spots important to their relationship—the lake where he first said he loved her, the room where they first met—and ended at a colorful tulip field at sunset. “Sophie almost forgot to say yes because she was overwhelmed with emotion, but eventually did as we both laughed about it,” says Eli. (Sophie, founder and CEO of The Conversationalist, also shared a moment-by-moment real time recap of the proposal day with her 17,000 TikTok followers in a viral playlist.)

Sophie and Eli hoped to highlight both their past and their future during their wedding weekend. “We wanted half of the weekend to be an homage to where we met at Penn and the other half to be something new for both of us,” they say. With planner Mindy Weiss, they held a pre-wedding Shabbat dinner and a welcome party in Philadelphia before tying the knot at Winterthur Gardens in Delaware, on May 26, 2024. “Winterthur strikes a perfect balance of elegance, nature, and privacy and allowed for us to create the wedding of our dreams with the Mindy Weiss Party Consultant team leading the way,” says the couple. “Eli loves nature more than anything and the forest-like greenery was reminiscent of the woods near Eli’s childhood home. Sophie loves florals and romantic landscapes, and Winterthur was just that, embodied.” (The bride, a fan of Taylor Swift, describes the venue as “the perfect mashup of Speak Now, Folklore, and Evermore.”)

Though they included 300 guests in their celebration, Sophie and Eli were intentional about creating a wedding experience that focused on their relationship. “As someone who tends to share most things publicly online, I wanted to make sure that there were parts of the wedding that were meant just for the two of us,” says Sophie. They shared a first look and recited their vows privately before their ceremony, viewed the reception tent set-up and polished their first dance before guests entered the space, and finished their evening with a final walkthrough. “As our tent was being broken down at the end of the night, we took ourselves on a private tour of our wedding, making sure that we soaked in every moment and every detail before leaving,” says Sophie. 

The couple’s personality touched every part of the event, from a color palette based on Sophie’s favorite color yellow to heirloom ritual objects used in their Jewish ceremony. The welcome party took place on the football field where Sophie and Eli posed for their first photo together—during their freshman year new student orientation, days before they met. “All of our classmates stood in assigned spots on the field spelling out 2017,” says the couple. “We found out after the fact, that we were both placed inside the number one. There was no doubt in our minds that us meeting was meant to be, and that within a matter of days, we were about to find ‘the one’ we were going to spend our lives with.” See every detail of their wedding weekend which perfectly honored their love story ahead, thanks to these photos from John & Joseph.

Welcome bags filled with sweet and salty snacks incorporated the French blue color palette used for the couple’s pre-wedding parties with accents of yellow, which appeared in the designs for each of the weekend’s events.

Sophie and Eli jumpstarted their three-day wedding weekend with a Shabbat dinner at The Four Seasons Philadelphia on Friday night. Sophie chose a tiered, lace dress from Lauren Gabrielson and Eli wore a custom three-piece navy suit from Henry Davidsen. “We wanted it to feel like we were inviting everyone over for Shabbat dinner, our favorite time of the week, so the atmosphere was incredibly warm,” says Sophie.

Guests were directed to their tables by individual wish cards and candles—a nod to the lighting  of the Shabbat candle—and Sophie and Eli encouraged them to bring Jewish headcoverings worn during previous family events (like the groom’s bar mitzvah or the bride’s baby naming ceremony). “To celebrate the union of our families, we wanted to acknowledge every person’s milestones that got us to that day,” says Sophie. 

Patterned linens, floral plates, and a fresh green and blue color palette created a welcoming and relaxed family-dinner atmosphere. Sophie and Eli incorporated the bride’s passion for conversation and connection into the event with a mixed seating arrangement that encouraged guests to make new friends. “Instead of seating people with their closest friends and family members, we mixed up the seating arrangement so that we intentionally placed people together who we felt they had something in common with. This was the best decision we ever made, because by the time the wedding came around on Sunday, everyone at our wedding already knew each other, but beyond that, our closest family and friends were now friends with each other,” says Sophie. “You could feel it in the atmosphere at the wedding. It felt like everyone in our lives had known each other as long as we had known them. Everything was so warm, everyone was up and mingling with one another the entire time, and people rarely stayed within their friend groups. It was a dream come true for a unifier like me.”

On Saturday night, the couple hosted a welcome party on The University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field—the same spot where they posed for the class photo during their new student orientation. Sophie’s custom Nardos Design dress included a sunny floral embellishment with bridal-ready puffed sleeves and a mini-train, while Eli chose an Alan David suit that called back to the University’s school colors, blue and red.

The menu for the welcome dinner was inspired by the couple’s desire to share their favorite local restaurants with their friends and family. “Our greatest love in life besides one another is food,” says Sophie. “Almost like farmers' market of our Philly favorites, we had food stations with our favorite items from each of our favorite restaurants from Chef Michael Solomonov, and every guest got to take home a package of Federal Donuts.”

During the party, the Jumbotron displayed a lineup of wedding hot takes, inspired by Sophie’s talk show, POVz, which guests submitted after receiving their save-the-date. Favorites included “Wedding cake should always taste as good as it looks -Ellie Donohue,” “Cloudy skies make for better photos -Tim Bloom,” "Every wedding should have late-night snacks -Esther Beren," and "Let's stop playing Mr. Brightside -Lizzie Youshaei.” At the end of the evening, Sophie—a self-described Swiftie—and Eli donned matching football jerseys with their wedding date. “Very Taylor and Travis,” she says. 

Sophie treated her bridal party to handmade Stokrotka pajamas with custom embroidery from Abbode. “Each person’s set had the date that our friendship was established embroidered on the hem of the short. My mom’s pair said ‘Established 1994’—when I was born. She cried instantly,” says Sophie. The couple also created a personalized wedding day-newspaper—The Newlywed Times—filled with trivia and puzzles to occupy guests during the 45-minute drive from their Philadelphia hotels to the venue in Delaware. “On the back page of the newspaper, we even listed our own nontraditional rules for our wedding. One of my favorite rules that we listed was encouraging guests to Irish exit at the end of the night instead of taking us away from the dance floor to say goodbye, and it worked!” says Sophie. “We spent our wedding dancing instead of hugging our loved ones goodbye, because we knew we would see them at brunch the next morning.”

Sophie’s Monique Lhuillier ball gown, with its Chantilly lace, corset bodice, and layered skirt, made a major impression on the bride during her research. “After looking at about every dress picture on the internet, only one stood out to me,” she says. “I heard that when you know you found the perfect dress, you begin to cry when you put it on. I had not had that experience remotely at any of my other appointments, so I thought this was far from reality, however, as soon as I put on the dress for the first time, I was in tears. I knew it was the one.”

Sophie encourages other brides to “throw every rule out the window” when deciding on the invite list for wedding gown boutique appointments. “I felt so much pressure to bring along every member of my family to every appointment or wait until the big day to show everyone your dress, but there are moments where I just wanted to be either by myself or with a close friend or when I wanted to show the dress to someone,” she says. One of her favorite fittings included just her and her cousin, actor and singer Ben Platt. “He is someone who I played dress up with since I was a little kid, and now as two adults, both getting married at the same time, it felt so full circle and allowed me to feel completely myself at the fitting,” she says.

After adding monthly facials to her pre-wedding skincare routine, Sophie opted for a natural beauty look. “Since the setting was in a garden, the vision was to match the natural beauty of the venue, married with modern romance and elegance,” she says. Makeup artist Ann Benjamas of All Brides New York used the Charlotte Tilbury Exagger-Eyes palette to highlight Sophie’s blue eyes, added a bolder lip, and kept the foundation light. “I wanted to look like an elevated version of myself, and the number one thing I told my makeup artist was that I didn’t want to cover up my freckles,” says Sophie.  

Sophie’s final look was the end result of months of stress, as she focused on meeting “society’s version of what it means to be beautiful” (and shared her journey via Instagram.)  “I spent the year from getting engaged to getting married trying to alter everything about myself to feel beautiful,” she says. “I would do anything to go back and spend that time on learning to love who I am instead, because that is the version of myself who Eli fell in love with to begin with.”

Choosing a yellow color palette for the wedding was “a no-brainer,” says Sophie, but she wanted to let her bridesmaids’ personal style show through, too. Katie Hubbard of My Wedding Wardrobe stepped in: “She scoured the internet for every yellow dress imaginable and together we narrowed the list down to 27 dresses, just like the movie. Then, my type-A self created a full PowerPoint presentation with step-by-step instructions for my bridesmaids to follow to select their dress. They were instructed to scan a QR code to take them to a Google form, where they would rank their top four dresses. Then Katie played the ultimate game of Tetris to assign each bridesmaid their dress,” says Sophie.

She also had all the women try their dresses on together. “You never know with mismatched yellow, so I also had my bridesmaids bring their dresses to the bachelorette weekend and we did a little fashion show to make sure they all looked good to go!” says Sophie. “I highly recommend doing this if you’re going for a coordinated, yet mismatched feel.”

Inside the jacket of his bespoke Alan David tuxedo, Eli tucked a pin with pictures of his late father, grandmother, and grandfather—a gift from his mother and sister. He also wore a Frederique Constant watch that Sophie gave him as a wedding gift, Magnanni black velvet loafers, and a bowtie (which was “self-tied,” he points out). 

Stonekelly Events & Florals created Eli and Sophie’s massive, bursting-with-blooms chuppah. “We knew we wanted a big chuppah, covered in flowers, to be the focal point of our ceremony,” says Sophie. “It was important for the chuppah to be big enough for our family members to stand underneath with us during our ceremony.” They installed an aisle that took a gentle turn, lining it with potted plants and baskets of flowers. “We loved the idea of a wandering aisle, like an unkempt garden, to feel at home in the garden space of the ceremony,” she says.

The couple’s flower girl wore a yellow dress from Maisonette, while the ring bearer accented his Men’s Wearhouse tuxedo with a sunflower bow tie—”a touch of Kansas in memory of my Grandma Joan,” says Sophie. “As the older cousin, Herschel made sure that Dani kept walking when they began down the aisle. They were so focused on getting down the aisle that they forgot to actually distribute the flower petals in their baskets. They were the cutest!”

Sophie and Eli chose their ceremony music thoughtfully. “Eli walked down the aisle with live singing by Meir Green to a song called, ‘Achshav Halev Patuach.’ This means, ‘Now, my heart is open,’” says Sophie. The groomsmen and Eli’s sister took their places to the strains of “Runaround Sue,” Eli’s father’s favorite song. “This was such a special way to kick off the ceremony,” says Sophie. Coldplay’s “Yellow” gave a witty nod to the color palette as Sophie’s bridesmaids and family made their way to the altar, and flower girl and ring bearer walked to Taylor Swift’s “Paper Rings.”

Finally, Sophie’s mother and father walked her down the aisle. “It’s a tradition in our family for our cousins to sing each other down the aisle,” says the bride. “I walked to Camp Ramah’s rendition of ‘Boi V’Shalom,’ accompanied by Samantha Auerbach, Jonah Platt, Courtney Platt, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Henry Platt.”

Sophie’s cousin, Rabbi Alexander Haffetz, officiated the couple’s traditional Jewish ceremony. In the weeks before the wedding, Sophie and Eli sent out emails detailing the traditions and history of the wedding ceremony, songs, and reception. “We had a very traditional Jewish wedding and we knew from the start that there are many guests who are not aware of these traditions or are not of the Jewish faith,” says Sophie. “This was also really fun to help people get to know us better as a couple and feel that they were playing such an important part of the process by preparing with us. Sending out these emails felt really personal to who we are as a couple, and we think was one of the best ways to create the atmosphere we wanted at our wedding and to ensure inclusion was a top priority.”

Sophie and Eli recited private vows to each other during their first look before the ceremony. “We both spent hours and hours on them, because there was a lifetime’s worth of things to say,” says Sophie. “We hand-wrote mini novels for one another, and got to read them out loud looking into each other's eyes with no one else around. It was everything. Ironically, I think the two of us were most nervous for this part of the day, because we have such high expectations for one another and we wanted this part of the day to be perfect. As soon as we finished wiping away tears of joy upon closing out our vows, we exhaled an enormous sigh of relief, as we fully embraced the feeling that now nothing else mattered other than getting married to one another.”

The understated yellows used throughout the pre-wedding parties and the ceremony burst into bright relief at the reception. “We brought yellow in on focal elements—custom walls in the entry tent, custom bars, linens—and accented everything with flowers in various shades of pink, apricot and yellow,” says Sophie. The couple served two signature cocktails: the "Blurred Vision," a reference to Eli’s ophthalmology career, and the "Mango Mint to Be." “Sweet, refreshing, and bright yellow in color. This was Sophie in a bottle!” says the couple. “Once guests headed into the reception, we also had Sophie’s favorite drink, espresso martinis, created with our wedding logo etched on them in ground espresso.”

For their first dance, Sophie and Eli enlisted her cousins Ben Platt and Henry Platt to sing Bonnie Raitt’s “Feels Like Home” and Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” respectively. Sophie and her father danced to “Little Bird” by the Jonas Brothers, performed by American Idol alum Louis Knight, and Eli created a video montage of himself and his mother in lieu of a dance. After Simcha Leiner’s musicians conducted the Hora, the night ended with one last Taylor Swift song, “Love Story.”

“We wanted our reception to be 90-percent dancing, 10-percent eating,” says Sophie. With that in mind, the couple opted for desserts passed on the dance floor: chocolate chip cookie dough pops, mini churro bites, sorbet cones, popsicles, donut holes, and Oreo beignets. The towering Funfetti cake was decorated to mimic a flower in bloom, while a smaller chocolate groom’s cake was finished with the topper Eli’s grandparents used at their wedding. 

Before the after-party, Sophie changed into a yellow dress from Lauren Gabrielson embroidered with “Don’t you wanna dance?” on the hem. As the couple and their guests continued celebrating, they were served late-night snacks of fried chicken sliders, tater tots, pretzel nuggets, onion rings, and falafel in pitas—and took home individual pints of a custom ice cream, “Sophie and Eli’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” from Caffe Panna. 

After the party ended, the couple had one last set of surprises to look forward to. Before requiring guests to turn off their phones for their unplugged ceremony, Sophie and Eli asked them to record a video with a final pre-marriage message. “This was so fun because we had so many videos and messages to look at from our closest friends and family sending us well wishes and marriage advice,” says the couple. And at the end of the night, Sophie and Eli made a video of their own, too—one for their future children. “We gave them a tour of the reception tent, shared some of our favorite moments, and shed a few tears that it was over,” says the couple. “But [it was] bittersweet, because it meant that we were one step closer to meeting them.”