Ryan Melcher and Brittney Giammanco.Photo:David Welch
David Welch
Ryan Melcher, the only heir of late Hollywood legendDoris Day, found his happily ever after.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the Carmel, California based real estate agent, 40, and wife Brittney Giammanco, 31, shared details of their happy day atLambert’s Cove Inn & Resortnear Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts on Sept. 30.
“It was truly a no-brainer when it came to it,” Giammanco tells PEOPLE of hosting their wedding on Martha’s Vineyard, whereMelcherhad spent time with his family as a child. “It just felt meant to be.”
Once the weather cleared, Melcher tells PEOPLE the couple said, “Let’s do this.” That’s when “everyone went running out” where there was a beautiful flower garden on the grounds. “It’s incredible,” the groom says. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and it’s kind of wild and rough on purpose. And there’s one aisle to walk down, and then on either side, there’s two rows of flowers.”
“I was adamant about getting into that garden,” Giammanco adds. “So, he’s like, ‘We’ll wait as long as we have to. We’ll get in there.’ "
“People were still seating when we started walking down the aisle,” she continues, revealing that the weather didn’t ruin the moment. “Then, at the end of it, it was raining. My poor dad and my brother — it was cute — they were so worried about my dress. My brother’s like, ‘I’ll hold the train for you. You can’t ruin it.’ I’m like, ‘Forget it. Who cares? Let’s go.’ "
Ryan Melcher and Brittney Giammanco.David Welch
For the welcome party, Giammanco says she had a dress of Melcher’s mother, Jacqueline Carlin, “tailored to fit from the 80s.”
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“She liked white a lot,” Melcher says of his mother, who died in 2021, “and there’s a picture of her in [the dress] in our old house in Carmel. And she’d given it to Brittney right before she passed away.”
Giammanco says there was “so much eucalyptus down the running tables with kind of that blue and white paisley looking pattern that went across the long tables. And then, the same pattern as for the napkins for the round tables.” She adds, “It felt very vineyard.”
“Everybody that left called in the morning pretty much, virtually everybody, or texted, and said, ‘That was the best wedding we’ve ever been to,' " Melcher says, adding there were friends and family “from all different walks of life, from all periods of life” for their special day.
In addition to “Kokomo,” Melcher says the Dukes Band, played a lot of Beach Boys tunes (his father produced some of their biggest hits) as well as a few favorites from his grandmother, including her signature tune, “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be),” a song that also has special meaning to both Giammanco and Melcher.
It turns out the bride had the lyrics from the classic song which Day sang in Alfred Hitchcock’sThe Man Who Knew Too Muchtattooed on her arm when she was 19 years old, long before ever meeting Melcher.
Then, during one of the couple’s dates — after first meeting at a dive bar in Monterey, California in 2019 — Giammanco recalls Melcher asking if she knew who originally sang the 1956 record. Melcher then told her, “My grandmother just sang it to me all the time,” revealing that he was related to the late Hollywood icon.
Melcher proposed to Giammanco in a meadow yards away from their dairy farm that overlooks the valley in San Lucia on her birthday — a birthdate she also shares with his mother. “I was completely caught off guard,” Giammanco says, adding, “He grabbed me and he was down on one knee.”
But given all their interesting little connections — from her sharing her birthday with Melcher’s mother to the song lyrics tattooed on her arm — Giammanco says, “Clearly we would’ve found each other in any lifetime at this point.”
source: people.com
