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Natalie Nowak & John Bartlett
Belcourt Castle
November 1, 2008
As the backdrop to asking his girlfriend, Natalie Nowak, for her hand, John Bartlett chose an evening stroll along the deck of a cruise ship traveling the pacific waters of the Caribbean. Perfect. Well, not quite. John had been feeling under the weather, but mustered the strength to say what needed to be said. "I thought it was strange," says Natalie. "I kept asking him, 'Are you okay?'" When John finally did propose, her response, according to him, was to start laughing. Natalie distinctly remembers, "I said yes, then I started laughing."
For the couple who met while working at the Marriott Hotel in Newport, their dating started as "that awkward group-dating thing," as Natalie calls it, and lasted three years. That night on board the ship, John slipped the ring onto her finger, which he'd bought a few days earlier on St. Thomas. "I didn't really see it for another 20 minutes," said Natalie laughing. "It's dark out in the middle of the ocean and I was thinking, he's never bought jewelry before, it's probably heart-shaped, or something. But when I got into the light it was fantastic...better than I could have hoped."
When something so ornate needs no decorating, and is so unique it leaves little left to say, it becomes the setting to experience one of life's most cherished moments. The magnificent grounds and grand interior of Newport's Belcourt Castle was Natalie and John's obvious choice for their wedding day. "We liked the antiques and stained glass," says Natalie. "It was something that our guests would leave saying, 'Wow! I've never seen a place like that. I'm glad I made the trip.'"
On a fall day last year, the couple became man and wife as a party of 160 watched Natalie, dressed in an ivory café-colored dress with a bodice beset with Swarovski crystals, carrying a bouquet of white hydrangea and gardenias, ivory and white roses, walked down the aisle arm in arm with her father, David. John describes it as his favorite memory of the day. For Natalie, an only child, to see her father all dressed up and looking so well, was touching. Her father had had quadruple bypass surgery and a second corrective procedure, shortly before the big day. Natalie remembers saying to him, "Dad! Fifty-nine years with no health problems and just before my wedding, this?" The day did not disappoint. In fact, nothing did. Right down to the first dance, Tim McGraw's "You're My Best Friend," everything went off seamlessly.
Their Cabo San Lucas honeymoon, at the end of December, was just what the doctor ordered for the "Just Married" couple, who live in Newport, where the recent Mrs. Bartlett is the restaurant manager at the popular Mooring Seafood Kitchen & Bar, and Mr. Bartlett still works at the hotel where he met the colleague who would become his wife. - MP
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