Ever After: Lindsay Avner & Gregg Kaplan

By Chiara Milioulis / Weddings / August 27, 2015

Lindsay Avner, founder and CEO of breast cancer charity Bright Pink, was scrolling through Facebook in December 2012 when she came across a friend request from Gregg Kaplan. “We had met in passing a few years earlier,” she said. “I heard [that] his wife passed away from breast cancer, so I sent him a private message and just said, ‘If there is anything I, or Bright Pink, could ever do for you or your family, please let me know.’” The two met for drinks and hit it off — and, two years later in August 2014, Kaplan, operating partner of The Pritzker Group Venture Capital and founder of Redbox, proposed in an apple orchard in Wisconsin.

For their July 19 wedding, the couple put blind faith in OceanCliff (65 Ridge, Newport, Rhode Island) as their venue. “We had only looked at it online!” Avner laughs. But it proved to be the perfect space for their botanical chic, traditional Jewish ceremony, where they were surrounded by 170 friends and family members, including Kaplan’s three teenage children.

At one point in the ceremony, the officiate, Gregg’s longtime friend Mark Fienberg, asked the couple to turn around and face the ocean. “Apparently, while we were turning around, he asked everyone to put their arms around each other,” Avner says. “[When we turned back around,] he said, ‘We are going to be the ones to support you in your marriage.’ It was one of those ‘I can’t believe this is real’ moments.”

Photos by Corinna Raznikov Photography