If a venue hosts multiple events in the same week, is it really unique enough to be the setting for your wedding? If there is a second wedding at your venue in the same weekend, can you truly customize it enough to reflect you and your partner’s experiences?
We believe the answer is, no.
At Mayflower, we believe that to create a truly custom wedding, couples needed more unique venues, fewer restrictions and more time to express their unique story. Mayflower venues are unique, rare, open spaces. Customize a venue that helps tell your story -- choose your own tent, accents, tables, food, music -- and create a one-of-a-kind story that will leave your guests talking for years to come.
Mayflower connects couples who want to tell their story with open spaces. These open spaces -- farms, fields, beaches, orchards -- can stay open for generations to come because select couples invest in them to host their wedding.
The space is yours, no sharing required. Find the perfect venue for you, choose your vendors, take your time to customize it and tell your story.
Our Story
Our values
Way back in 2015 there were two values that converged and led to the creation of Mayflower: celebrating couples’ individuality and preserving unique open spaces.
Celebrating Couples’ Individuality
Every couple has a unique story to tell, and therefore should have a unique wedding venue that supports it. We’ve seen too many unique friends have virtually the same wedding. Too often traditional wedding venues and event spaces have restrictions on design and vendor choices, limiting a couple’s chance to convey what makes them, them. Because Mayflower’s open spaces are not wedding factories, the owners are happy to give couples exclusive use of the space for a full 48-hours to allow for far greater customization than traditional venues.
Preserving Unique Open Spaces
As New Englanders, we have long loved the region’s farms, fields, orchards, historic homes and many other spaces that would make breathtaking wedding venues. Many of these spaces are now at risk of being sold or developed as it becomes increasingly expensive to maintain open land. Our goal is to help preserve and celebrate the beautiful and historic open spaces we love across New England. We work with farmers, land trusts and other land owners to connect them with an additional means of capital to maintain their properties. No faceless hotel chains or restaurants here, just real people with real open spaces they love.
Our people
Sam McElhinney
Strategy, Marketing, Sales
Sam worked at Google doing marketing and sales. He crafted brand strategies for large companies by leveraging big data to understand changes in the behaviors and needs of their consumers. At Anheuser-Busch InBev he identified product gaps in market and created a new beverage brand for this unmet consumer need. He also developed an innovation model to support an internal startup accelerator. Sam loves to hike, fish and spend time with family. He went to Dartmouth College for his undergrad and is currently pursuing his MBA at MIT.
Lucy Minott
Product Management, Finance
Lucy is a second-year MBA candidate at MIT Sloan. Prior to Sloan, she was a Product Manager at HourlyNerd, an online marketplace startup connecting businesses with freelance business consultants. Before joining HourlyNerd, Lucy worked for three years at Endeavor, a global entrepreneurship organization connecting high-growth start-ups with strategic expertise and resources. This past summer, Lucy interned on the Product Management team at Eventbrite. Mayflower combines two of Lucy's passions - marketplaces and small New England communities. Lucy is very excited about Mayflower's power to help local property owners while also giving couples a truly unique, customized celebration of their relationship.
Wesley Ripley
Full-Stack Web Development
Wesley Ripley has been coding professionally since high school and graduated in 2013 from WPI. Since graduating Wesley has been working at Wayfair full time. There he has had his hands in everything from leading a product focused team, to adding many new features from scratch, and making the codebase easier to work with. Wesley brings experience with large scale websites, e-commerce, and customer centric development to the team.
Our Advisors
Donna Levin
Co-Founder Care.com,
Serial Entrepreneur
42 North
Wedding Planning
Hummingbird Bridal
Wedding Planning
Andrei Hagiu
Marketplace Strategy