Nina H.: Triple the Joy

Mother of: Carly

Wedding venue: Loews Chicago O’Hare Hotel in Rosemont, Ill.

Vibe: Classic black tie

Dress: Montage by Mon Cheri from Volle's Bridal

When you’re the mother of triplets, you get used to every major milestone being multiplied—school concerts, sporting events, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations. Three times the joy and comotion. The triplets—Carly, Marissa and Justin—are now in their mid-20s, out of school and establishing their careers, but their lives continue to evolve in sync. As Nina was planning her daughter Carly’s wedding, her other daughter Marissa got engaged. And then less than a week after Carly’s November 2022 wedding, her son Justin popped the question to his girlfriend! So if you need to know anything about wedding planning or dress shopping right now, just ask Nina—she’s seriously in the zone. (For Chicago area weddings, she highly recommends wedding planner Alison Ross Events  and Kasia at Flowers by KH.)

Nina might not have predicted the triplets would all get engaged within months of each other, but she did expect Carly to be first. Carly and her now-husband Nathan started dating their freshman year at Purdue University, and they’ve been together ever since. She’s a fertility nurse; he’s a mechanical engineer. Of the three kids, Nina says Carly is “my really chill one. She’s very low key and not into foofoo fancy.”

They settled on Black Tie preferred for Carly's wedding with around 250 guests. Nina knew she didn’t want to wear black—“It sounds like a funeral to me.” But she was open minded about the style. She scoured department store websites and ordered a bunch of different dresses from Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. “They’d come, I’d try them, and I’d send them back,” Nina says. “On models, the dresses looked great. But on my body…I thought, this is not happening. I need to go to a store.”

She knew just the place: Volle’s Bridal Boutique in Lake Zurich—an institution in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago that has specialized in occasion dressing, and personalized service, for 50 years. There, Nina fell for a strapless gold sheath with lace overlay by Montage by Mon Cheri. “I had tried every style," Nina says. "This one was different."

For the second of the three weddings, which is scheduled for July 2, Nina skipped online shopping and went straight to Volle’s. Two dresses found; one more to go.

“To have three kids who found three amazing partners with amazing families,” Nina says, “we’re just so grateful and blessed.”

| Photography by Carasco Photography