Abby + Ted's Adorbs Berkshire Wedding

Abby was an early reader of ESB (long before she was engaged....) so it's super fun for me to be featuring her real live wedding photos. Super. Fun.

Here's what Abby and Ted had to say about their sweet little mountain wedding:

My rocker BF gave me a twist tie instead of a diamond, and it was perfect. In his music studio, surrounded by about 20 of his closest guitars and synths, Teddy proposed to me with a black twist tie he had fashioned into a ring -- a twist tie that a minute before had been holding together some cables. I wore it for about 24 hours, and then we picked out a stacker set by Rhode Island jewelry artist Heather Guidero. We had the original twist tie engagement ring cast in silver to preserve the spontaneous and totally metal nature of the proposal.

Teddy is an experimental sound artist and electronic musician, and I’m an architecture librarian, so we eloped in the mountains in an introvert’s paradise. Our wedding was a quiet, private, DIY celebration of us and what we've built and will continue to build. We got married in the Berkshire Mountains in Williamstown, Massachusetts with just our immediate family and a few friends, 12 people including us. We chose the Guesthouse at Field Farm as the venue because it’s one of our favorite places. It’s where we come to get away, read, write and be happy.

The Guesthouse at Field Farm is a mid-century 6-bedroom home that once belonged to a librarian and American art collector. There is a library, American paintings, books in every room, and original mid-century furniture. It's now a B&B on a nature preserve, so we rented the venue for the weekend, and had complete privacy. Design is important to us, and our venue was a place designed and built with love and an eye for minimal beauty.

We held the ceremony under a tree in a field, surrounded by mountains. Most of the flowers came from my Mom’s garden, including poppies which we put in the boutonnieres. My brother Pat walked me down the aisle, and my brother Brian was my MOH (Man of Honor). There was a flash storm, high winds, heavy rain and black skies for about an hour before the ceremony. But, just before, the sky opened up and the birds were freaking out. All I could hear was birds chirping, and I had so much fun during the ceremony. That surprised me. I was so present, in the moment and content. The ceremony was my favorite part.

A close runner up for favorite moment is the photo/skate sesh we had just before the ceremony. We hiked out to the main road, and my brothers tore down the hill on their skateboards in full suits, laughing like crazy as they just barely missed me. At one point, I had to wear Pat’s skate shoes to tromp into the muddy woods for photos. There I was in my Sarah Seven dress, holding my Jeffrey Campbell wedges and stomping into the forest in my brother’s huge, skate shoes. It was awesome.

After the ceremony, we had an intimate dinner at the Guesthouse in the dining room. We designed a minimal woodland chic tablescape, including a burlap runner, animal place card holders with library place cards, menus hand-typed by the groom, and airplants. We got a rad custom cake topper from Melabo, which was our first wedding purchase. The cake was a DELICIOUS gluten-free chocolate cake by our caterer, Wild Oats, a local farm co-op.

Following dinner, Teddy performed an original work called “Ceremony” in the garden. Here’s how he described that: 

“Ceremony, a site-specific sound installation created for our wedding day consists of 3 different instruments (acoustic guitar, sampled piano and modular synthesizer) each recorded onto their own cassettes. Each instrument was recorded in varying lengths and then looped at different intervals, each only repeating 1-3 times. The effect is somewhat hypnotizing as familiarity with each part is only partially established before the overall feel of the piece changes over time. The 3 cassettes are played in unison in their own individual players, each placed around the area where we were married.”

When the sun set, we celebrated with drinks and watched an entire field of fireflies blinking like nature glitter. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve seen.

Our photographers Jamie and Michelle of Rad + in Love were amazing. Like better-than-I-ever-could-have-imagined incredible. They helped us choose our ceremony and photo locations. They were fun and flexible, and guided us through the day. It was a privilege to have such talented, cool and stylish ladies be a part of our celebration. The energy they contributed to the weekend ended up helping to shape one of my most favorite weekends ever, and I can never thank them enough for being part of it.

We live in coastal Rhode Island, so we had a big post-elopement picnic with about 100 friends and family at the Meeting House in Tiverton, Rhode Island the week after our ceremony.

In the end, our wedding was exactly what we wanted, we shared it with people we love and made new friends in the process. And, WE’RE MARRIED. Seriously, it’s the best.

-Ted and Abby

Photos by Rad + In Love! Go see more over on their blog.

Antlers, and pom poms, and xerographica! Oh my!

You guys, I'm posting more details than usual on this one because GAAAAAAAAH. 

Here's what Kelly had to say about her cool-ass California wedding:

Mike and I are both very untraditional, so from the beginning we knew we wanted our wedding to be unique, whimsical, and just a freaking good time. We were both so excited to be able to have all of our family and friends in one room for the first time ever. Being both midwest transplants, Mike and I wanted to give our family and friends a true California experience to show them why we fell so in love with it out here. 

After months of searching for the perfect outdoor venue, we stumbled upon the Carondelet House. When we walked in, there was no discussion, we knew this was the place. It had history (was actually the old Otis building), amazing architecture, and also had amazing outdoor areas. The space itself was so beautiful that we did not have to do much to it. Once we found the venue, everything else just fell into place.

Mike and I wanted the decor to reflect the fact that this was a celebration and we wanted to bring the fun. We knew we wanted things to be festive and modern since the venue was really rustic. Gold was a must. We worked with Jihan Zencirli from Gironomo Balloons as well as Confetti System for the rest of the gold decorations. All of my friends helped with the planting, making of terrariums, and setting up the day of. 

I designed my dress myself and had it made by an amazing dressmaker in Koreatown. [Dets to follow in a separate post.] My best friend, Jeff Millbern of Banner Year, made a wood, crystal, and pyrite brooch for my dress as well as wood bracelets and pins for each of the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Mike and I chose wood to go along with our wooden wedding rings which were made by Gustav Reyes of Simply Wood Rings. 

With my background in visual merchandising and costume design, and Mike's background in graphic design, we were able to do pretty much everything ourselves...no wedding planner needed! Had we not have had 125 people, I would have wanted to do the food as well! [Kelly has a food blog on the side.] For food, we ended up using Tres LA to do the catering. We kept the menu simple with a cheese and cocktail reception, tacos for the main event, and late night appetizers that included sliders, burrata grilled cheese, fried mac and cheese balls, buffalo style cauliflower, and most importantly, a full bar. 

Our cake was a gift from Mike's employer, the LA Weekly, and was from Rosebud Bakery. We also served red velvet cupcakes from Lark Cake Shop and Earl Grey Macarons from Bottega Louie for dessert. We ordered the invitations from 2 Be U Design on Etsy, and Mike was able to make the programs and menus to correspond with them. The ex-cheerleader in me had to have pom poms and I found some from Spiritline that we used as favors. 

Neither Mike and I are big fans of flowers, so we decided to use airplants and lots of potted succulents as at home, we love to be surrounded by plants. Each bridesmaid held a large xerographica. We purchased everything from the flower market downtown and because we used so many plants, we were able to prep everything weeks earlier. 

Our amazing photographers, Rad and In Love, helped us to set up our photo booth and I can say that was definitely a crowd pleaser. We were married by one of our best friends and walked down the aisle to Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. My favorite part was the swaying of my bridesmaids to this song as I came down the aisle. Our DJ was the amazing Bennett Schmid from Ameoba and he played all old school 80s, 90s, and hip hop.  People are still talking about how great the music was.

Overall, the day was absolutely perfect, but everything went by so quickly... wish we could do it all again! We could not have made it so perfect without all of our amazing friends and family who helped us put it all together. It was definitely a collaboration and celebration of love. We will remember it always.

Photos by Rad + In Love. Check out tons more from Kelly + Mike's wedding over on the Rad + In Love blog!

A Wedding in Polaroids

And the most thorough, thoughtful, helpful write-up I have yet had the pleasure of publishing.

Take it away April:

Sitting down to write about our wedding seems an awful lot like an Academy Award acceptance speech -- there were so many incredible people and friends involved. I'm about to start blurting out a list of names before the orchestra starts playing the STOP TALKING music.

About our wedding: it happened over labor day weekend in a small town 2 hours north of San Francisco. Monte Rio is beautiful, remote and very California without having the expense of nearby wine country. The ceremony was on a meadow by the Russian River with the reception at the community center. We treated it like it like a destination wedding.

Besides our own marriage, here's what we wanted for our guests:

- to have a relaxing long weekend on the river.
- to enjoy themselves so much that they were really sad when the weekend was over.
- to leave feeling like they really got to know other people and made new friends.
(To that end we created a Facebook group to organize lodging, communicated on our save the dates that guests needed to book lodging pronto and gave people the resources to find rental houses together. We also created a custom google map with important location and people's rentals.) As far as we know, success!

Long term, WE owe the photographers, big time. We didn't have a pile of cash to burn, so we decided early on to spend on what was important to us. Pictures last forever, right? We wanted the photographs to represent the time we had that weekend and Chloe Aftel did just that. Bonus: she is hilarious and a joy to work with (she did our engagement shots too). She does magical things with Polaroids and captured the romantic, ephemeral parts of marrying someone you love. Waking up the day after the weddings and flipping through the prints was immediate gratification! We had another photographer manning the photo booth during cocktails -- Meg Messina took fantastic wedding guest portraits.

Finally, a shot of gratitude to Jennifer Tipton. She came on as the wedding day coordinator but she was indispensable long before that. She was wonderful to work with and  was on top of everything during the weekend.

The dress: it was St. Lucia sample by Jenny Packham, purchased at San Francisco's Glamour Closet. This is the place to go if you want an expensive dress for half-price. Ideal for people who a) are motived bargain shoppers or b) don't mind if their dress has a few fix-it blemishes.
The headpiece: bought a couple but settled on the Mignonne Handmade - Nature Girl Halo in ivory.
The bridesmaids: almost all wore long, pale pink Rachel Pally. She designs with modal jersey, aka feels like pajamas.

The cake(s): we didn't want a wedding cake per se. We bought basically one of every cake from Miette. Beautiful/delicious/not $1000.

And finally, here's the rest of the Rad people/places/things near California's Sonoma valley....

Artistry by Alan: Oh my, those lashes! He comes from a Hollywood background and sat me down, did his magic and I looked like myself but flawless. What cinched it for me is he did make-up on the movie Clueless. HELLO 90's girl fantasy!
Brian Ho of Dreams in Audio: the best damn unwedding DJ we could've found (sf-based)
Fork Catering: food truck extraordinaire, tasty, local, fresh food.
Pinterest: I had an Inspiration and Final Wedding board to manage the look since our wedding decor didn't really have a strong theme besides what we liked.
Virb: hosted our wedding website! Easy and (more importantly) stylish.

The last note: we ended up with 12 kids/babies on the attending guest list(!). Besides reserving the playground adjacent to the reception site we also introduced the parents beforehand via email. We had a kid activities, made programs with a colorable illustration. One of my favorite parts of the reception was the kids smashing a Confetti System-style piñata we filled with toys and candy. It was joyful having them around!

OH, I cannot believe I almost forgot to mention my favorite wedding stress coping mechanism. No, not stress eating (close second!) — my favorite way to let of irrational impulses and wedding industry wackness out was by creating the Twitter account @BRIDEHULK. In the same vein as internet meme @DrunkHulk, you tweet the rage away. I did not man @BRIDEHULK myself, I enlisted the help of about 10 other brides who were also wedding planning last year. Most of us graduated out but there are still a couple friends who are getting married in 2012. I hope the tradition will live on and would be happy to share login information with others who find themselves fed-up with one too many staged wedding blog posts, difficult potential vendors and crazy-pants family drama.

Cheers!
April

(Chloe Aftel also took super gorg digital photos. A few of em are up over here.)