1: Food. Will and I raised a pig from March until July. We built the fence and her shed out of wood and fencing given to us from a friend, and we ran all over Chelsea and East Randolph collecting table scraps for her to eat (as well as grain...) and in the end had a most magnificent feast. That piggie was a loved piggie, and I will forever be grateful to her for what she provided us. The wood to cook the pig was cut by Will's father in the Spring. Will cut and stacked it and let it dry for the summer so it'd be ready. We also grew some vegetables, but most weren't ready to eat by July 14th so I'm not sure how much of that went into our food. When we were first engaged and talking about what we wanted, we came up with an idea to do a pot-luck dinner. Who doesn't love a pot-luck? The gathering of family and friends bringing delicious home-made foods? Yum. I also have an allergy to alliums and it's impossible for me to eat anything. Doing a pot-luck made sense for me and my allergies. Most people don't get what I can/can't eat (not that i expect them to) and so it's impossible for me to eat anything without knowing the exact ingredients. I didn't want to be sick on my wedding. My sister-in-law is an amazing cook and has crazy food allergies herself, so she actually made all of the dressings (for the salads, pig, chicken and fish) and also made up a dish of foods that I could eat. So that was great.
2. Dinnerware: we collected plates from the GoodWill store in Boston back when we were living there. I wrote a post on that awhile back. Then when we moved here, I went to the local thrift shop and spoke with the dear sweet woman that works there. She ended up just giving us stacks of plates to use as we would be returning them all to her when we were finished. Amazing! I gave her a donation when I dropped them off, as all of the profit from her shop goes to help local women/families in need.
3. A woman in town gave us bags of tablecloths to use for the night, and another darlin' friend loaned us her tablecloths from her wedding. We had so many extra that we even had enough to cover the hay bale seating at the ceremony spot. We were going to have to get blankets for the hay bales (rough seating...) but we ended up not having to.
4. Speaking of seating, the hay bales were loaned to us for the night from my little brother's friend. That saved us a lot of money....hay bales are not cheap. We also had picnic tables from around town that our family and friends and community members allowed us to use for the weekend.
5. Flowers. We had a real live flower fairy deliver us GORGEOUS bouquets! A dear friend of Will's aunt grows beautiful flowers, and sometime between five and six, those flowers were delivered and set up all over the orchard. It was magical to walk in and see that.
6. Lighting and music: oh god. this part was so stressful. I can't even go there. But I'll just tell you that my brother is a gem of a man and good lord did he ever save the day. Also, three bests of ours (plus my sweet, sweet nephew) made the playlists which was INCREDIBLE.
7. Photography. A friend of ours is a photographer, and he took all of the photos for us. I can't wait to see them! He's a very busy guy during the summer, so understandably we haven't gotten our photos yet. I can't wait to go over them!
8. Everything else was all DIY, and all projects that I posted on here at some point.
Working on cake toppers and the guest book.
9. One of my brothers (the music/light guy I mentioned above) made a wooden arch for us to get married under. It was so special.
I was so nervous about the kiss for some reason. I actually wanted to practice (hah...excuse to make-out. Sure!) But then Will just swooped in and kissed me and holyshit the pictures make me swoon.
10. Booze. The beer was the most expensive, coming in at somewhere around 300 dollars. We didn't want a dry wedding though, nor a BYOB, so we decided early on we would just do what needed to be done.
whatever, it happened.
11. We had no tent. I knew from the beginning that the weather was going to be outstanding. I just knew it. I also would not accept having a tent at the orchard--it was not a big enough space for that to happen. So no tent it was. I'm not sure what we would have done if it had rained...
12. We went on a honeymoon to a campground in the Northeast Kingdom. We had planned on an intense hiking get-away in Maine, but we were so exhausted after the wedding that the thought of driving ten hours to hike for a few days seemed like torture. So we went to the middle of nowhere in Vermont and had a kick-ass time together. Perfection.
Oh! I can't forget! My brother and sister-in-law surprised us with fireworks AND my best friends Justine and Morgan surprised me and Will with chinese lanterns. Duders, I tell you. Those chinese lanterns made the whole night officially magic.
So there. That's how we spent 2000 dollars. Everyone has come up to us and told us either A. How amazing it was and how glad they were there, or B. How amazing the pictures looked that have been put on Facebook, or C. Word of mouth around town from people that went and said it was an outstanding wedding.
Of course people say that, however I'm going to believe that they're being honest just because it really was the most rocking wedding ever. :)
The End, even though I don't want it to be.
