This is one of those weddings that just sort of soothes your soul. One of those weddings where crazy gorgeous blooms from Spruce Floral and fabulous vintage stylings join forces with a Glen Magna Farms setting that can only be described as amazing. It’s also one of those weddings that simply screams HAPPY. With a bride and groom who are so in love and so full of joy, it’s an entirely new level of wonderful. See every last love-filled moment captured by Arielle Doneson right here in the full gallery.
From the Bride… I’d had plenty of time to envision our wedding as Tom and I had been dating for a decade before he proposed (on our 10th anniversary)! We met as freshmen in college and have been together ever since, studying abroad together in Spain and moving from Boston to New York a few years ago. We knew from the beginning we wanted our wedding to be natural and easy, very personal, very “us.”
Although we now live in Brooklyn, we always knew we would get married in the Boston area since that was where we met and spent a good seven years of our relationship. A bridesmaid of mine sent me some venues to look at, one of which was Glen Magna Farm, a beautiful old mansion with gardens all around it, just outside of Boston. I knew I wanted the feel to be a little rustic while still being elegant and romantic, incorporating vintage details throughout.
I knew I wanted the girls to be ethereal and bohemian in long chiffon dresses. They wore varying muted tones of lavender, taupe and gray and my sister, as my maid of honor, was in moss green. The ceremony was under a pergola of old stone columns and wisteria and the girls looked incredible with all the vibrant green around them. Their jewelry was mostly vintage, all of which I found in Brooklyn flea markets over the summer. The boys looked so cute in their skinny suspenders and succulent boutonnieres and Tom was very handsome and dapper in his custom three piece suit!
I really wanted to incorporate as many fun and personal details as I could. There was an underlying travel theme which stemmed from an idea I’d had years ago to use names of places we’d traveled and/or lived together as the table numbers. I found old maps online, printed them on linen paper and placed them in vintage frames I found on Etsy and eBay. There were no escort cards; instead we used a world map where guests had to find their name and were then directed to their “destination.” Our “guest book” was an old globe we found at a flea market on the Cape.
Our florist understood our vision from the get-go. We decided to use several small textural arrangements, which she put in all different kinds of vintage glass vessels. She also had the idea to incorporate lanterns, larger on some tables, smaller on others. No two tables were the same. We used the girls’ beautiful wildflower bouquets as the arrangements lining the long head table, placed atop burlap runners. There were lavender sprigs and bunches everywhere.
As the favors, we had trees planted in the name of each guest to re-populate the Atlantic forest of Brazil, a place close to Tom’s heart as he lived there for several years with his family. We wrapped little ferns in twine and placed them on the bread and butter plates with attached tags explaining what they were to our guests.
We wanted our signature cocktails to really be signature, so we did a Maracuja Caipirinha for Tom, a nod to his time in Brazil and his love for their cocktails. Mine was an Iced Green Tea, which was a delicious fusion of green tea, vodka, honey and lemon with a large sprig of mint, because as anyone who knows me knows, I am never without a huge iced green tea in the summer. They were named “The Peep” and “The Caitie B” respectively, for nicknames that started small and have stuck with us over the years.
Photographs were of course hugely important, especially since we decided not to have a videographer, but to have our guests pass around a handheld video camera instead in order to get some different perspectives. Arielle was totally into our whole concept, super excited about the details and captured it all beautifully. We couldn’t have been happier with her!
Our friends and family helped more than they’ll ever know, from my mom hemming lace tablecloths and painstakingly wrapping those little ferns with my sister and mother-in-law in the backyard, to my aunt printing a million custom labels and dipping chocolate pretzels for our hotel goody bags, from Tom’s sister helping stuff invitation envelopes and scouring flea markets with me to my girls frosting homemade cupcakes the morning of the wedding, this really was a labor of love. And it wasn’t just the girls – my dad went on more than one hunt for the perfect decanters and when it was discovered the night before the wedding that the best man had been sent the wrong suit, the groomsmen came together to get the right one the day of- tailored to fit just in time!
All in all, the night was natural and easy, which was exactly what we wanted it to be. It couldn’t have been more “us.”
Photography: Arielle Doneson Photography | Floral Design: Spruce Floral | Gown: Nicole Miller | Invitations: Post Script Brooklyn | Ceremony Venue: Glen Magna Farms | Shoes: Badgley Mischka | Catering: Fireside Catering | Band: Live Radio | Venue: Glen Magna Farms