Our wedding – honeymoon acres

October 6, 2018

 We got married at Heather’s family farm in Ramsey, NJ surrounded by our favorite two & four-legged companions, we did it exactly like we wanted to. After an extremely wet summer and fall in New Jersey, we were struggling to get any of the sunflowers up and puddles dried around the property. We considered tenting it when we were originally wedding planning, and were very glad that we hadn’t when that whole area was underwater after nonstop rains! My uncle initially told us that we could use “any part of the property” – but – “don’t touch my garage”. So we decided to have it in the garage.

The garage is actually an extension of the barn and where he runs his landscaping business out of. We tirelessly cleaned out all of the trucks and grease spots and strung up edison lights along all of the rafters. After the rentals arrived and tables were set with my grandmother’s old plates, you never would have known that just a few days beforehand, the space was just a big storage area for equipment. We wanted to leave everything on the walls to celebrate that space — shovels, nuts and bolts, planks of wood, tools, and of course the playboy calendars. Fear not, we made little cover-ups for their naughty bits and had my sister’s pastor-fiancé come up with the most clever quotes for them, i.e. “modesty is hottesty”. Amazing.

We turned the gazebo into our cocktail hour bar and the potting shed into the “Scotch-Shed”, which quickly became the most popular 14’x14’ hangout for those who enjoy the finer things in life, AKA whiskey and cigars. The rest of the farm was decorated with pumpkins, mums, corn stalks, and princess lights. The animals were bathed and flower-crowned and everything came together in due time. Instead of a traditional rehearsal dinner, we hosted a thin-crust pizza party and mala bead ceremony which was amazing. In the meantime, we were busy prepping our homemade pasta that would feed 100+ people the following day.

Food and hosting has always been super important to us, so when we were thinking about catering options, nothing felt quite right. We toyed with the idea of doing a fun food truck scene but ultimately, our hearts have always been in the kitchen and we just couldn’t imagine not making the food ourselves. It is such a huge part of what we do as a couple, and it had to be part of our wedding story. So, for two tireless days before the wedding, we handmade pounds and pounds of fresh pasta… kneading the dough with our trusty KitchenAid and pressing raviolis together. We had huge pots of scratch sauces simmering, and for 48 hours, the house smelled amazing (but looked like a bomb went off)! In the end, we got to serve 100+ guests ourselves, and it was the best dinner party we’ve ever hosted.

The whole night was spent dancing under the lights and drinking scotch in the shed (a perfect evening in my opinion). We had speeches and surprises, pumpkin pies, and we got thrown up in chairs for the hora, even though we’re not actually Jewish! Oh, and pro tip— don’t use folding chairs for the hora… seems like a no-brainer but I got absolutely squished up there! We passed around a whiskey bottle on the dance floor to One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer and at one point, Terrence ended up shirtless. So many wholesome memories haha, but we rallied until the dawn’s early light and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way!