our wedding

from the start, stell and i wanted the same thing: a quiet and relaxing outdoor wedding shared with our closest family and friends. it also had to be personal; store bought decor and hired wedding planners just didn’t seem right to us. so with only a couple months to pull it all together, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work making, gathering, designing, and organizing all the things we felt would make our day perfect. while we knew it would be a ton of work, we knew it’d be worth it (let me pause to give a huge thank you to our family and friends for lending their help along the way). and in the end, it was. our wonderful friend married us under an arbor i build from sticks collected in the surrounding woods. our vows, our own. my necktie? handmade by stell. our invitations? hand typed and painted with help from stell’s matron of honor.  all flowers, including the bouquets and boutonnieres, were purchased from local farmers and arranged by us. bottles, wooden crates, hand sewn napkins, wooden chairs – all collected in the weeks before. stell’s aunt drove over 2,000 miles from california to bake the most delicious wedding cakes, and it all happened in the backyard of the most gracious hosts – my brother and his wife.

i could go on for hours with all the details that made it such a memorable day, but i feel our photographer mae did such a spot on job documenting every last one of them. i’ll let her pictures below and in our slideshow tell the rest of our story.