Katie Wanders : Our Wedding (recap and video) - August 9th, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 really forced people to rethink how they were able to get married. Truth be told, we always wanted to elope and COVID actually made it easier for us to do just that when we explained our intimate and not-so-inclusive plans to friends and family.

It was always in our plan to skip the big party and instead, focus on the real meaning of the day to us. The wedding industry felt like far too much for me... too much glitz and glam, too much of people spending astronomical amounts of money on a day they barely get to enjoy while trying to greet their 200 guests. Invoices for food and decor easily adding zeros without question just because the word "bride" was involved.

According to The Knot 2017 Real Weddings Study, couples spend an average of $33,391 on weddings. Depending on where you live, this number can be even higher. Your average wedding in Connecticut is $47,435. Over forty-seven thousand dollars for a day.

Family Photo - Swell and Stone

Reception - Swell and Stone

It's not even just about the price, it was about the experience too. So many times I had been to a wedding where the guest count was in the triple digits and I was lucky if I got a quick word in with the bride or groom. We always had fun enjoying the often mediocre food paired with an endless supply of alcohol on the dancefloor. For me, so many of these weddings just felt the same, more of a party than honoring the day two people vowed to spend their lives together.

Lobster Bake

I'm not here to boo anyone who did that $50,000 wedding or the big party, it's your right and your finances after all but for us, we knew that wasn't what we wanted. It wasn't what was important to us. In our 30's, our priorities had shifted and we decided to invest in our house and have a small intimate ceremony that allowed us to spend quality time with the people who meant the most to us, our family. By keeping our numbers to our immediate family, we were able to spend money on items that were really important to us. For me, it was my dress, the photographer, the location, and the food. The flower, the cake, and the decor was not a priority for either of us and so, we were able to really move around our funds to the things that really mattered. It was really important to have the photos commemorating the day and by eloping, you have a lot more flexibility on where you can take your photos. In Katie Wanders style, I was pretty set on having our wedding photos taken in a National Park.

Olive at Grace On The Lake

Adam and his brother Nick

If you know me, I mean know me, you know I like to keep my life pretty private. This blog is a catalog of my adventures and sort of serves as an online diary if you will, cataloging my life over the years. I wasn't sure if I wanted to share the video or some of the details but figured this has been my best adventure yet.

Our original plan was to elope with our immediate family in Yosemite National Park in California. I rented a huge house just outside the park where we would all stay, enjoying more of a family vacation with a wedding in the middle. We had been talking about a family vacation for the last few years and our wedding was the perfect excuse to make it happen. After the elopement, we were going to have a very casual get together with extended family and friends to celebrate. We rented a food truck (sliders), hired a band, and found a few bartenders to serve beer and wine to our family and friends. 2020 was not the best year to plan a wedding and as the pandemic changed the way we lived, it changed the way we celebrated. We decided it wasn't safe to put my immunocompromised father through an airport and on a plane and had to do some rethinking on the elopement front. We canceled the after-party entirely as there was no safe way to include a larger guest list, even at a laid back food truck event like the one we had planned.

Our amazing photographer, Kat Carney of Swell and Stone was wonderful in helping us switch our plans in the midst of the pandemic. After months of planning a Yosemite elopement, we shifted gears and toyed around with some local destinations fit for an adventure elopement. We started looking around the Adirondacks of New York, the Green Mountains of Vermont, the Whites of New Hampshire and the coastline of Maine. We ended up centering our search around the house, trying to find somewhere to house the 18 of us at a reasonable price - something good for the kids and something scenic enough to host an intimate reception. My sister is actually the one who found Grace On The Lake and after a few minutes of flipping through photos of the property, we decided we would marry in Maine. The best part? This gorgeous lakefront property was only an hour from Acadia National Park. It wasn't Yosemite, but it was a pretty amazing second choice.

One of the five cottages - Grace On The Lake

Main House Grace On The Lake

Blue Building by the water Grace On The Lake

Adam's nephew with the dogs

The dogs roaming the property

Lakefront - Grace On The Lake

Grace On The Lake offered a large three-bedroom main house with a commercial kitchen, a screened-in patio, and a large living area; five guest cabins; a boathouse full of floats, paddleboards, and kayaks; a barn style building where a reception could be held on a rainy day and best of all, 100 acres of serenity and lakefront property. It was dog-friendly and very secluded with no immediate neighbors around and the dogs had the time of their lives running around the property. We immediately envisioned our families enjoying this summer trip together, each with their own cabin (especially important with COVID). We planned to spend our days playing in the lake and our evenings with good food and company, celebrating togetherness. This is exactly what we did during the four days we rented the property. There was no agenda the first few days - you could go for a swim, take one of the kayaks out for a paddle, float in the warm water, or nap the day away in the cabin. On our way to the house, Adam and I stopped at BJs and whipped up breakfast, lunch and dinner in the commercial kitchen that made feeding a group pretty painless.

The last two days we spent a bit more time prepping for the wedding as my mother in law and I baked up a cake (from a $2 box mix) and my sisters and mom worked on flower arrangements (bulk flowers shipped to the house for a fraction of the price of the florist). The guys moved tables under the oak trees and hung string lights between their branches. For our "rehearsal" day, we did a quick run-through by the lake and enjoyed a traditional New England style lobster bake cooked in the firepit outside and catered by the local farm. The lobsters were pulled out of the water that morning, the potatoes and corn were grown right in the state of Maine.

Bulk flowers from Flower Moxie

Table Setting - Lobster Bake

Lobster Bake

His and Hers Lobsters

Our wedding day (highlight video here) was a relaxed day of swimming in the lake, getting ready, and the perfect intimate ceremony down by the water. My sister of The Well Dressed Table was in charge of decor, flowers, and the table setting. My brother married us and my nephews brought us our rings. The dogs sat patiently with the guests and we said our I Do's on a humid summer day in Maine. After the ceremony, we all snacked on a cheese plate before everyone made their way up the lawn to the house where the caterers would be back to prepare dinner. While dinner was being finished, we did a few traditional dances before sitting down to an amazing meal from the same local farm. Dinner was locally made bread, a green salad, and a surf and turf combo of steak and shrimp with smashed potatoes and a veggie medley. Red wine, white wine, local beer and champagne were passed down the table. We all agreed it was an incredible meal, and an incredible day really and after dinner, we enjoyed a vanlla cake and some exciting news we couldn't wait to share with our family. We broke bread with a view of the lake, we sat outside under the twinkle of the milky way with the addition of string lights and an abundance of candles. Our photographer snapped some beautiful photos commemorating the day and a videographer captured the highlights, a way to share the experience with friends and family.

First Look - Swell and Stone

Swell and Stone

Swell and Stone

Katie and her siblings - Swell and Stone

Adam and his siblings - Swell and Stone

Dinner Salad

Boquet made by Ashley

Reception Table - Swell and Stone

Swell and Stone

Swell and Stone

Swell and Stone

Swell and Stone

Swell and Stone

The next day, we packed up the house and while our siblings headed back south to the Connecticut shoreline, our parents joined us for a few days farther up north at Bar Harbor/Acadia National Park. We checked into the beautiful Holiday Inn Resort Bar Harbor and checked into our room with ocean views. The grounds were also beautiful and we spent some time by the pool before grabbing our wedding clothes and heading to Acadia National Park.

At the park, we met Kat and made our way to the trailhead for our first set of photos. We traversed the first half-mile in normal hiking clothes before slipping into our wedding clothes for the rest of the trail. I was wearing my very fitted wedding dress (paired with hiking shoes) while Adam was wearing his suit and tie (also with his hiking boots for safety's sake among the slippery iron rungs). He had to help me traverse large climbs including sections of ladders and rungs as we made our way along the Beehive Trail. We had a blast smooching our way along the trail and laughing as we navigated the rungs in formal clothes. We joked about how nice it would be to have a photographer follow us around on all our hikes and enjoyed the views and the perfect weather. The trail was insanely beautiful and the pictures that Kat took will hang on our walls for a lifetime. After hiking the Beehive, we made our way to Otter Point where the fog and the sunset provided a moody backdrop that made us feel like we were in Alaska. After parting ways with Kat, we had a late dinner in Bar Harbor and planned two more days of adventures with our family in the park. We hiked some of the park's most famous trails, we had lunch with a view of the lake, and we drove around the National Park in awe that the New England weather had been so good to us all week long.