A Mennonite Wedding
Today I’ll take you behind the scenes of my Mennonite wedding. Come along for the photo story of our day, and I’ll tell you about how we survived a flower disaster, what the inspiration for the day was, and what it was like to DIY my wedding flowers and sew my own wedding dress. (I’m Mennonite after all. We DIY almost everything.)
A Mennonite wedding is typically a community effort. If I listed everybody who pitched in to make our day happen, we would be here for a while. Some friends threw a bridal shower and some served a lovely brunch with friends. Some foraged peonies, ironed linens, baked cakes & cupcakes, and mixed up gallons of lemon poppy seed salad dressing late at night (hey, Dani). Others cooked, baked, served, ushered, or DJ-ed my iPhone playlists. There was even a competent posse of young ladies who lit candles, served water, helped wherever needed, and cleaned up. All of them made a relaxed celebration possible for us, and for this we are grateful.
If you want to know more about a Mennonite wedding, here is a post I wrote about them a few years ago. Maybe the most relevant thing to note is that we usually hire a photographer and florist and DIY the rest of the celebration ourselves with the help of friends and family. Because I have experience as a wedding florist, I did my own flowers, too.
Our Wedding Inspiration
The 2020 remake of Emma served up large doses of inspiration for this wedding. I fell in love with the colors, mostly, and thought the film was as elegant as it was humorous. So a picnic to Box Hill became the inspiration for our evening wedding. I know it’s cheesy, but it actually was very helpful in narrowing down the thousands of ideas my brain kept concocting.
Wedding details that were a nod to the film: strawberries (jam, appetizer, cakes), lots of Spring flowers, rich color, checkered napkins/tablecloths (picnic vibe), over trimmed dresses :), children with banners, and fun music.
The Wedding Venue
2022 was the busiest year for weddings since 1984. Because of this we were fortunate to be able to book our preferred wedding venue, Rivercrest Farm, and our photographer, Tiffany Reiff Photography. Finding a videographer proved another story, so I paid a small sum to a few friends with iPhones who got some great behind the scenes footage. (Thanks, Angie & crew!) You can see the video here. Some of you know my sister Rosita (and RDC business partner) also got married this year. You got it… busy year for us!
I’m not too keen on stuffy Mennonite weddings. Those have their place to be sure, but I wanted something a little different. Rivercrest Farm gave us the relaxed celebration we were hoping for. We also chose them because they take care of set up and tear down, which in my opinion is worth the price of admission. The decorating was our job and we had to clear the tables, but everything else was provided, including the charming mismatched china, goblets & flatware, tables and chairs, and lots of vintage furniture pieces. They have a groom’s suite and a bride’s suite where you can both get ready, and the grounds are wheelchair accessible. This is not an ad for them… we just really loved the venue.
Our ceremony was rained out. We had planned to have it in the courtyard by the barn overlooking a pasture, but as the time to start drew closer it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. Our contingency plan was to seat everybody in the reception area. This wasn’t ideal, but we were grateful for the Rivercrest staff & our ushers & others who pitched in to help us roll with this fresh trial. 🙂
A Wedding Flower Disaster
My sister Rosita & I both got married this year. Because we grow and design with flowers here at Root Design Co., the goal was to grow most of our own wedding flowers. We planned a May wedding to coincide with the spring flower abundance from our garden. The previous year we had our best ever crop of foxglove, which bloomed on cue with loads of peonies, nigella, garden roses, bachelor buttons, chamomile, lady’s mantel, larkspur, ranunculus, and Argentine forget me nots. It was a florist’s dream.
So we planted, trimmed, tended, weeded, mulched, and waited. The garden was looking pretty good, even though the craziness of 2 weddings in one year meant that we didn’t get all of the crops in that I wanted. That was OK. I’d order my ranunculus from Sunny Meadows. We soon realized the foxglove hadn’t survived the cold winter very well, but as long as I’d have a few that would be fine. And if all else failed, our 90-ish peony plants looked amazing and should produce a bumper crop. I had a very loose flower plan, because I knew the best garden designs usually happen naturally.
Four weeks before the wedding a quick, furious hail storm destroyed much of the garden, and what wasn’t destroyed outright was delayed for weeks. The peonies, roses, foxglove, snowball bush, bachelor buttons…all toast. Almost nothing I had planned on was going to produce anything. It was a sad day.
All was not lost, though. We have a great rep at Driesbachs in Columbus, OH who was able to fill our last minute flower order, and generous friends who offered their peonies for free. I spent at least $1,500 more than I was planning to on flowers, but that’s just life sometimes.
DIY Wedding Flowers
Doing my own flowers was a lot of work, even if it was fun and blessedly distracting, too. I could never have done it without the help of my sisters who foraged, prepped flowers, designed many tins of flowers for the guest tables, and delivered them to the venue for me. Would I do it again? Absolutely. We’d better ask them, though.
Rusty Tins: my favorite detail from the wedding was the rusty tin cans filled with flowers. I collected empty cans from family and friends in the months leading up to the wedding, brushed them with Plum Brown Barrel Finish to give them some vintage rust :), and added labels I found on flickr. My sisters filled 50 tins with peonies, ranunculus, astilbe, chamomile, bells of Ireland, and roses.
IF YOU WANT TO DIY YOUR WEDDING FLOWERS, we are preparing a bridal bouquet class that will be available for purchase soon. You can sign up for our emails in the side bar to be notified when they are ready.
Sewing My Wedding Dress
This was a project that would have been a lot more fun if there wasn’t a walk down the aisle as the deadline! I first tried to purchase a dress, but after trying on a voluminous tulle skirt and 3 ill fitting dresses I decided to sew my own. My aunt Erma made a pattern for me, and I commenced to making 4 practice dresses first so I could get it just right. My dress took several weeks to sew and had 3 layers (lining, crepe, mesh overlay). I also added a tulle overskirt to it which had several layers as well. I fear Mrs. Elton would have approved. 🙂 I managed to finish it up one whole week before the wedding. (aka, in plenty of time)
A little story: The fabric for my dress came from Joann Fabrics. I’ll never forget the sweet employee who struck up a conversation with me as she cut swaths of crepe and tulle. We chatted about her home country (India) and I mentioned how I had been to India and how I also have an uncle from there. One thing led to another and before I knew it, she asked me to wait for a minute, and came back with one of the still warm samosas that she had smuggled to work in her coat pocket. It was delicious, and I polished it off as she finished with my order. Before I left she said a blessing for my upcoming wedding. What a kind human.
The Appetizers & Meal
We decided to serve the appetizer before the ceremony to encourage a relaxed time. The idea was to have a bit of time to mingle and chat before the ceremony began, so charcuterie cups seemed like a good grab-and-go option that wouldn’t cause a bottleneck. My friend Carolyn agreed to spearhead the appetizer project and went above and beyond with a gorgeous charcuterie spread to boot.
Good food is a must at Mennonite weddings. I always thought a wedding potluck would be charmingly old-fashioned and cool. Logistically it was a little iffy, though, and my mom was excited about planning a good meal. We decided to hire some friends to grill up the chicken and make the salad, potatoes, green beans, and rolls. I guess we “potluck-ed” the desserts, though. My aunts and a few friends brought cakes and cupcakes, which we served with ice cream and coffee. I tapped a few friends to manage the dessert table so the cooks wouldn’t have to do it all.
The Story Of How We Met
We met through mutual friends. When Myron reached out with an offer of friendship in January of 2021 I meant to politely decline. This wasn’t part of my Five Year Plan. He was humble, though, and funny, and my interest was piqued. Before I knew it we were sending emails back and forth every day. One thing led to another, and soon we were meeting at a Cracker Barrel in Cincinnati. It was one of the few restaurants that allowed dine-in during the 2021 phase of the pandemic. We sat on those hard chairs for 5 short hours. There wasn’t much else to do in an unfamiliar city on a 7 degree February day.
What followed was seven months of slippery slope… me losing my grip on a rock solid five year plan and falling in love with a cowboy. Myron is a salt of the earth cattle farmer who lives to make the world a better place. I was immediately drawn to his kindness, composure in the face of mad mama cows, and gentle spirit.
True Story: we were dating for several months before I realized he had two different colored eyes.
So that’s it. That’s the story of our wedding day. You can find a few more photos here.
And if you’re still here, thank-you for reading all the way to the bottom of this post in this small corner of the internet. You’re the real hero, here. 🙂
Cheers!