A Love & Lobster Wedding in Harpswell, Maine ~ Photos

Since it’s Valentine’s Day and we’ve now been married for 3 months + 4 days and pictures of engine projects just don’t seem that romantic… I thought I’d inundate you with our final batch of wedding photos instead 🙂

(I loooooove weddings ~ and photos of our wedding make me *blissfully* happy!!!)

We got so lucky with the weather… The Thursday before we woke up to 2″ of snow on the ground… but our morning dawned bright & beautiful…

Our amazing families all came together and really *made this wedding happen* For example, our gorgeous flowers were put together by my cousins and aunties, and the antique blue mason jars that we used as vases were from Teeter and Jon’s Auntie Dana (aren’t they amazing??)



Since we had originally planned to get married in Mexico, I made “Papel Picado” (the paper cut-outs hanging from the ceiling) one of my wedding crafting projects. The darn things had to be cut out 2-at-a-time, so needless to say my mom and sis got seriously suckered in to helping 🙂

Somehow we got a rustic-burlap-mason-jar-nautical-sail-cloth theme going (if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em). So I bought 100 yards of burlap and made table runners and little place settings… then my awesome sister made hand-filled, hand-wrapped chocolates (with delicious flavours like “white chocolate mango”) for each guest, and I made everyone a lobster bib out of one of Teeter’s old sails (you can just see it peeking out of the top below).






Erin Wild, our fantastic photographer, did a great job of capturing every little detail… including my seaglass engagement ring that Lisa Hall Jewelry custom designed for us.
And the inscriptions in our rings… “A life with Brio” 🙂

My earrings were made by the fabulous Jeanne Costello of Passionate Pearl (she was awesome — I went to her studio and we designed these together, and then because they turned out so wonderfully I had her make earrings for the girls + my mom + a bracelet for Teeter :P)
A few days before the wedding Jon happened to mention that he thought snakeskin was sexy… and I still needed wedding shoes… so… 🙂

I was definitely that little girl that was planning her wedding when she was 5 years old… so the dress was important! However, when I realised that most dresses were in the $2000+ range, I was disgusted. Two boat bucks for a dress I’m going to wear for a day??

A little online research turned up “Love Forever Wedding Dress Alibaba” (of China, of course, where else do wedding dresses come from??) and this gorgeous dress. I had my sis take some late-night measurements, sent off my money, and 10 days later this arrived…


Did I mention that I paid $180 for this wedding dress? Including shipping from China??
We had a fun morning getting ready together…

(more burlap hehehe)












A little quiet moment with my dad before the wedding craziness really began…

And then it was time to get zipped up!
Oh and have a little morning meltdown… this was actually the first time I’d tried to sit down in my wedding dress, and it was kind of… hard. hahaha THIS is what you need to be warned about, not “find the right man” — “find a dress you can comfortably sit in”!! But a little stretching and it was fine, I could sit. Sort of. 😉



Even Jon got roped in (get it? “roped in”?) to helping with this project… making a rope-word wooden wedding sign to announce where the ceremony and reception were being held (he mostly operated the staple gun while I got up to my elbows in Elmer’s glue. Worked pretty well though!!)

The building we had our ceremony in is a Heritage Building that used to be a former library… “Bailey Island Library Hall”

The good looking Tetro brothers…
And my handsome guy with our boys…






Our cutie-pie flower boy had a little fit and chucked the flowers first chance he got (that’s the basket on the ground) and then belted it for his mom at the front hehehe 🙂






Jill Allen, our wedding ceremony officiant, was the *best* and I only wish I could hire her for more of my life events haha. Seriously, she made it easy on us and made the morning as smooth as we could ever have dreamed of (down to having a lobster-candy ready for the flower boy to soothe his unhappy tears!!)

We decided to incorporate an “Ocean Ceremony” in to our wedding, to represent our two coasts coming together. This was the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific coming together to be one…





We had bubbles during our recessional, and Mexican music playing…

I realllly love the bubbles!





A group photo of everyone that attended the wedding ceremony at Bailey Island’s Library Hall in Maine…








And then out to the end of Bailey Island to get some gorgeous photos…



It was a *little* cold, given the November date… but the girls stuck through it (including Jess, who kept getting unceremoniously dumped and positioned on uncomfortable rocks for us!)





And then a couple shots in front of the OBI Fire Department — where Jon is a volunteer.

(the other rope-word wedding sign)
Jess’ fantastic cake that she made for us — she is amazing.

Jon even got a custom Groom’s cake — that’s him slaying the Kraken 🙂

We wanted to make some kind of an entrance to the reception, and Jon and I had spent the morning cooking these 80 lobsters…
So we had the DJ play Beauty and the Beast‘s “Be Our Guest”, and then when Lumiere sang “as the kitchen proudly presents… your dinner!” we came bursting in 😀


And then delivered lobsters to all of our wedding guests (DESPITE many arguments to the contrary, a bride delivering lobsters does not necessarily mean she’ll get covered in lobster juice. Just means she needs to be careful 😛 haha I had to fight hard for this one!!)


Oh and there were more mason jars — these ones with the potato salad and bean salad that we all made…
Since I’d spent weeks sewing lobster bibs out of sail cloth for everyone, I made sure they all wore their damn bibs 🙂





We had some great speeches…








The bride got her… ahem… groove on 😉





And before we knew it, it was all done…


Comments

A Love & Lobster Wedding in Harpswell, Maine ~ Photos — 11 Comments

  1. Absolutely stunning photos Leah! I think they perfectly capture the beauty and mood of your wedding. It was so wonderful to be a part of your special day, and looking at these activated happy memories of that weekend in Maine 🙂

    • Thanks Zachary ~ you stand as the best friend ever for flying from SWEDEN to be there and make it just a perfect day!!
      PS – Tried to tag you in the FB version but you don’t seem to exist there… 😛

    • Nope — although the space would be big enough for a small reception (maybe 40 people?), we had our reception at the Old Orrs Island Schoolhouse; a gorgeous venue that could easily seat up to 200 (we had 70 at our wedding and a big dance floor). Both the Library Hall and the Schoolhouse are fantastic venues though!!

  2. I am so happy to find these pictures! We are having our wedding October 2014 and have been worrying that the space won’t be enough for 70ish people. Glad you posted about how many were there and that there was plenty of dancing space.

    • Hi Mary,

      That is super exciting! We loved both spaces (Library Hall and the Schoolhouse) and I wouldn’t change a thing about the locations!! Schoolhouse is especially great because it has the full kitchen, tables, etc ready to go. The only thing we rented was chairs (because I decided to be the one person who cares about the chairs, and paid $240 to have white chairs…. and in the end, am SO happy I did!!!) and I bought tablecloths (on Amazon, because it was cheaper than renting). I’m sure you’ll have a beautiful wedding there and October will be so pretty!!

      Leah

    • Hmm I don’t actually remember, it was 3 years ago! But I think it was around $300? You could call them directly to find out.

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