As you may or may not know, we got married last month. Many of you wrote to wish us well, and we can't tell you how much that means! Thank you!
Since then, several of you have asked us to share more details about the event, so we're dedicating this post to just that. We haven't yet gotten our photos back from the photographer we hired, but our friend William Waybourn, along with a few others, took some amazing photos, so we thought we'd share them with you.
(And who knows? Maybe we'll even do another post when we do get the rest of the photos!)
First off, the entire wedding weekend was amazing. We were so lucky to have close friends able to join us. Our friends Drew and Ralph, who get name-checked here a lot on the blog, hosted all of our out-of-town guests on Friday night for a wine-and-dessert reception at their house, which was the perfect start to the weekend.
But we really lucked out on Saturday, especially when it came to the weather. It was just a perfect, beautiful day. If you read our announcement in the New York Times, you may have seen that we were married in our apartment. That is technically true, as we were able to be legally married in D.C., but we held our wedding and reception on a farm near Rockville, Md.
The farm -- actually called the Agricultural History Farm Park -- constists of an historic home and barn now owned by Montgomery County. It's used for agricultural education programs and farm events, like harvest festivals. It's a gorgeous setting -- in the suburbs just 15 miles north of D.C., but a world away. You feel like you're really out in the country.
Incidentally, we were the first people to rent this barn out for a private event, but the county wants to continue doing it. We absolutely loved it, but it's not for everyone. It's very do-it-yourself. We'd decorated the barn ourselves with string lights and lots of candles in Mason jars.
Zach's mom Brenda and sister Cassidy, along with our friend Katie, made the bouquets, which looked great!
So here's how the evening went! As guests arrived at the barn, they were treated to a glass of prosecco.
We milled around for a bit, and then everyone headed over to a huge evergreen tree near the farmhouse: We all stood under the tree and that's where Clay and Zach got married. There was a bit of crying...
But happiness too!
Zach's stepfather, Kent, served as our officiant and was just brilliant.
The ceremony was brief, or at least brief enough that the guests were not seated. Once the ceremony was over, we all walked back to the barn for the party.
So what about the food?
Well, as you know, food's pretty important to us. We really wanted the food at our wedding to be special. (For a brief period of idiocy, Zach actually thought we should cook the food ourselves. Fortunately, Clay gently convinced him what a disastrous idea that was.)
So we found a caterer we just fell in love with. His name is Oliver Friendly, and his company is Eat & Smile Foods. Eat & Smile focuses on locally grown and raised ingredients from D.C. farmers markets (in fact, we run into Oliver now almost every Sunday at the Dupont Circle farmers market!). AND he smokes his own bacon, which pretty much sealed the deal for us right there.
Anyway, here's a rundown of our menu. Sorry, no photos of this stuff yet, but hopefully later. Rather than having a sit-down meal, which we thought might be overly formal for the venue, we did lots of rounds of heavy, passed hors d'oeuvres. Here's what we served:
MENU
- Baby BLTs with Homemade Bacon
- Gruyere Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Caramelized Onions
- 36-Hour Smoked Pulled Pork BBQ Sandwiches with Homemade Pickle and Slaw
- Mini Crabcakes with Roasted Corn Slaw
- Pork-and-Scallion Wontons
- Vegetable Wontons
- Soup Shots
- Sweet Pea with Thai Basil
- Roasted Corn
- Mushroom with Homemade Bacon
For dessert, we dispensed with the cake and went with pie instead, serving an assortment of mini-pies from Dangerously Delicious, a pie shop here in town (the original location is in Baltimore).
We served four different flavors: peach, blueberry, chocolate-peanut butter, and a Dangerously Delicious specialty, the Baltimore Bomb. To make the Bomb, they take traditional Baltimore-made Berger cookies, which are shortbread cookies dipped in fudge, crumble them up and bake them into what is essentially a chess pie. It's phenomenal. If you're not salivating right now, there's something wrong with you.
We hired a gypsy jazz band called Hot Club of DC for atmosphere. There was a bit of dancing, but most of the rest of the party was cocktail-style, with guests milling around, or gathering at tables to chat and eat.
For a bit of randomness, there were alpacas living in the bottom floor of the barn. They were probably the most photographed attendees besides Zach and Clay.
As the night wore on, the setting changed quite a bit. These next two photos are ones that our photographer, Katie Stoops, supplied to the Farm Park to help publicize the space.
So that's it! An incredibly special, magical night for us.
Thank you again to all of you who continue to support our blog with your time, your comments and your inspiring emails. We've learned so much from all of you, and we appreciate your support and inquisitiveness when it came to our wedding.
We'll leave you with our favorite photo of the evening, also taken by William. And we'll share more photos once we've seen them all.
