Melissa and Alex’s Bootjack Farm Wedding Photography

I met Melissa and Alex early wedding morning for a ritual they’ve been doing for years: sharing a [fairly large] French press of coffee.  We all wandered around Bootjack Farm while they walked me through the timeline while I secretly admired their incredible organizational and planning abilities. Their seating chart was unbelievable: there were 20+ categories used to find your name – things like “Has Camped With Mel/Alex” or “Describing Me As a Foodie Might be an Understatement and Mel/Alex Always Have Thirds When I Cook”.  And their Save the Dates were a limited edition block print.  And they made their own invites (and they were gorgeous!).

Not long later Mel and Alex went their separate ways until the First Look early in the afternoon, then we took care of the family portraits before the evening ceremony.  You’ll see from the pictures that Melissa was a pretty emotional woman who had to keep hydrated so she didn’t run out of tears.  One of the most powerful moments I’ve ever experienced at a wedding happened when Melissa and Alex paused during their recessional to take in all the love coming their way from their 170 guests.  I am not sure that couples always realize how loved they are because ceremonies are a blur, but Mel and Alex’s intentional pause to take it all in was emotional for all of us.

Day two began with a hike to nearby Bootjack Lake for a wonderfully refreshing swim.  A dolphin an a unicorn came along, which were highly entertaining.  The afternoon was filled with an intense tie-dye station put together by Melissa and Alex’s mothers and the beginning rounds to a Scandinavian game called Kubbing.  I don’t know that there is a good one sentence summary for this game, but it involves knocking over your opponent’s wooden blocks, then having to throw backwards through your legs to knock over the last center block to win the game.  There was also a card game with grandma, bocce ball, bubble blowing, and corn hole.  Kubbing progressed throughout the day until the final championship round (dubbed the First International Whitefish Kubbing Invitational, or something like that) in the waning moments of light.  Once darkness set in there was a little dancing (though the wedding night dancing might have worn everybody out) and some light stick dancing/waving.

Sometimes I include stories of how the couple met or got engaged and I especially liked this one:

“Alex proposed after driving cross country from New Hampshire, after finishing architecture school when he and I had been living on opposite sides of the country for almost 4 years. He stepped out of the car at our apartment in San Francisco (which he hadn’t actually ever seen before) and proposed that instant. I was shocked and so happy. We had spent a lot of time visiting each other and it was so wonderful to be living in the same place again.”