Elka and Peter’s Green Farm Wedding

While having a low cost, ecologically friendly wedding on our family farm is not an option for most of us, Elka and Peters deeply sane, green, and family centric wedding philosophy can absolutly inspire each of us. Reach out to your family, your community, your friends, use what you have around you. Celebrate who you are and what you have. Let your love be what reaches up to the rafters, wrap your wedding in love. With that, I’ll let Elka take it away:
Our wedding was held on my family’s land in northern Wisconsin. It is someplace I have planted trees on as a child and ridden horse across. We plan on someday building a green home on it. The reception was held at an historical fishing lodge about two miles away from our land.
The wedding was creative in many ways. I had so many people helping! My little sister Grace helped me make the fabric “Midwest prayer flags” that were hung all over the ceremony and reception site.My aunt-in-law, sister-in-law, and bridesmaid’s husband helped me finish stuffing the little birds we also hung. My father and husband cut down the chuppah poles from our land and constructed it, using fabric I’d sewn for the canopy. My dad also made much of the wine for the reception. My mom and I thrifted over 100 blue and white plates to use as mismatched table settings for the reception dinner. A friend designed our wedding invitations. Farmer friends provided our organic bison and pork, a friend catered and provided the organic food for our reception . . . A writer friend was the officiant, and recited a poem in Arabic. Another friend played “La Vie en Rose” on her accordian, and another friend (who won an NEA grant for her amazing poetry) wrote us a wedding poem, which she read, that used only the letters of my name and my husband’s name. We also had a honey ceremony, using honey from my dad’s beehives. Our photographer set up a camera on a timer and guests took a ton of candid photos, which turned out great. We also provided some activities for our guests, including swimming outings and a farm animal visit for kids.In terms of thrift, we knew there were certain things we didn’t care about, and certain things we definitely did. We borrowed chairs from the local high school for the ceremony, and guests also sat on haybales (grown from my dad’s hay fields) covered with cotton rugs. We spent a lot of money on a really good hot club jazz band, because that was important to us. It was also important for us to have organic and local food, but it was surprisingly inexpensive! We were lucky because my fabulous mother-in-law covered the cost of the reception lodge, which really helped us out.Our flowers were cheap, local, and beautiful, raised by a lady who lived very close to our reception site on her flower farm. Having our wedding in Wisconsin, as opposed to the San Francisco Bay Area, where we live, really helped save money. I also had a second-hand dress (from the 1920s, beaded silk charmeuse, flapper style) which I adored, and which cost a lot less than most dresses, but was of incredible quality, even though it was 80 years old. We also helped to save our guests money by providing them with free or cheap places to stay.Our guests said that our wedding made them feel as if they’d gone back in time, which was really wonderful. Overall, we spent less on our wedding than the average wedding by far, and our wedding was also “green” in many ways.We really felt as if the wedding was sane because it was not just about us. I think that helps you to keep your sanity. It was about a “joining of the tribes” as my mother-in-law put it.We were including our family and friends in every step! From my mom’s cousin, who helped to mow our ceremony site (while drinking a can of Leinenkugels, nice!) to my aunt-in-law sewing 40 of the 100 birds we hung from satin ribbon around the reception site, we were blessed with the presence and helping hands of our friends and family.We also kept things in the family: Our caterer was an old college friend, our photographer our tenant, the meat was raised by neighbors, our flowers were provided by my grandma’s Scrabble friend, our horse and carriage service was provided by my parents’ old high school friend, the wine was made by my dad and having everything so intertwined just made everything that much more special. That much more special, and just right. Thanks Elka. I don’t have a farm, or a dad who makes wine, but I have a happy spirit, and friends and family who love me. Your wedding gives me the impetus to reach out, to give, to receive. May this first day of sharing be a story that you tell your grandkids as you rock them to sleep. Happy, Happy, Elka and Peter. Happy.

What Happened With I Stopped Reading Wedding Blogs*

Remember back when East Side Bride was my first wedding graduate ever? Her first piece of advice was this:

1. Don’t go overboard with the wedding blogs. I know‌. right? They will give you a complex.

At the time, I knew it was good advice, but I wasn’t quite ready to take it. I was still at the sucking-in-wedding-inspiration-with-a-straw point. In fact, I might have been mainlining wedding images into my veins. But whatever, it was TOTALLY HEALTHY, and I DID NOT HAVE A PROBLEM, thanks. I was reading wedding blogs, I was buying wedding magazines, I was under the impression that I needed to maintain some sort of physical wedding “binder,” whatever that was, and even though I was very unclear what I was supposed to be putting into it, I was carefully sticking in images and forms and the like. I was on the job.

But then, one day, something changed. I noticed that 9 out of every 10 wedding blogs/magazines were not making me feel excited about our wedding, they were making me feel tired and overloaded and like I wasn’t living up. Another white dress, another set of favors (and you know favors drive me over the edge), another set of bridesmaid dresses. So I decided, I was going to take East Side’s advice, as an experiment, and stop. I took every wedding blog that didn’t make me feel excited and engaged off my reader. Done.

At first, I didn’t notice anything much. I felt safe and comforted in my little wedding cocoon. I felt like we were all in this together, and everything was going to be just fine. I started feeling very secure in our choices. But I didn’t think much of it. So one day, I was sitting in front of the computer, a bit bored, and I decided to browse on over to some big-wedding-media.

And my eyes popped. You should have seen the astonished look on my face. After a few months of no contact with standard-issue-big-wedding images, the type of weddings you often see had gone from seeming aspirational – what we were all supposed to be living up to – to flat out bananas. Everything draped in pink? Lots and lots of things that inexplicably matched? Endless handmade details all woven together into a overarching theme? Chandlers in the TREES? Instead of seeming delightful and quirky and well thought out, all of this seemed totally out of hand.

Now, none of this is to say you shouldn’t read wedding blogs (achem). None of this is to say you should all have weddings just like mine, or just like each others, or that you can’t have chandeliers in the trees if you want to. BUT. BUT. I think it’s important for each of us to think about what wedding inspiration we’re consuming, and how it is making us feel about ourselves. I talk a lot about how we should find a way to not judge ourselves as we’re planning our weddings, and I really believe that. But I do think that the big-money, big-time, big-energy, One Perfect Day, Your Big Day, The Best Day Of Your Life, The Details Really Matter concept of a wedding that is taken as un-questioned gospel in large parts of the wedding world is damaging. I think it is actually emotionally warping, and is bad news for our sanity, our relationships, and our wallets. It takes our eyes off the prize, it makes us focus on parts of our wedding that really don’t matter (like the favors) instead of focusing on parts of our wedding that really do matter (like the ceremony, or spending time with our loved ones). I think it’s damaging because it makes brides think that they are less-than when they can’t live up to the $100K weddings they are being spoon-fed.

So. Take a moment to think about what wedding magazines you are reading, what wedding blogs you are reading, what images you are consuming. If they are making you feel good about yourself and your decisions, and giving you inspiration and energy, keep reading them! But if you find yourself thinking, “Those brides are out of my league” or “I’m never going to live up to that” or “I’m just not that chic” or “Oh my god, we’re so not doing this right” or “I really want this simple quick wedding, and I guess that’s impossible.” Then step back. Because you are amazing. And you’re going to do it your way, and that is so much better than doing it someone elses way.

And if that’s still not enough, East Side Bride just followed up with some tips for when wedding blogs are getting you down. Yeah. She’s a smart lady.

Now go spin around in your dress, boogie around your living room to your favorite song, kiss your partner, and pour yourself a drink. I think that’s the feeling you’re going for.

*Not all wedding blogs, obviously. Just wedding blogs that didn’t make me feel excited to be myself.