Today’s wedding is a huge treat for me, because it is like no wedding I’ve ever seen. Kerstin and Jacob’s wedding is old fashioned in the very best sense of the word – handmade and thoughtful. The wedding leaps off the screen as joyful, vibrant, and full of love. It’s a wedding made by a community. Kerstin, take it away:
The scene: We had the wedding at the Prairie Woods Environmental Learning Center which is about 5 miles from where I grew up in rural Minnesota. The Learning Center is a vast expanse of prairie and wooded area, with a couple of buildings for events. We had our ceremony outdoors (thank the universe that it was the only beautiful Saturday in September!) overlooking a field of native prairie (meaning it has never been mowed, plowed, etc. — it’s just the way Minnesota prairies used to be hundreds of years ago!). There were a lot of yellow jackets — my husband got stung – and a little gopher made his way under my skirt for one part of the ceremony! No one noticed but me and my sister, who was the maid of honor – but I thought it was pretty funny…
What made our wedding creative: Our wedding was creative because Jacob & I created it ourselves, from the heart, to reflect our personalities and our values. We literally started with a blank slate, and we made all of our decisions very intentionally – from the site, to the food, to the flatware (made out of corn, and the plates were out of sugarcane fiber!). 
We designed, printed, punched, and addressed the invitations, programs, and thank you cards together A dear friend of ours officiated the ceremony, and we worked with him a couple of weeks beforehand to nail down the casual ‘feel’ that we were going for, and the spiritual aspect as well. My mom made my dress. We decorated with things that we already owned. We registered with a local potter to make place settings and serving pieces for us – we were unsure of how this would go but it was a real hit! 
I also painted & wrote a Quaker Marriage Certificate that everyone signed after the ceremony rather than having a guestbook — which turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the day.
What made our wedding thrifty: I believe the whole thing came in under $3000. The site was a huge bargain (but don’t tell them that!), we got our flowers from a local garden owner who picked us two five gallon pails for cheap We got all of our food from Costco and a local fish market (an array of assorted smoked fish), I made our cakes and we also purchased truffles for a great price from a friend of my mom’s. Next to the site fee, the most expensive thing was the band, which was also a real bargain and did a bang-up job – who can beat live blue grass music at a prairie wedding!? We had a very talented friend take the photographs for us for just the cost of developing the black and white pictures. And, of course, my mom made my dress (which only ended up being $80 worth of fabric in the end — and a priceless amount of work), and my sister/maid of honor made all of the jewelry!
What made our wedding sane: I think that having it in a setting that is most focused on nature helped to keep the whole day sane for me. The prairie, the colors, and just the open air allowed me to breathe and just take it all in. 
Our ‘wedding elves’ were all of our friends – and we could not have had such a perfect day without their tireless efforts. But – doing all of the work leading up to the ceremony (which wasn’t until 5:00 p.m.) really helped to take the pressure off – I had seen Jacob all day long as we went about our separate tasks, we had a fun moment after we both went to get ready and we saw each other for the first time in our wedding attire, but we were really able to relax and just enjoy the time with friends and family, and with each other. 
It also helped that we had the ‘groom’s dinner’ on Thursday night, then a potluck dinner on Friday, and the wedding on Saturday – so we had a lot of opportunities to connect with people, which was wonderful! It was great to have extra time with family and friends – who had come from all over the United States. After the wedding, we all went out to a nearby state park, had a campfire, sang songs, and danced in the moonlight.
A huge bottom of my heart thank you to both of you for sharing your day with us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wedding quite like this one, and it melts my heart. This is what a wedding should be about. Here is wishing you many happy years together. May your wedding day be the start of a long adventure.
Kerstin & Jacob’s Magical Prairie Wedding
