Grayfields Farm Wedding in New Jersey
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Gray + Laura
I’ve always told people who don’t believe in ghosts that I’d pay for them to stay in a legit haunted house or hotel room. It’s not that I think that it’s actually dangerous but more that it will scare them in the same way I used to be scared of the monsters under my bed (that is, unless I leapt from the bed, in which case, they couldn’t reach me). Now I haven’t had a paranormal experience in a long time—but the photo that Heather took of Laura and Gray at their farm wedding in New Jersey this past weekend—that was the good kind of paranormal. The kind of feeling you get when someone you lost is there with you, watching over you.
Lens Flare? Don’t Care
During Laura and Gray’s golden hour session, they decided to stop by the pine tree that they planted for Gray’s late father, Chris. As they settled into a few poses, Heather kept noticing a flare following Gray around wherever he went. At first she thought it was a lens flare but the way it moved and the way it appeared she ruled that out. Then, as they went to the next spot, Laura and Gray’s favorite tree on their property on the other side of the house, the same flare appeared. Whether or not you believe in ghosts or the many other explanations for how that light appeared, I don’t really care. What I saw and what I felt gave me the sense of presence of life after death and that our energy lives on. This is the positive reality that I choose to believe in.
DIY Weddings
Weddings don’t have to be one-size fits all. You can prioritize or de-prioritize wedding details according to your needs. Laura and Gray didn’t want to have a lot of moving parts so they decided to host it on their gorgeous family farm in Allamuchy, NJ. They did, however, want the food to be amazing so they splurged on a high-quality caterer. They brought in a band, tent, tables, and a trailer restroom and had themselves a wedding to remember. Don’t get overwhelmed with details, instead, choose things that represent your priorities.
Relaxed Wedding Vibes
I always say that the vibe of a wedding comes from the top-down. If the bride and groom are relaxed, everyone else will fall in line, logistics included. Laura and Gray decided to have a more casual attire, jackets optional, because they wanted their guests to be comfortable in the August heat. Many think that the c-word (casual) is an invitation for friends and family to wear cargo shorts and a tuxedo t-shirt, but what happens more often than not is a dressed down, comfortable chic look. I for one, am heavily in favor of moving away from full suits or tuxedos during summer weddings, preferring a more customizable, fashionable style that Gray and his brothers absolutely crushed. Ladies, as for what you decide to wear, the floor is yours!
Laura and Gray’s wedding is one that will stick to me for a long time; if not for the spirituality, or the relaxed vibes, then it is because Capa got to come along. With a bunch of other little ones in attendance, the Grayfields wedding was the perfect blend of family and fun, class and comfort. Cheers guys!
It’s us!
The whole fam with Gray and Laura at polo the day after their amazing wedding. Reach out for your own photo needs below!
Equestrian Wedding Photos
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Helen + Sam’s Wedding
The first wedding of a triple-header weekend feels like the first lap around the track when running a mile. Your pace is good, energy is high, and you think to yourself, “I got this, this is going to be easy!” Lucky for us, Helen and Sam’s equestrian wedding at John Jay Homestead was the perfect mix of their fun personalities to get our weekend off on the right foot!
John Jay Homestead Wedding Photos
The best part about having a wedding on a blank canvas historical site like John Jay’s Homestead in Katonah, NY, is how customizable it is. Yes, you have to do the legwork to bring everything in, but the result is a wedding that reflects the most important aspects of a couples relationship. Take Sam and Helen’s wedding for example: they held their ceremony behind one of the many picturesque, historical buildings, and branded a cowhide rug at the ceremony’s conclusion. From there, their guests moved onto cocktail hour in the garden while the staff put the finishing touches on their reception space under a pristine white tent. Helen and Sam decided to bring in food trucks rather than a catering company, and had a mechanical bull (!!), and a bunch of other carnival games scattered about the grass. You won’t see these details at your local country club.
Equestrian Wedding Photographer
We knew going into Helen and Sam’s wedding that wedding photos with their horses were at the top of their priority list. Right after the ceremony, their horses, Pacman and Pepper, arrived to the property, and we found a great shaded spot for them to stay cool while we corralled them. Taking photos of horses can feel like trying to take photos of 2,000 pound children who can’t be bothered to look at the camera, but Pacman and Pepper did a great job! Helen even jumped on Pacman bareback—the kind of no-frills bride we absolutely LOVE to work with! Do what YOU WANT TO DO on your special day!
Personalized Wedding Details
Whether it’s something blue, a pair of cufflinks, a watch, belt buckle, tie clip, or cowboy hat—make sure you grab a little something for yourself to show off on your wedding. Heather and I had “bad cop” and “good cop” stitched into our respective wedding garments for our celebration. We always joked that when we had a kid that these would be our roles. As for Helen and Sam, they trekked down to Fort Worth, Texas, to get some American-made, custom cowboy hats for their wedding day. They both dazzled in them and wore them like badges of honor. No faux cowboys or cowgirls here, just a couple horse lovers through-and-through.
Golden Hour Photos
We finished Helen and Sam’s wedding day with some absolutely stunning golden hour photos! They strolled the grounds, already reflective and ecstatic with how their wedding day went, and shared a few beautiful moments before we headed home.
vendors
Photography | Apollo Fields
Venue | John Jay Homestead | Katonah, NY
Tent | Cartwright and Daughter’s
Bar | Bar-a-Cudas
Food Trucks | Brooklyn Boys @southbrooklynboyspizza | Three Little Pigs | Taco Loco | Waffle Cabin
DJ | Lakeside Productions
Floral | Maple Field Floral
Planner | LCR Events
Concessions | Conrad’s Concessions
Carnival Games | Just 4 Fun Entertainment | Ovation Events
Hair/Makeup | Beautify by Celeste
Transportation | Red Oak Transportation
Howdy, friends!
We had such a blast with Sam and Helen! Reach out today for your own photography.
The Ethel Walker School Wedding Photography
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Jess & Dan’s Wedding
I don’t know exactly when we became the unofficial Ethel Walker’s alumni wedding photographers--but after photographing Jess and Dan’s ceremony in the chapel on campus--it’s pretty safe to say “‘08 Don’t Hate!” That was the hilarious motto for Heather’s graduating class, which was less than 40 students. I love watching Heather talk to her old classmates and share the questionable teenage stories that are made of pure nostalgia. It’s like listening to The Goonies talk about their adventures, or hearing “Green Onions” come on when The Sandlot boys are walking on their turf to talk some trash. Nostalgia is so powerful because it connects senses (smells, tastes) with memories that immediately transport us back to a place in time. I’m just happy to be taking photos and coming along for the ride.
I’ve learned as a photographer that the lighting in churches is typically terrible. That being said, the chapel on Ethel Walker’s campus has pure New England church vibes. It has that immaculate white spire that pierces cloudless blue skies, and clean, dark wooden pews that contrast with all the white on the inside. The large, long windows allow natural light to pour in from all directions. There was an aura in the air during Jess and Dan’s ceremony, almost like an atmospheric halo floating above their guests’ collective heads. It’s probably one of the most divine scenes that I’ve experienced in a church.
After the ceremony, we borrowed Jess and Dan and took them up the hill from the church to take some romantics. The sun is already setting so early so we have to be precise when it comes to golden hour in the beautiful fall months. Jess and Dan danced around in the same space that Heather used to jump horses, with a quintessential New England backdrop in the background. Every time we have one of these perfect moments it makes me sad that Heather and I never quite got a romantics session for our own wedding. Between hosting it on Heather’s uncle’s farm, the on-and-off rain, and welcoming our guests, we simply didn’t carve out enough time. It does make me immensely happy to help deliver this experience to our couples like Dan and Jess, though!
From there we headed to The Riverview in Simsbury, Connecticut, a venue that we have worked at a few years ago. We rolled right into cocktail hour as the night came on quickly. Heather and I got to catch up with a few more of her classmates before dinner was served and dances and speeches began. Once the music kicked off people hit the dance floor and it was all partying from then on!
Heather and I are enjoying the connections she has to Ethel Walker and the friends of her past. We got a small tour of the gorgeous campus before Jess and Dan’s ceremony and we even found a mural that Heather painted back in 2008. It still hangs in the infirmary, right behind one of the nurses that has worked there since Heather was a student. As our partnership goes into its seventh year it’s always wonderful to see sides of Heather I haven’t seen before. Judging by all of the interactions with her friends and teachers it’s obvious that everyone knew that Heather was going somewhere. I’m just grateful that she was heading towards me.
Enjoy these photos from Dan & Jessica’s Simsbury, CT wedding:
Vendors
Photography | Apollo Fields
Ceremony Location | The Ethel Walker School | Simsbury, CT
Reception Venue | The Riverview | Simsbury, CT
Back in my old stomping grounds…
And always up for a CT reunion. Reach out for your own wedding photography!
Farm Wedding at The Pines Barn in Glastonbury, CT
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Jacki & Tim’s Wedding
If you’re ever driving to Connecticut from Long Island with a baby—here’s a piece of advice—take the ferry. One of the things Heather and I learned from bringing Capa to 11 states in his 10 months of life is that an extra hour or two in transit can kill you. There’s a tiny margin of error for a small human whose only form of communication is crying. We know that we ask a lot of our beautiful little boy, but honestly for the vast majority of the time he’s better than most adults. That being said, if you have an opportunity to stretch your legs and have a beer on a boat—take it.
Despite the traffic we endured on I-95 we made it up to Glastonbury, Connecticut, for Jacki & Tim’s wedding with time for lunch. Heather is very familiar with the area because of her time at The Ethel Walker School with Jacki, but I’m still new to the beautiful horse farm life. Jacki’s family farm, The Pines, is a quaint functional equestrian property with a show ring, large barn, with a secluded house in the back corner amidst the trees. Jacki has planned to have her wedding there since she was a little girl. In fact, she did all of the planning and DIY’ing herself—absolutely crushed it.
One of the best things about hosting your wedding on a private property is the freedom of customization. Sure, it takes more work, but the pay off to have a celebration that represents who you are as individuals and a couple makes your wedding experience that much more authentic. Exclusively using the one-stop-shop method of hiring vendors attached to a venue may be a logical time-saver, but the food, music, and decor will never be as good as if you hand-picked them yourselves! Take the time, do your research, and you will be rewarded!
Heather and I couldn’t have been happier with the way our wedding on her family farm in northern New Jersey turned out. We greeted our guests at the gate, cooked and served a homemade pasta bar, and had our own very own whiskey shed. Jacki and Tim’s wedding celebrated the same similar little details: one of their favorite food trucks (with delicious truffle Mac and cheese balls), a photo booth backdrop that her family made of solid wood, an intimate wedding ceremony tucked into the corner of the property, and a cozy tent adorned with strings of Edison lights.
Of course there’s a million ways to host a wedding but in our opinion the best ones are the ones that make you feel welcome. The ones where family and friends invite you with open arms into religious rituals, family traditions, and dance parties. Where you can stumble into a conversation at a cocktail table and comfortably meet someone new. From the first moments we spoke with Jacki and Tim on their wedding day, Heather and I felt more like friends than vendors. They welcomed us into the celebration of their love, just like all of their other guests, who all came from traffic-ridden journeys of their own. And for us—that feeling of a warm open welcome—well it just doesn’t get any better than that.
Enjoy these pics from Tim & Jacki’s wedding:
Vendors
Photography | Apollo Fields
Venue | The Pines Farm
Food Truck | Craftbird
DJ/Band | DJ JR Burrows
Cake | Taste By Spellbound
Apple Cider Donuts | Belltown Hill Orchards
Rentals | WT Rentals and Services
Rings | Cleves and Lonnemann
Dress | Wtoo by Watters
Suits | Folchi's
Hair and Makeup | Larissa Lake
Invitations | Dominque Monarca
Transportation | Valet Park of America
Floral | The Floating Dahlia
Our traditional last-pic-of-the-night
But with the cutest photo bomber! Reach out for your own wedding by clicking the button below:
We're Not Just an Instagram Couple
Farm Venues in Hudson Valley NY | Apollo Fields Wedding Photography | Husband and Wife Team | Small Business Owners
“We’re not just an Instagram couple,” I playfully declared to Heather while carrying a handful of dirty dishes to the sink. “If people knew that we really live this way all the time—I think they’d be sick,” I added. We were just putting the finishing touches on a delicious candlelit dinner of baked tofu in a spicy yellow coconut curry sauce, when Heather and I both realized that that declaration was just begging to be the beginning of a blog post.
What I meant in that moment was that it’s not just that we do “‘Gram-worthy” things all the time in our everyday lives, but that we do them because we really enjoy them rather than “doing them for the ‘Gram.” Thinking on this topic made me realize that Heather and I are motivated by connecting with each other and other people—that’s why we cook healthy, homemade meals with spices we can barely pronounce for people that we love—because that’s what makes us happy. Where most people see a moment to get some likes and promote themselves (and we’re not blind to the fact that we’re doing this also), we see a moment to express ourselves and connect with like-minded people.
Social media platforms like Instagram are the 21st century soapboxes for us to climb upon and speak our truths to the town (or more accurately, our local city, country and world). They are magnificent microphones of unlimited potential, but we all know that their feeds tend to hide the dirty dishes and legwork, tucking away the hours of unsexy tedium in favor of the curated moments of short-lived perfection. While it is important to celebrate the beautiful products of our hard work it is equally important to acknowledge the reality of success, that success is built upon aches and pains, empty cups of coffee, expletives, and endless amounts of frustration. To ignore that is to fail to tell the whole story of our success or truth.
Heather and I lean into the ugly side of our truths because we know that to ignore them is to live an incomplete life. Yes, we may not be as perfect or as “‘Grammable”, but because we are honest with ourselves we feel more whole as individuals, as a couple, and as a business. It allows us to connect with each other and connect with you. It is part of our brand because we are our brand, through and through. Apollo Fields is the whole meal: the rickety chair, the dirty dishes, the colorful plate and flickering candlelight; the stubbed toe, spilt red wine, and dabbed club soda; and as such our stomachs and hearts are always full to the brim. “We are not an Instagram couple” — we are an Apollo Fields couple and are damned proud of it.
As we enter 2020 may we give equal voice to our pains as we do to our peaks, embracing bravery in our weakness as much as humility in our strength. May we help each other do the dirty dishes while we polish off that last bottle of champagne. May we remember that success and failure are not mutually exclusive but rather are inextricably linked.
Cheers, friends, let us cry and create our truths together, Instagram and other social media be damned.
Photography: Apollo Fields
