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.