Tory + Ryan's Beautiful Summer Wedding at Saltwater Farm Vineyard
If you’re looking for summer wedding inspiration for 2021, you’re in luck! Today we’re sharing Tory and Ryan’s beautiful summer vineyard wedding which is chock-full of some of our favorite things: a sweet couple, a perfect venue, gorgeous flowers, incredible catering, and so many other wonderful details. From the bride…
“Our engagement was a long time coming. We had been together since my senior year of high school and Ryan’s freshman year of college (hence the wedding hashtag #promdates2soulmates). So, after getting engaged in November, we were hoping for a summer wedding and rather than waiting til the following year, we jumped right into planning for that summer. While that idea sounded nice, we soon realized how difficult it was finding vendors that had dates available for us.”
“Our biggest struggle was a venue. Every place we looked at with available dates didn’t seem like “us”. We looked all over Massachusetts, Rhode Island and our last set of venues was in Connecticut. On our day of Connecticut venues, Saltwater was the final planned stop on our route. We had looked at 25+ venues throughout all of our searching and were starting to feel defeated. Before heading there, I said to Ryan, “ugh, I’m done, this place is out of our way… can we just go home?” Thankfully, Ryan pushed me to look at just oneeee more place.
The minute we pulled into Saltwater’s driveway, we knew this was it. The lush greenery, beautiful flowers and vines, the well-manicured landscape with water all around – it sold itself before we even stepped foot inside. Once inside, everything came together. We took a tour and saw the incredible event space inside of the old hangar, the beautiful bridal suite, the cool upstairs bar and deck and the patio overlooking the vines where the ceremony takes place. It was truly meant to be, as they had one date left for the entire summer… and 7.15.16 was ours.”
”Planning a wedding is overwhelming with the amount of decisions you have to make. But Saltwater made it so much easier for us, having a list of preferred vendors to work with so we didn’t have to start from scratch. The best part was one of their employees Daly Sanford doubles as an event planner. Hiring Daly was the best decision we made throughout the wedding process. She was so familiar with the venue and vendors that she guided us through the process based on our vision of having a casual New England wedding.”
“Daly connected us with Hana Floral, who had an interesting task of providing a lot of color with the flowers, while making sure it didn’t look like “too much”. She knocked it out of the park – the bouquets in particular perfectly complemented my dress and especially the minty turquoise bridesmaids’ dresses, which really popped!”
“When searching around for a photographer, person after person recommended Maggie Conley Photography. When I looked through her samples online, I knew she was the person for us. She has a way of capturing the candid shots, so you really get a glimpse into what the day was like – all of the little special moments, but also making sure to hit the big traditional moments for a perfect mix of wedding photos. The best part of our videographer Henry Loves Hazel, (other than the video itself) was that I didn’t even realize he was there! A pet peeve of mine was at weddings I had attended, the videographer felt very intrusive for the wedding party and guests. Mike was the opposite; he was quietly in the background the entire time – yet somehow managed to capture every moment of our day beautifully.”
“For catering we worked with Gourmet Galley, we created our own stations menu with a New England Summer theme – complete with a raw bar for the cocktail hour, three stations and berry shortcake bar (which was a big hit!). Our stations were “summer shack” with fried chicken, lobster rolls, etc., “summer grill” with grilled steak, salmon and veggies, and “New England” with coconut mussels and clam chowder.”
“The day of, what we really wanted our wedding to be was fun. We had a short ceremony, short speeches, short dances, and even chose stations so that we could get to the party part of our wedding ASAP. What really got the party started was our band – the Sugarbabies. Simply put, they were incredible. They had people dancing on the wine barrels, crowd surfing, they came into the crowd, let us sing into the mic, let us play the tambourine, etc. At most weddings you take a break for the band to breathe, and for some formalities like cake cutting. Our party was so rockin’ that both us and the Sugarbabies decided we were having too much fun for a break and the party continued. To this day, people still ask who the band was at our wedding. Our friends liked them so much that they hired them for their wedding next summer and we can’t wait to hear them play again!!
While I’m sure they’re just saying it, we have had many people tell us that our wedding was the best they had ever been to. We’d love to take credit, but the truth is we pulled off the wedding of our dreams with limited planning time thanks to the partnership we had with the incredible vendors.”
“7.15.16 was our perfect day, even if it was a littttle hot. Saltwater will always hold such a special place in our hearts. We live out of state so our first chance to come back was this past summer, three years later, with a baby on the way. Coming back home with our Saltwater baby onesie and some cases of wine, we’re already looking forward to our next chance to come back… in 2021 with Baby Charlie, since our good friends had such a fun time at our wedding – they booked theirs there!”
V E N D O R S
MMW Caterer: Gourmet Galley Catering
MMW Event Coordinator: Daly Planning
MMW Florist: Hana Floral Design
MMW Lighting: Power Posse Productions
MMW Photographer: Maggie Conley Photography
MMW Venue: Saltwater Farm Vineyard
Band: Sugarbabies Inc.
Hair Stylist: Posh Salon
Makeup Artist: Jennie Fresa Beauty
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