Posts Tagged ‘low-impact wedding’

Featured on Eco-Beautiful Weddings!

Posted on February 11th, 2011 by Tonia No Comments

Heeeeey! Neato! I submitted our wedding to my fave green-weddings blog, and we were selected for a feature! Thanks to Katie for this!

Our Wedding: The Morning After

Posted on December 21st, 2010 by Tonia 1 Comment

Oh, you thought the festival was over?? Ha!  You obviously don’t know how we roll!  We’d never end things like that.  Much merriment, drinking, and dancing during the night calls for much eating of delicious breakfast food the next morning!!  So, after scraping ourselves out of our warm and comfy beds, we all caravan over to the Bigga Man. 

The Bigga Man is not actually what the place is called…it’s actually Paul Bunyan’s Cook Shanty.  But my Italian-immigrant bisnonno {great-grandfather}, who brought his family up to Northern Wisconsin to go fishing, took one look at the enormous painted sign out in front of the shanty and exclaimed, “That’s a bigga man!”  So…Paul Bunyan’s has been Bigga Man ever since.

Anyways, this place is awesome.  It is an old log cabin converted into an all-you-can-eat restaurant, food served family-style by servers dressed like lumberjacks and lumberjills.  My family has been coming here every summer for years- especially whenever our Italian relatives come to visit. 

You sit on long wooden benches at long wooden tables with enamelware utensils, plates and cups.  Huge bowls of powdered sugar donuts, flapjacks {be careful, they expand in your stomach…} eggs, eggs, and more eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy keeps coming to the table in a steady stream until you look at your server with watery eyes and lift your hand in a “stop…please, stop…” motion {because you can’t speak.  You are reduced to sign-language after that last bite of egg.} 

Even more entertaining than the food is the gift shop.  Taxidermied foxes, taxidermied fischers, quaint little wood-carvings of wolves, sweatshirts with wolves and Native American designs screen printed on them, cross-cut logs with deer painted on them,  real rabbit-foot key chains, and “Indian war hatchets” fill every corner, every inch of the tiny space.  “Northwoods mementos” is what they call these things. 

The best part is watching little kids beg their parents for a taxidermied field mouse that’s been mounted onto a woodland scene {a piece of wood, with moss glued on it, and a mouse posed in a terrible defensive position as if one of the taxidermied owls is about to come back to life and eat it}…the look on the parents’ faces makes the stomach-ache you now have from the Magical Expandable Flapjacks totally worth it.

It was a great morning, and nice to relax with our guests, chat and laugh together one last time before all going our separate ways.  For Mike and me, that way meant Kaua’i.  We were pretty dang excited about getting on the plane and heading to the beach, which made saying goodbye to all our friends and family a little easier.  But it was tough to process the fact that the weekend was over.  Part of us wanted to do it all again, and part of us was just so satisfied, tired, and content that we were completely fine with it being over.

Perhaps I’ll do a post about the honeymoon sometime in January when we’re all really sick and tired of the snow and cold, so we can live vicariously through the photos of sun, sand, and dolphins.

That’s all, folks!  We’re just old married people now. :)

Our Wedding: The Dance & After Party

Posted on December 16th, 2010 by Tonia No Comments

Please, don’t steal any photos off my blog!!!!  Just ask- I’ll share.

Phew!  This has been quite the journey, reliving our entire wedding weekend here on the blog!!  I hope you’ve enjoyed the stories and photos {and if you’re planning your own eco-friendly wedding, perhaps some of our ideas were useful to you.}

This next batch of pictures was taken during the dance, which was a total and complete blast.  My family and friends all have something in common…we like to eat good food, and we like to dance to good music.  Thankfully, we happen to have a lot of really ridiculously talented musician friends, who jumped at the chance to give us the gift of their music for our wedding.

And did I mention that my brother and I play the fiddle?  We grew up playing with our family-band called Roll Up the Rug at folk dances all over the Midwest.  We were quite the popular dance band back in the day!  But then college got in the way of playing regular gigs, and busy-grown-up-life followed shortly after college, so the fiddles don’t get taken out of their cases very often these days.  My brother got up there on the mic and played a beautiful waltz for Poppy and me to dance to, and it was pretty cool to see his fiddle skills have not waned.

And then Mike and I danced to “Don’t Be Shy”…because we fricken love that song and it deserved to be played twice at the wedding!!

Our reception band was Hip Pocket…the grooviest dance band on the planet, for real.  It was so, so cool to look around {in between pulling sweet moves and simultaneously making sure not to spill my mason jar of beer} at them groovin’ out with their instruments and think “hey, I know these guys!”  Someone should have given me an “I’m With the Band” t-shirt to wear over my dress.  Someone did give me a glow-stick necklace at one point, which of course I wore for the rest of the night.

Even the Grandmas were out on the dance floor!

Also take note of the shiny bocce medal around the neck of one of the formerly mentioned champions.

Yes, the groom is air-guitarring in the background here.  He is always air-guitarring.  It is his favorite, and he does it with immense concentration and skill.  You’d swear he was shredding a real guitar- it’s almost a trick of the eyes…which, as every good air-guitarist knows, is exactly the desired result.

At this point I’m going to switch over to photos taken by family and friends again, because there were some really entertaining moments captured, which I believe you will enjoy greatly…

Somehow the Photobooth costumes and props made their way from the gazebo to the dance floor…

I call this one “Fun Revolutionary”…My cousin John was channeling his inner Che Guevara…except, happier.

“Laura Ingalls Wilder Gone Wild”

Oh dear!

After the dance ended, the night was far from over…approximately five hours far from over, for some people:

A bonfire, several frozen pizzas, and a sexy Lady Gaga iPod playlist were warming up at Cabin 11 {which was later re-named “Club 11″ by its inhabitants.}  Mike and I joined the party and were instantly handed a cocktail and a slice of pizza.  I love my cousins.

Did someone spill something??

Just way too much fun, that’s what that is.  I didn’t want the night to end…but then again, we were exhausted and soooo ready for a tiny bit of peace and quiet.  Reluctantly, Mike and I snuck out of Club 11 together, leaving the cousins to party on.

My feet were K.I.L.L.I.N.G.ing me at this point {even though my shoes were very sensible, sweet vintage t-strap heels, found on Etsy} so Mike gave me a piggy-back-ride {pretty challenging while wearing a huge fluffy wedding dress!} and we made our way through the dark, quiet resort down to the lake where our private cabin was waiting.

It was a beautiful walk.  Mist was rising off the lake.  The moon was almost full and the stars were unbelievably bright in the clear, black sky.  The air had that crisp autumn bite to it, and it seemed like the earth was breathing in and out with us.  Everything was quiet, and we were alone- husband and wife.

Our cabin was filled with goodies that had been left for us by little elves.  :)  Champagne, chocolates, etc.  We just couldn’t believe the biggest and best day of our lives was OVER.  It felt sad and amazing at the same time.  Best of all, we were married & all filled up with the love that everyone had radiated out to us all weekend long.  It doesn’t get any better than this– thank you, everyone, who came and ate, danced, partied, and made our wedding all that it was.  We love you!!

Our Wedding: The Dinner

Posted on December 15th, 2010 by Tonia 1 Comment

Hey!  No need to steal these pretty photos taken by Generation Photography.  If you ask me, I’m sure I’ll be happy to share.  Thanks!  

Dinner was a delicious buffet catered by my Nonno’s {nickname for “grandpa” in Italian} favorite local restaurant, Pine Baron.  They were so flexible with us- allowing Poppy to customize the menu with his own recipes, even though they normally only allow wedding groups to choose from a set catering menu.  It was so cool to eat familiar and much-loved recipes that evening, and added to the comfortable and laid back feeling of the wedding.  

Pine Baron even prepared a separate gluten free version of the meal for a few of our guests who are allergic to gluten, and a vegan version for our veggie friends and fam.  I can’t rave enough about how accommodating they were.  They even helped us with things like the tent rental, deciding where/how to arrange the tables, and what color napkins to go with!   

Check out those cute, mis-matched vintage plates, baby!!  I loved this element of the wedding…they were all different and all from thrift-shops.  My mom and a few of our friends collected them all summer long, washed them, and brought them to the wedding.  Anyone want to avoid plate-rental fees at their wedding?  I’ve got plates.  Lots and lots of plates.  Holla’ at me, I’ll hook ya up.  

My Poppy is kinda famous for his salads.  He and my mom have a huge garden and make the most delicious salads from the greens they grow.  I was so happy that salad was such a large part of our wedding meal.  Crisp, spicy, nutty, yummy greens!!!  

 

My favorite photos of the whole wedding were taken during the toasts.  Joe and Tony captured our reactions and emotions during every single one of the speeches.  So many people got up during dinner to share stories and give us their blessing…and one brave {and slightly crazy-in-a-good-way} group of friends even performed a song and dance for us!  The toasts had us laughing and crying at the same time, it was a wild mix of emotions, to say the least.  

          

My brother made a sideshow/movie for us and played it after dinner while we all drank coffe and ate the delicious bunt-cakes made by Mike’s mom.  He did a great job on it…so many happy memories flashed on the tent wall.  It was fun to look around and see everyone’s faces as they watched.  

“That was so crazy when Jesus showed up.” -My cousin Jim [in the foreground holding the Bud Lite, which he brought from his own cabin– we definitely did NOT serve Bud Lite to our guests! This was a classy wedding!! Come on now…] when he saw this photo.

 

And with that, we move on to the dancing…