A Down-Home Handmade Wedding

(Flat-footing to the music.)

This weekend my boyfriend and I took a mini vacation out to Rutherfordton, NC for my friend Amanda and her sweetie Dan's wedding. This was quite a treat for us, since we normally work on the weekends.

Every aspect of the wedding was handmade by family and friends with so much love! The bridesmaids all wore cowboy boots and their own green dresses in all shades, Amanda's father forged an interlinking design with letters from both of their names in metal to hang over the outdoor service, Amanda and Dan wrote their own vows, and the groom's father, a judge, officiated the wedding. After the service we broke off for a bit and went exploring in the hilly wooded farm. We found some delicious wild muscadine grapes and snacked on those, spitting out seeds as we went. After a night of dancing under a tin roof, we camped out on the 40 acre West Point Farms.




A traditional band played folk standards, along with some special modern songs they learned specifically at the bride and groom's request.



The bride's mother made the wedding cake, based on the North Carolina born hummingbird flavor that the couple share weekly at a bakery in New York City, where they live. (The flavor is like a spice cake with chopped pecans, crushed pineapple, and mashed bananas frosted with cream cheese icing).


Amanda's mother made the beautiful double-layer dress and her grandmother embroidered it with an intricate fern pattern.



Her grandmother also made a quilt in the wedding colors similar to on that she had made for Amanda's parents. The quilt was embroidered with dozens of types of flowers and painted as well.


I'm cooling off with one of the fans that the couple cut out and stamped up a few months prior. As you can see here, we worked up a sweat dancing the Virginia Reel. Even though I grew up square dancing, the flow of the Virginia Reel was very different. Somehow my boyfriend and I never quite got the hang of it, but it was still fun!