Cottage Wedding in Lanark Ontario

There’s nothing I love more than a casual cottage wedding and this one was extra special since I’ve been hanging at this cottage since I was a kid and I’ve known Andrea for many many many years. We met back in Brownie days and her dad was my high school Chemistry teacher! When I found out I was able to not only attend but photograph her Folksy Cottage Wedding in Lanark, Ontario, I was ecstatic! I knew it was going to be an epic day!

We had a lot of help from family and friends to put together all the little details. Everything from picnic tables to flowers, decorations to signs, were all done by us. Haydn is a carpenter so he decided early on that he wanted to build the picnic tables. We were going to need seating for 100 or so people so he built them big! We had 8 beautiful tables, each 8 feet long, that could sit 10-12 people each and they were all made from local white cedar that we picked up from a sawmill near Peterborough. Over a couple weekends, Haydn, our Dads, and his groomsman, Ben, cut and assembled all the tables. I love having a handy husband, especially when he wears his tool-belt!
Andrea

DIY Wedding Décor & Guest Book Quilt

My maid of honour Andrea and I did all the rest of the decorations and signs. We spent HOURS practicing chalk-board art and learning how to add flourishes and details to the lettering. All of our signs for the menu, clean-up areas, and seating chart (or lack thereof) were done by us and it was a great time spent together in the weeks leading up to the big day. A word of advice – it’s not as easy as it looks!”
Andrea

In my younger days, I spent a lot of quality time at this cottage, swimming, water-skiing, camping under the stars and one summer Andrea & I even got to paint the outhouse! Well you could imagine my excitement when I found out our underwater fish mural was still decorating the walls!

Custom Wood Cufflinks

“Ben Luxton, one of Haydn’s groomsmen, made the cuff-links and they all worked together to figure out how to remove the cuff buttons to make them work.”-Andrea

DIY Wedding Invitations

“Haydn and I created the invitations using a stamp, burlap, and an old shirt that a friend gave us (I just used the sleeves so I saved the shirt for Haydn to wear later..can’t waste a perfectly good red-check shirt!”-Andrea

Love Letter Anniversary Time Capsule

Andrea & Haydn wrote some heartfelt love letters which they added to their anniversary time capsule.

Handfasting Ritual

Andrea & Haydn included the ancient Celtic ritual of handfasting into their ceremony. The tying of their hands symbolizes the binding of their two lives.

“Our wedding came together pretty easily, partly because we tried to keep things simple and partly because we had lots of help. We decided right away to have it at the family cottage. This was where I spent my summers growing up and it has always been my favouite place – both to have quiet, peaceful moments and to invite lots of people and have a great time enjoying the lake, campfires, good food, and fun. When Haydn and I started dating, I quickly introduced him and the girls to the cottage life and we spend as many summer weekends, and some winter ones, up at the cottage. There is lots of space outside and we made good use of the beach and a large raft that we have. Usually the raft floats out in the bay so we can swim out to it, but for the ceremony we pulled it right up onto the beach. The pictures of the ceremony are amazing, with nothing but sky, lake, and trees in the background. The girls all took part in our ceremony by performing the sand-mixing with us and providing their love and support.”-Andrea

Aerial Silk Acrobats

“Our friends, Victoria and Jeff, brought their silk and hung it from a tree on the beach – the kids loved playing acrobat! We also had a full-sized jenga wedding game, photo booth, and hoola-hoops to keep the many kids busy through the afternoon and night.”-Andrea

Wildflower Wedding Bouquets

The flowers for all the vases and our bouquets came from my friend Heather’s farm. She planted several different flowers in the spring, and then collected all of them plus whatever was growing wild at the time of our wedding. My step-daughter Khaili put the bouquets together and got them all ready for the ceremony – they were a great mix of bright colours that went perfectly with our cottage-picnic wedding
Andrea

Potluck Wedding

“The plan for dinner was simple: a pig roast and potluck with pies for dessert. We have some very good friends who live in the next bay and Kenny offered to loan his pig roaster and even took charge of the cooking (putting the pig on at 8am so it would be ready for the crowd). We asked everyone to bring an appetizer, salad, or side to go along with the pig – and we just left it up to chance to see if we would get a good balance of all things. There was certainly lots of food and macaroni and cheese was a big favourite – there was probably 6 large casserole dishes! The pie buffet was also a big hit, especially for the kids who couldn’t believe all the different kinds and kept coming back for more.”-Andrea

Haydn and I were thrown together a few times before we really noticed each other. We had several mutual friends, and so we met at the local rock climbing gym, at music shows, and at parties. We actually starting talking to each other about rain-gardens – Haydn was building an outdoor shower for a client and was wondering about creating a rain-garden to drain the water. We had a few back-and-forth emails about that, and then about me borrowing a ladder to clean my eves-troughs, until he finally asked me out. He says he was planning to ask me out in person, when he came to pick-up his borrowed ladder, but my Dad was visiting and he met Dad at the door instead of me. We hadn’t been dating long before we were spending lots of time together and I was meeting his daughters – Khaili, Emery, and Amelia (who were 18, 11, and 9 at our wedding)
Andrea