Katie and I got married!

Katie and I got married last weekend just outside of Saint John, New Brunswick at Katie’s family cottage, called ‘Minote’ (pronounced min-o-ta; which means ‘happy thought’). Minote has been in Katie’s family for several generations and has been around since 1905 where it served as a party spot for a couple of bachelor brothers. It’s Katie’s favourite place in the world, and we just knew we had to have the wedding here. We convinced her dad that it would be worth all the work to host such a large gathering… And it all worked out perfectly.

This part of the cabin was built in 1905, so you can almost smell the all those years in this photo. — This part of the cabin was built in 1905, so you can almost smell all those years in this photo.

It was an absolutely perfect, hot August day with barely a cloud in the sky. We had exactly the wedding we wanted, and it’s exactly where we wanted it. I proposed to Katie on the bridge you see in the background of the first photo– since it’s her favourite place in the world, that was a pretty easy choice as to where I was going to ask her. I had to wait until we were in New Brunswick to ask… I popped the question a few days after we were back east for her brother’s wedding back in 2010.

We're big canoeists, so why wouldn't be break out the vintage Chestnut canoe that's out at the camp? — We’re big canoeists, so why wouldn’t we break out the vintage Chestnut canoe that’s out at the camp? We paddled down to the far end of the lake (with the photographer following close behind in a rowboat) and he was able to capture some amazing images.

We told everybody that the theme of our wedding was going to be more 'family picnic' style, with lots of soaking up the sun, playing games, and swimming the the nieces and nephews, yet we still surprised everyone when we actually did it. Here's the traditional 'dive over the bride' shot! — We told everybody that our wedding was going to be more ‘family picnic’ style, with lots of soaking up the sun, playing games, and swimming with the nieces and nephews, yet we still surprised everyone when we actually did it. Here’s the traditional ‘dive over the bride’ shot!

We put our collective event planning experience together and did all the planning and details of the wedding ourselves. We designed the invitations, and even printed our own invites at home on a hobby letterpress machine called an Epic L Letterpress. This was a lot of work, and a lot of fun. We probably went a little overboard by creating a full website, but we wanted to share as much information as possible with people coming from all parts of Canada and the US; better to have it than not.

The final wedding invitation â€“ two inks and a blind deboss letterpressed onto Crane's Lettra paper. — The final wedding invitation – two inks and a blind deboss letterpressed onto Crane’s Lettra paper.

We bought an ‘Epic L Letterpress’ machine, a hobby/craft machine (which I believe has now been discontinued; we bought ours locally on Craigslist). We followed these instructions from Boxcar Press on what we were going to need to do to get the most out of our machine. After we designed the invite, we sent off the artwork to Boxcar in New York for them to produce the high-quality polymer plates. I ordered the special letterpress paper direct from Neenah Paper in Wisconsin – we went with Crane’s Lettra Paper. It’s 100% cotton, high quality, feels great and isn’t cheap. We went with the Fluorescent White in the 100lb weight; so it feels substantial in your hand. And then we ordered the matching cotton envelopes because we also letterpressed the return address on them. Matching thank-you cards were also letterpressed and folded, and we also made matching envelopes with the return address. It was really rewarding to do all this work ourselves, we put a post up on our wedding website letting people know that we did it all ourselves– otherwise you’d never know.

Below are a few photos of us printing the invitations at home in our office.

From top left: Katie rolls the yellow ink, the first colour onto the printing plate; me rolling the second colour, the brown ink through the Epic letterpress printer; me carefully handling a freshly printed invitation; and all the invitations on the drying rack.

Katie wanted to make her own succulent bouquets, learning how to make them by watching YouTube videos. I gave her a hand with all the hand-wiring and assembling– and they turned out great.

Katie worked with the caterers, Betty and Russell Dobbelsteyn at A Chef’s Table to put together a great menu, and they came through with an absolute stunner of a meal. Some people commented that it wasn’t just the best-catered meal that they had, but may very well be the best meal they’ve ever had. And we agree. People are still talking about the dinner months later.

Chef Russel serves us our fantastic dinner.

We’re so happy that we went with our gut and used photographer Sheldon Parsons for our photos; we loved his more editorial/casual style of photography. Sheldon lives in Toronto now, so if you’re in that part of the world and looking for a wedding photographer– look no further.

PHOTO GALLERY | Below are a selection of photos from the day – sorry there’s so many, it’s really hard to whittle these photos down. This gallery has all the images from the above article, and plenty more; scroll through them with your ‘right arrow’ key.