Private Estate Tented Wedding in MA Featured on Boston Weddings!
All photography by Arielle Doneson
This blog post might just be the longest one we’ve ever written. Why, you ask? Because this wedding was just packed full of personal touches and we can’t get enough of it! Jen and Tylan are the kind of couple that every wedding planner hopes for. They trusted us to bring their MA tented wedding to life from the very beginning, which led to, well, magic! Arielle Doneson Photography captured every moment so perfectly and we have being waiting to share all of the photos and details with you for a loooooong time. We are thrilled that this real wedding was just published on Boston Weddings!
Let me start by giving you a little context. Jen and Tylan bought an 1820’s farmhouse, Bascom Hill, in Western Massachusetts with the plan to renovate it and turn it into their forever home. The home itself has a ton of history - it was was originally built on the stagecoach road from Boston to Albany and is thought to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. The property sits in a central location for Jen and Tylan to run their small business that they co-own, Walden Hill, which produces sustainable, acorn-fed pork in New England. This means that they spend a lot of time harvesting acorns! They also bottle their own maple syrup straight from the farm!
Now that you know a little bit more about the newlyweds, let me tell you what you’re dying to know about - their wedding! Jen and Tylan got married on their farm, Bascom Hill. That’s right, the farmhouse they bought and decided to renovate was also the location of the wedding. Did I mention they were renovating alongside wedding planning? I don’t mean they were just fixing a room or two. We’re talking a full scale renovation involving the construction of farm roads, landscape that included a pool, and pretty much completely gutting the interior of the home and building additions. When I went for the first site visit, there was an exterior structure of home with heavy machinery dropped here and there around the property. We had our initial meeting in an airstream, where they assured me that I had nothing to worry about - the home, aka venue, would definitely be done before the wedding. Fast forward to the early hours of the Friday morning of their wedding weekend. Furniture was being moved in and they were wedding ready - a three year project came to an end with just hours to spare!
We believe that stationery really sets the tone for a wedding and we love it when our couples want to design something that is uniquely theirs. Jen wanted something hand-illustrated, so of course we turned to Caitlin of Hark Creative Co. Caitlin designed a full stationery suite, including an elegant boxed wedding invitation, complete with dried flowers and raw silk ribbon. Little did we know that the designs Caitlin created would end up being incorporated not only across the wedding day, but into Jen and Tylan’s home, too! The pattern from the liner of the Save the Dates even made it onto the wallpaper in their powder room.
Since the farmhouse is located in the heart of the Pioneer Valley, guests stayed at hotels across the area, with most hotels being about 20 minutes away. That felt too far for the bridal party, so we brought in glamp tents from Stout Tents and created a little village on the property. This meant that the party never had to end! To warmly welcome everyone, welcome bags were given to each guest. Sustainability is important to Jen and Tylan, so we kept that in mind for the bags, which included metal, reusable straws, custom reusable water bottles, Baklava from one of their favorite restaurants, a deck of custom playing cards, soap made by a local farm, toffee from Jen’s childhood, and apples picked on the farm!
Before the ceremony, the couple and their bridal party gathered in the sugarbush, which is where the bride and groom harvest sap and make their maple syrup. The maple syrup was incorporated throughout the wedding in signature cocktails and again at the end of the night as favors!
Arielle captured the first look, as well as some portraits before walking down the aisle. Jen’s dress was a classic A-line gown by Carolina Herrera that she found at L’Elite Bridal on Newbury Street in Boston. The dress had strawberries, cherries, and flowers embroidered on the fabric. L’Elite designed a custom veil for Jen to incorporate some of these fruits and flowers, too! Tylan wore a bespoke suite from English Cut in Boston. It was lined with a custom pattern which was adopted from the wedding stationery. The groomsmen wore custom ties to coordinate with Tylan’s suit. The fabric for the ties was made using spoonflower.com and then the ties were created on bowties.com. Even Ralph, Jen and Tylan’s golden retriever, got his own custom bowtie and leash! The groomsmen suits were custom Alton Lane suits and the bridesmaids wore Monique Lhouillier. Even the flower girls’ attire was well thought out. They wore custom Isabel Garretón dresses to coordinate with Jen’s gown!
After more than six years together, Jen and Tylan said their vows next to the big maple tree in their backyard, under a chuppah made by Tylan’s dad and sister. Jen’s late brother’s tallit was hung at the top of the chuppah and the whole structure was made to feel like it was growing out of the ground by Winston Flowers. Jen and Tylan included twelve children in their wedding, as well as their three-legged pup, Ralph. Jen walked down the aisle to “When I get my hands on you” by Bob Dylan and the New Basement Tapes. During the ceremony, they planted a pomegranate tree with soil from both of their parents’ yard to, as Jen explains, “symbolize their families coming together to create new roots.”
Cocktail hour took place adjacent to the farmhouse, under a custom-constructed lighting structure designed by Frost Productions Boston. In order to get the color of the poles just right, they actually torched each one instead of staining them! A custom, circular bar sat in the middle of the structure and was yet another use of the designs that Hark Creative Co. The bartenders served a signature cocktail that included Blueberries and Black Raspberries handpicked from the farm by the bride herself!
Another unique element included in Jen and Tylan’s New England wedding was hand-pressed floral elements created by Linda from Flora-ly. She actually came out to the farm a couple of weeks before the wedding and harvested flowers to use for her artwork. She made a gorgeous custom guestbook that was displayed during the cocktail hour (and throughout the evening), as well as the table numbers. After the wedding, she even preserved the bride’s bouquet for her to create a true keepsake.
Jen and Tylan’s wedding hashtag was #evermastinglove. As Jen and Tylan explained in their welcome note:
Mast is the term used for the nuts of forest trees like acorns - it comes from the Old English word mæst which means “to fatten” because of the historic use of these tree nuts in fattening pigs. Every 2-7 years, an oak tree has a bumper crop and produces a plentiful amount of acorns, these trees are masting and are our favorite to find during acorn harvest season. Unlike the acorn crop which has bad years between mastings, our love is always abundant or as you might say “evermasting”.
We thought that cocktail hour would be a good time to remind everyone of the hashtag, which we did in a collaboration with Winston Flowers and Hark Creative to create an oak tree display. Each couple’s name and table number was written on an oak leaf tag with an acorn!
Guests made their way into the wedding tent and found their seats. There was a pear at place card at each seat. The pears were picked harvested from the farm, too! Behind the band, a custom triptych painting of the farmhouse and surrounding property made the perfect backdrop! That painting is now handing in Jen and Tylan’s home - another forever keepsake. The bride and groom entered the reception tent to Natalie Cole’s “This Will Be (and evermasting love)”. Yes, you read that right. The Eleven band tweaked the wording the classic wedding song to fit Jen and Tylan perfectly! This wasn’t the only special song of the night. For their first dance, Jen’s cousin, Richie Birkenhead, performed “What I have to Offer” by Eels and for the father-daughter dance, Jen and her dad had a surprise, choreographed dance to a custom edit of “Brown Eyed Girl”/“Everybody Needs Somebody”. Jen wore bedazzled white sneakers that she found on Etsy and both of them wore sunglasses!
Now, we bet you’re wondering where the pork from Walden Hill comes in. It was, of course, included in the charcuterie station on Friday night, but on Saturday, it was the main course! Forklift catering, in addition to cooking up an absolute feast for the weekend, coordinated with a local potter to have handmade serving dishes for their family-style wedding dinner. Each dish has an inscription in the bottom and the bride and groom kept them after the wedding to use in their home, as well as to give a few as gifts. How special is that?! After dinner, there was cake! Ralph, their tripawd rescue pup, even got his own cake topper!
As if these photos aren’t wonderful enough, the wedding gram from Tweed Weddings brings us right back to Jen and Tylan’s wedding day! We think a part of Jen’s vows sum up this wedding perfectly: “You built us a home. And this home is so much more than the structure we all see. You built me a dream.” Cue the tears!
A special thanks to the dream team of vendors that made Jen and Tylan’s wedding weekend so incredible: Arielle Doneson Photography, Tweed Weddings, The Eleven, Forklift Catering, Walden Hill Co, PEAK Event Services, Winston Flowers, Hark Creative, Frost Productions, Beautini, Flora-ly, Valet Park of America, Stout Tent, Capron Lighting and Sound, A Royal Flush, and Photobooth Planet.