A Pennsylvania Brewery Wedding – Elyse & John

Tattooed bride Elyse and her husband John were married at Stoudt’s Brewery in Adamstown, where Oh, Karina Photography shot their wedding. Elyse got her dress from Asos and it looks amazing! I got a chance to speak to both her and John about their wedding day..

John: There are a lot of highlights from our day to choose from, but what still sticks in my mind is the realization I had later on in the reception that the day had gone so well in so many ways. I’d look around the room and see everyone entertained in one way or another. Dancing, chatting around the tables, toasting at the bar, smoking cigars in the open air. We, Elyse and I, could move from one circle to the next, individually or together, or withdraw for a few minutes and be by ourselves, and everything continued on regardless. It was the realization that we’d surrounded ourselves with exactly the atmosphere we’d talked about in the months leading up to the wedding; we didn’t have to be the center of attention, but we could be. We didn’t have to try to be everywhere at once, because our guests were enjoying themselves regardless of our immediate presence. We were able to enjoy our own wedding which, as surprising as it ought to sound, some couples don’t get to do.

So yeah, there are individual moments, but it’s really the culminating realization that lingers and will continue to linger in my memory. At the end of it, and for the days and weeks afterward, we were able to say to ourselves, honestly, that our wedding was a lot of fun for everyone, ourselves included.

Elyse: Agreed on that, but I personally loved the dancing. I always love to dance, and the positive energy that John just described gave me the freedom to not worry about a damn thing and just go dance. The DJ hit my musical taste right on the nose, too.

John: What represented us the most as a couple was the ceremony. The reception was great; the music, the food, the drinks, the dancing, but those details, for all their merits, can’t help but feel superficial in comparison to the time and depth of thought we dedicated to making the ceremony feel right for us. A lot of the more traditional customs of weddings felt wrong for us, and so we spent a great deal of time talking about each element of the ceremony and what it meant for us.

As a result, the ceremony really meant something to me. We wrote our own vows (it even feels weird calling them vows, but for lack of a better word), and spoke earnestly to each other and to our guests about the past, present, and future of our lives together. Perhaps that’s not the moment that others will remember. Instead, if our wedding comes up, they’ll talk about how fun the photo booth was, or how neat the venue looked, or how nice we all looked in our fine clothes. Or maybe the ceremony impacted them as much as it did me, and that’s what they’ll remember.

Elyse: John explained it perfectly. I thought the longest and hardest about our ceremony and vows. We’re not spiritual nor traditional people, and I didn’t want it to be cut-and-paste, so we had to completely customize. We wrote our own vows, our minister gave an original homily about how being in a relationship is like brewing a beer, and my best friend read a poem about how falling in love is like owning a dog. Building the whole ceremony from the ground up really made it feel like that time was just for us – anything else would have felt untrue.

I DIYed the photobooth backdrop, the bouquets, and a couple other random smaller things. The photobooth backdrop was so fun – very personal and fitting of a brewery wedding. I love to think about how guests will keep looking back on our wedding photos and see that bright, beery shower curtain in the middle of everything.