1. Real Weddings

Sarah & Eric: A Summer Wedding in Middletown, Connecticut

Despite knowing each other since high school and becoming roommates during college, it wasn’t until Sarah and Eric graduated and moved back home with

Despite knowing each other since high school and becoming roommates during college, it wasn’t until Sarah and Eric graduated and moved back home with their parents (just blocks away from each other) that they started dating. The Bride Sarah Jankowitz, 28, elementary school teacher The Groom Eric Strong, 29, professional gambler The Date July 18 Eric proposed to an unsuspecting Sarah on Valentine’s Day with balloons, roses, earrings, a necklace, and finally, an engagement ring. After Sarah decided she wanted to throw a barn wedding, the two started scouring sites. After finding the perfect venue in Middletown, Connecticut, the two started planning their modern barn wedding for the following summer.

As another nod to Sarah’s profession, the couple used chalkboards throughout the wedding as signage. On the bathroom doors were “hens” and “roosters” signs, and “Mr.” and “Mrs.” signs were attached to their sweetheart table chairs.
Though she had originally wanted the escort cards hanging on a clothes wire, when she arrived to the reception she fell in love with the way her wedding planner had wrapped the wire around pillars in the barn. “It looked amazing and was so much more original this way,” Sarah says.
Sarah chose very nontraditional dresses for her bridesmaids from a local shop near her home in Brooklyn. She found the shoes online, and they matched the dresses and her wedding colors perfectly.
Sarah chose purple and yellow with green and red accents for her wedding colors. For the reception, they used purple lighting to give the barn a modern feel and strung rope lights and woven ball lights on the ceiling beams.
When she found a rooster-themed address stamp online, Sarah and her wedding planner used it to personalize paper cones filled with flower petals. After the ceremony, guests tossed the petals on the couple as they made their exit.
For their signature drink, Sarah and Eric chose mango mojitos (which they had made in a big batch ahead of time). They served the drinks in mason jars embellished with drink disks stamped with their rooster monogram.
Sarah and Eric’s colorful cake was topped with a custom made cake topper that the couple had found online. They sent the artist photos of themselves and what they would be wearing, and she personalized the figurines to match. There were even tiny purple roosters in keeping with the wedding theme.
Sarah wore a fit-to-flare Liancarlo gown with a full birdcage veil to capture a vintage ‘40s look. Her bridesmaids wore short, summery dresses in Sarah’s signature yellow and purple.
Sarah used a craft she uses in her job as an elementary school teacher to DIY her programs. After having stationery printed with a monogrammed rooster stamp (a recurring theme throughout the wedding), she and Eric bound the programs together with pencils printed with barnyard animals and colorful rubber bands.
This huge willow tree served as a backdrop for Sarah and Eric’s outdoor ceremony.
Instead of traditional favors, Sarah and Eric donated money to Heifer International, an organization that donates cows, pigs, chicks, and goats to third world countries, in their guests’ names. Not wanting to leave their guests without a tangible treat, though, the couple handed out barn animal cookies with tags describing the donation.
To share their love of travel, Sarah and Eric named their tables after the places they had been together. Then Sarah framed photos of the two of them in those places and put them at each table. Sarah loved that guests got out of their seats and mingled while they looked at the photographs.