Laurie & Ryan’s DIY Maryland Barn Wedding at Rocklands Farm

Images: Cassidy DuHon Photography

You’re going to LOVE this one Romancers. DIY details galore, a stunning Maryland barn wedding venue, sunflowers, rainbow streamers, AND SO MUCH MORE. This stunner was planned by one of my favs, Rebecca with Blue Canary Events and it was captured beautifully by Cassidy DuHon. Enjoy.

I read in some wedding planning book that you should get married somewhere that feels like home to you.

Rocklands Farm was the first venue we looked at, but the moment we set foot there, the sense of home knocked us backwards. Open green land, dogs and cats and sheep running around, wildflowers everywhere, the beautiful old barn. It felt so much like us. And once we picked the venue, so many details fell naturally into place around that first choice. We’d use wildflowers that grew on the farm (beautifully arranged by Anna Glenn, who lives there), the wine would come from their vineyard, we’d have a bluegrass/swing/jazz band and end the night with s’mores around the fire pit.

We chose to have lawn games at cocktail hour because that so perfectly fit the casual, rustic vibe of the farm. And we were able to use tons of materials they already had at the farm for the smaller details: we hung the escort cards on twine between two ladders; we set up the favors on stacks of old crates. The atmosphere of the farm even helped me pick my dress; I couldn’t imagine wearing anything but the vintage, dreamy Vivienne gown from BHLDN fitting at this location.

Ryan’s best friend since 3rd grade, Alex London, wrote the ceremony and officiated the wedding. He’s a YA author and does a ton of public speaking to promote his books, so he was absolutely perfect for it. We had three friends from different facets of our lives do the readings (excerpts from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses), and our niece carried the rings. We also had an awesome group of friends and family who helped with the DIY elements.

>>Click inside for the rest of this gorgeous DIY Maryland Barn Wedding! <<<

One of our biggest guiding principles for the wedding was “we won’t do anything just because that’s how it’s done.” Another was that we wanted to focus on our community of friends and family as much as possible. So instead of doing a dramatic reveal of ourselves for the ceremony, we hung out beforehand and greeted people as they arrived.

We set up the seating in circle formation, with us at the center, to emphasize the community of friends and family that surrounds and supports us. We walked into the ceremony together, because we felt that best represented the journey we were making into marriage. During the ceremony, Alex asked our guests to make vows to be there for us, in addition to the vows we made to each other. And the rings that we put on each other had been warmed by our guests beforehand: we set up a ringwarming station (made by our sister-in-law) on the guest table where everyone could touch, bless and channel well wishes into our rings.

We also bucked tradition in smaller ways that just felt right: I didn’t wear white, we wrote our own vows, and we didn’t even have a cake, because why have cake when you could have gelato???

We tried to DIY as much as possible, because we wanted our personalities to feel present in every element of the wedding. I think our favorite thing we made may have been our rainbow chuppah, which we made with ribbon and birch poles that the farm already had. With the addition of the sunflowers from our florist, it made for a gorgeous canopy to make our vows under.

Our centerpieces were created partially from books from our own shelves. Each table had a theme that we felt fit the group that was sitting there, and we made little cards describing the books’ significance to us. And Ryan designed these really cool program/fans that had the ceremony details laid out on one side, and on the other side had a map of the farm with important locations marked. Even our lawn games were largely DIY, including the amazing cornhole set made for us by a carpenter friend!