Maine Squeeze: It begins

Are you ready for this? It’s been just over five months since my sister’s wedding, and I’m finally ready to share all of the delightful details with you. I hope you’re still interested! :) Since it was really a week-long affair for our two families, I’ll start at the beginning — the Friday before the Friday before the wedding, when J and I flew into Logan airport in Boston.

My parents picked us up that evening driving two very laden cars. I call Kate and Cormac’s wedding a semi-destination affair, because although none of us were local to Maine, we had a home base (our summer cottage) a short walk from the ceremony and reception locations. This was a HUGE convenience and really the only way we were able to pull off this very-DIY wedding. My parents live in Connecticut, and were able to make several trips to Maine over the course of the summer to deliver things like clay pots (a favor component), wooden cutlery packets, napkins, paper cups, punch bowls, strings of bunting, lemonade dispensers, reception centerpiece components, lawn games, etc.

Even with all of those pre-wedding week trips, however, we had quite a large load driving up to Maine that Friday. From my recollection, here’s the short list of what they had packed: their clothing and accessories for a week and a half, all of the soda and beer (the wine went in another trip!), de-constructed wooden signage, food to get the seven of us (my immediate family + John + Cormac) through the first few days on-island, tennis equipment, a croquet set, and I’m sure many things I can’t remember. On top of that, I brought a carry-on suitcase and two checked bags on our flight, stuffed with everything from cake stands to blue Ball jars to cake signage. And J brought at least one suitcase. Whew!

Since our flight arrived in the evening, we planned to spend the night at my uncle’s house in southern Maine. That way, we only had a two hour drive and no boat ride ahead of us!

The next morning (Saturday) we continued heading north. We made a quick stop in Freeport to pick up the whoopie pies for the welcome dinner from Wicked Whoopies — yum! When we arrived, our order of 100 mini classics was boxed and ready to go. The staff couldn’t have been nicer — they even opened the store a half hour early to accommodate our travel plans!

Whoopies wedged into one of the cars, we drove the last hour-long leg up to Boothbay Harbor, and finally rounded the familiar, glorious curve to the Island parking lot!

As I think I’ve mentioned before, there isn’t a bridge to the Island, and there is only one truck on the Island. This makes packing efficiently essential, as, in general, you carry or cart everything you bring on and off. There is a ferry (a refurbished lobster boat) that runs several times a day, and most Island families have their own boats.

We made sure to arrive in time for the 12:30 ferry, reminded the ferry driver we’d need an extra trip (we had alerted him a few weeks before!), and then proceeded to unload our stuff. You can see a little of that in the video here! I wish I had photos of all this, but due to a miscommunication between my co-recorder and I in clearing off the camera each night, the first few days of pictures are no more. Sniff sniff!

We got everything loaded on and over to the Island in one trip, and then began carrying everything up the ramp and loading it into the truck. Can you tell yet that this week involved a lot of lugging?

We then followed the truck up the hill to my grandmother’s cottage, where we’d be staying the week, and — you guessed it — unloaded everything off the truck.

We paused a few moments to take in the view — SO BEAUTIFUL! —

and then it was back to work. I became famous that week throughout the Island for my “wedding binder,” which was chock full of schedules and lists. That sounds a little intense (and it was!), but as counter intuitive as it seems, being ultra-organized absolutely helped us all relax. We knew what needed to be done, and we had a plan for getting it done. The rest of the time we could relax!

Anyway, the wedding binder told us that we had two tasks for the day: moving all of the beverages from my parents bedroom to a designated spot under the house, and constructing the wedding signage. I’m happy to say we accomplished both! A sneak peek:

To be continued…

All photos by the fabulous Jenna Cole