Catskills Wedding — Allison Considine

I think back on our wedding weekend with overwhelming joy and gratitude. We planned the whirlwind wedding in just 90 days—a real feat with the vendor and supply challenges of the pandemic! After our original wedding plans were postponed and canceled, we replanned our 2020 California nuptials for 2021 in upstate New York. Crosby found the venue on TikTok, and we snagged an open fall weekend. It was a wild planning process, especially since two vendors needed to be replaced just weeks before the wedding! One of my favorite projects in the lead-up to the wedding was putting together a zine with designer Melissa Gutierrez for our guests with wedding details and an illustrated map of the hamlet of Callicoon. I was thrilled to go to Manhattan’s flower market to hand-pick selections with the florist days before the wedding—I especially loved the dinner plate dahlias and fluffy stems of pampas grass.

Bridal Celebration

The day before the wedding, I had the greatest bridal celebration at Buck Brook Alpacas, an alpaca farm I have visited a few times over the years. My aunts, in-laws, cousins, and friends walked alpacas through the farm, finding hidden gifts along the route. Valentina, my feisty alpaca, led the herd. We enjoyed wine and charcuterie and alpaca-shaped cookies and the fall foliage. Later that afternoon, guests toured the Seminary Hill orchard and cidery, the world's first passive house certified cidery.

Rehearsal Dinner & Welcome Party

The rehearsal dinner took place in the back field at the mountain house where my family stayed, overlooking the Delaware River. My two favorite cooks, my dad and Crosby, prepared a feast of salad, standing rib roast, and sweet potatoes, and we enjoyed a croquembouche from Newburgh Flour Shop as the sun set. Afterward, guests met in town at Catskill Provisions Distillery, where we tasted whiskey and gin with the head distiller and nibbled on local cheeses.

The Big Day

Saturday was a balmy, sunny day. There was just a whisper of fall—the trees were beginning to turn shades of red and yellow, but the temperature was in the low 70s. We got ready at the Boarding House at Seminary Hill, a quaint lodging with apartments beautifully appointed with a Shaker-style design. The morning went by in a flash!

Our ceremony took place in Seminary Hill’s orchard overlooking the Delaware River, with views of the rolling Catskill Mountains. Crosby’s father delivered a beautiful program filled with marriage and life advice—and a few jokes, of course! As our first challenge to overcome as a married couple, Crosby and I used a two-handed saw to cut through a log as guests cheered us on. Instead of tying the knot, we cut the log. My father got the saw from a junkyard when he was 8 years old, and he and his father built the wooden handles. A quartet of dear high school friends sang “The Irish Blessing” before the marriage proclamation. Our guests tossed cones of dried lavender buds sent from Crosby’s elementary teacher’s lavender farm in Maine, and a harpist played “Married Life” as the recessional.

The Festivities

The star of cocktail hour was a long charcuterie board with figs and Harbison cheese! Our dear friend Adam, the matchmaker, owns Bread Service PA and provided bread for the escort table. Each guest received a tasty baguette featuring a tag with their name calligraphed by Crosby’s talented mom! The baguette tags corresponded with the round boules on the tables, with numbers marked in flour. (Adam also made batches of “Wedding Granola” à la Eleven Madison Park for day-after favors.)

Dinner was Spanish paella, prepared in a four-foot-wide pan and filled with lobster and mussels and saffron rice! It was a hit. Crosby’s brother, Graham, learned to play “The Stars and the Moon” on the piano, a favorite song of my dad’s that I promised to one day sing at my wedding. When the sun fell, s’mores were enjoyed outdoors ‘round a bonfire and guests played corn hole. A hot jazz band brought everyone to the dance floor, then my high school pal Gia, a DJ in Berlin, brought the house down on the one and twos.

Over the past decade, Crosby and I have celebrated many birthdays, anniversaries, and special occasions with dessert made by my cousin Sean, an executive pastry chef. For the wedding, Sean made the most delicious cake that featured almond dacquoise, praline cream, concord grape gelée, vanilla cream, a layer of feuilletine yuzu crunch, all covered with a thin layer of buttercream. It was perhaps the greatest wedding cake in all of time.

We moved the late-night festivities up the hill to the mountain house. We had tomato pies from Bread Service PA and Gerry’s Pizza around a fire pit, then we danced in a field under the stars to ABBA ‘til the wee hours of the morning. The fog rolling in on the Delaware River made us feel like we were in outer space. We said our goodbyes the next morning over bagels, feeling grateful and full of love and exhausted in the best way.