June 30, 2020 | Posted by Village

Zita and Conor tied the knot in Jenny’s Garden under the arbor and surrounded by blooming flowers and their closest family and friends. After rescheduling and ultimately cancelling their larger wedding out of safety concerns, they chose to have an intimate wedding at Fearrington with just their nearest and dearest. It was an incredibly special day.

How did you and your partner meet?
Conor and I met the day before my senior year and his junior at Bowdoin College in Maine. We had both been attending the same last day of summer party and ended up walking home around the same time early in the evening. Conor ran up to me and mustered up a pick-up line “Let me guess, early class tomorrow morning?” I must have found it charming because the rest is what led us to the Fearrington on June 6th. Conor has always claimed that he knew he would regret it for the rest of his life if he didn’t say hello to the girl walking in front of him.

Tell us about the engagement.
During my family’s annual summer trip to Maine Conor mentioned that he wanted to stop by the Bowdoin campus and that my sister and brother-in-law wanted to join us. After a long tour that led us to the street where we first met I started to get suspicious and at that moment Conor dropped down on one knee. Afterwards we went to meet up with my family at a local brewery where I was stunned to find Conor’s family and all of our closest friends waiting to surprise me. We spent the night drinking delicious beer, eating pizza at my favorite restaurant in Portland, and feeling extremely loved.

What made Fearrington the place for you to say “I do?”
If you think wedding planning is hard, try doing it during a global pandemic! After rescheduling and then ultimately cancelling our original wedding plans, we knew that we still needed to honor the things that were most important to us – getting married and doing it with our families by our side.

We let our families know that we still wanted to get married on our original wedding date of 6/6/2020 and started to look at options for how to do it. Conor’s family had heard about Fearrington from a friend and when we looked at it for the wedding we knew it would be perfect. The thing that struck me most were the gorgeous gardens. To me they felt like the perfect combination of wonderfully wild and natural, but tamed and refined. Gilda made us feel extremely well taken care of and we knew that they would work with us to make the day special. And last, but certainly not least, I have a bit of an obsession with cows so it felt like fate when I found out about the Fearrington belties.

 

Describe the highlight moment of your wedding day.
For me the highlight moment was when I saw the setup for dinner. When I cancelled my wedding plans I thought that I was giving up on all of the work that I had done to make the day beautiful and special with lots of attention paid to the details. Fearrington gave all of that back to me. The farm table was gorgeous, the menus had been personalized to us, and the flowers were absolutely stunning. Getting to think back to both families gathered around one table under the string lights is my favorite memory.

What was the biggest surprise of the day?
I think the biggest surprise of the day was just how seriously Gilda and Fearrington took our small event. While we were nothing like the weddings that they are used to hosting, they made us feel like our event held the same importance as a 150 person wedding. In particular, the wait staff was incredible. They were kind and attentive and went out of their way to bring us anything we needed. At one point my 2 year old niece bit into a crab cake misunderstanding and thinking it was a cupcake, which you could imagine her disappointment. Brian, who coordinated all of our service, saw her upset and brought her out a little dessert! Everyone really went above and beyond for us.

What was your biggest surprise about wedding planning?
That we hardly had to do any! Really Gilda and her team took care of everything. We only needed to provide general details about what we were looking for and everything turned out better than we could have imagined.

Anything you want to add about your wedding story?
The last thing that I will say about our wedding is that it was nothing like we originally planned, but it was more than we could have ever imagined. We now feel fortunate that we were able to have such a special small event and know that the experience created moments and feelings that couldn’t be replicated in a larger wedding.

Photographs: Krystal Kast Photography
Venue: The Fearrington House
Flowers: Fearrington Village
Cake and Catering: The Fearrington House