New Years Eve Wedding at Lord Hill Farms

I can’t think of a better way to close out a decade and kick off a new one than celebrating Molly + Brandon. Lord Hill Farms in Snohomish, Washington was the perfect venue for their epic New Years Eve wedding. Molly was one of my closest friends in high school and it truly meant the world to be able to capture their wedding day. Is there anything better than seeing your friends happy and thriving and in incredible partnerships?! I think not. Two years ago, Brandon sent me a Facebook message and asked me to call him and ended up including me in his plan to propose to Molly during one of my trips back to Seattle (and their proposal was featured on How They Asked - how cool is that?!). I was hiding behind a van on Alki beach, Molly having no idea I was there, and it was sooooo incredibly special to be a part of. Fast forward a year and a half later, and the big celebration finally arrived!!!

Molly and Brandon received a massive shock when their wedding venue suddenly closed down, over a year of planning GONE, and they had to basically re-plan their wedding within two months (after already paying off the first one). If that won’t test a couple I don’t know what would - but they handled it like champs and ended up planning an even better one (Molly will explain more of this story herself in the questions below!). It’s such an incredible testimony of keeping sight of what’s important - they’re the perfect example of a couple who was just stoked to be married and celebrate with all their friends and family, and they didn’t let the details or nitty gritty get them down. They had the time of their LIFE and it was a blast to capture.

There were so many rad New Years Eve details - they set out to throw the greatest NYE party ever and wowowowowow did they deliver! A photo highlight for me was that legendary New Years Eve countdown moment - soooooo much excitement and energy on that dance floor and all the streamers were so crazy and fun! Moments like that are always sooooo nerve-wracking and anxiety-induing for a photographer (I’ve only got one chance and I better not eff it up!) - and it turned out better than I ever imagined. I also reallyyyyy loved capturing their Ketubah signing ceremony. Before the ceremony, their wedding party, immediate family, and grandparents all gathered in a room to experience this Jewish tradition together. It is a super emotional time and such a special way to set your intention before the big wedding ceremony. It was SUCH a sweet time for family and friends to be with them and send them love and good intentions before everyone else arrived. You could feel the love so much and I was getting pretty emotional behind the camera.

Thinking about planning a New Years Eve wedding? I’ve got a little advice from a photographers perspective and a few things to consider!!! If you’re getting married on NYE, I’m SURE that ‘midnight’ moment is what you’re looking forward to most, right? However, that time of year (depending on where you live), the sun sets SUPER early. Here on the west coast, it’s around 4/4:30pm, but it starts to get dark fast in the PNW even closer to an hour before sunset on an overcast day like this one. Molly + Brandon booked 10 hours of photo + video coverage so we originally thought our coverage would be 2-midnight, which TOTALLY makes sense (especially with a 6pm ceremony!). If light wasn’t a concern, that would have worked perfectly. But from a photographers perspective, I immediately panicked when I saw photo + video would only have 2 hours of coverage before sun set (particularly problematic for a wedding with a large wedding party and a ton of family photos AND wanting getting-ready coverage, not to mention first look and couples photos!). Another thing I was thinking about was that by the time midnight rolled around, it’s very possible most of the guests would have already taken some of the early buses back to the hotels and there would be less people around them to celebrate the countdown. ANOTHER thing that crossed my mind is several hours of dancing coverage just to wait around for that midnight moment isn’t making the best use of photo+video coverage (trust me when I say I really don’t need more than 30 mins-1hr MAX dancing coverage), whereas adding more hours with natural light will add soooo much more to your gallery and film than the extra two hours of dancing coverage. OK, so with all that being said, I had us adjust coverage from noon-10, which allowed 4 hours of natural light for getting ready and all formal photos (and the down time between wrapping up photos and ceremony starting was PERFECT for relaxing + the Ketubah ceremony). And KICKING OFF the dance party with the countdown when all the guests were still there and excited and ready to party was soooooo epic - the energy was insane and it really couldn’t have been a more EXCITING way to get everyone out on the dance floor. So they ended up doing a “Nashville” countdown and counted down to 10pm and it was epic and amazing and the perfect solution! So all this being said - if you’re planning a New Years Eve wedding, work with your photographer and have an open mind to plan accordingly for light and what your photo goals are! I was so stoked how open M+B were to these changes and it made the day flow so perfectly AND still capture the magic countdown moment.

There’s so much more I could share about this day, but there’s a lot I wanted Molly to put into her own words. If you want some solid advice about planning your dream wedding, staying positive, and never settling (and also trusting your gut - if something feels too good to be true, it probably is!) read this, because these two had to do it TWICE. They also have a pretty incredible (and hilarious) story about how they met that I HAD to have her put into her own words. I had a blast reading this and even learned they WON their honeymoon (I had no idea, but damn did they deserve that after all the planning fiascos)!

1) Tell me about how you and Brandon met!

Brandon and I met in June 2016 when we were both living in Portland, OR. A mutual friend had recently moved there from Seattle and invited me to join him and his new roommates on a river float of the Sandy River. I showed up on a 100 degree Sunday morning where Brandon and his friends were waiting with Coors Lights and beef jerky. Brandon and I hit it off right away and spent 5+ hours floating on the river, laughing and talking the whole time. Brandon lost his hat, a shoe, a fitbit, his tank top, a pair of sunglasses and his inter-tube popped - but he still got my number! We started dating that week and quickly found out that we both graduated from the University of Washington the same year, studied the same minor, had 4 classes together and somehow hadn't met before. There are even videos of us at the same event with many mutual friends, and it took us several years after college, moving to another state and an invite to a river float for us to finally meet!

2) Tell me about what planning a wedding was like for you guys! Tell me about your first venue and what happened when you found out it closed - how did that change your plans? What did you do? How did you re-plan just months before?

We got engaged in August 2018 - we had a wonderful engagement weekend with a surprise engagement party that night! With our families all in town helping us celebrate this joyous moment, Brandon and I got excited about planning our dream wedding. We’d attended many weddings together and were so excited to make this our dream day with all of our family and friends. I had always envisioned a winter wedding in the Pacific Northwest, so when one of our family members suggested New Year’s Eve, it felt perfect! We knew that planning a wedding in four and a half months for December 31st, 2018 was not realistic, as wedding venues (especially on a holiday) are hard to come by on short notice, and vendors can be tough to find in a competitive market like Seattle, so we decided to focus our sights on December 31st, 2019.

Then the venue hunting began! Seattle has many options in the wedding world, including warehouses, wineries and large event spaces, but all of them were wanting to charge astronomical rates for a New Year’s Eve wedding. We did research online and found the Monte Cristo Ballroom, an “all-inclusive wedding venue” in Everett, WA, about 30 miles north of Seattle.What made this venue even more ideal for us was that they were located directly across the street from a large Courtyard by Marriott hotel, so all of our guests could easily walk to their hotel from the wedding, and not risk being on the road on New Year’s Eve! Booking with this venue made the rest of wedding planning incredibly easy! We just had to provide the dessert for guests, flowers and our photographer - the photographer was our easiest choice!!

We booked this venue in August 2018, and by October 2019, we had completely paid off our all-inclusive wedding venue for 200 guests 2 months ahead of time! We were so proud of our hard work and having been able to pay everything off. Less than a week after we had celebrated paying off our venue (and within that, 12 different services - catering, bartending, rehearsal dinner, decorations, late night snacks - all of it!) we got the horrible news that this venue had shut down and were canceling all future weddings. There were 300+ couples that were affected since they hosted 3 weddings a week! There was no sign of getting any of our money back from the venue and with 10 weeks left until our wedding, invitations had already been sent out, guests had booked flights and hotel rooms, and we'd been looking forward to our wedding for over a year. Some of the couples that had booked with this venue found out 4-10 days before their wedding, so we kept reminding ourselves that we did have more time than others, but we needed to act fast if we still wanted to have our wedding.

We discussed canceling, eloping, rescheduling, going to the courthouse and having a party later, but we decided to get all options possible for keeping our date the same since we felt lucky enough to have 100+ guests already committed to traveling to Washington to celebrate us, and we'd been so excited for a New Year's Eve party wedding!! The day we found out our venue closed, we started making calls. We alerted our families and wedding party of the news and we all started getting to work. We needed a ceremony venue, reception venue (ideally both together but we couldn't be picky!), a DJ, coordinator, catering options, alcohol options, decorations and a space for a rehearsal dinner and welcome reception for out of town guests if we could swing it - and we were looking 10 weeks before our wedding on a date that we were competing with NYE parties for. We started touring venues that next day and we toured 12 venues in 5 days, emailed and spoke with many more - I was grateful for vendors like Kami and our florist Joleen from Entirely Poshable, who I was able to discuss different venues with and how they could potentially transform these spaces - we were looking at hotel conference rooms! We didn't know what we would do! The entire Seattle wedding community was so gracious and generous, as no one could believe this had actually happened to so many couples with no warning! Some venues offered their space for free, others offered significant discounts, some offered to open up during days or times of the year they were normally closed. We felt overwhelmed with people's kindness and willingness to help strangers. It felt like we had more options for ~200 person wedding on NYE 10 weeks before than we did 16 months before!!

I had posted on social media asking for recommendations and people came out of the woodwork with suggestions. A girl I knew in high school recommended us looking at Lord Hill Farms in Snohomish, WA. When Brandon and I arrived for our tour, it felt like the perfect winter wonderland dream venue I had always envisioned for our day. We booked with them that day and they helped accelerate the entire planning process for ceremony and reception, catering, decorations and bartending. They were amazing!

We felt so supported by our family and friends. One of our bridesmaid's family owns Hoffman's Bakery, who donated our cake, my mom's cousin was our DJ, her other cousin is a coordinator in Las Vegas who coordinated our wedding, Scuttlebutt Brewery in Everett, WA opened their taproom to us for three hours on a day they're normally closed for us to host a rehearsal welcome reception, and my dad and stepmom cooked a rehearsal dinner that they hosted in their AirBnb. It was amazing!

3) What did you LOVE most about your venue?

Lord Hill Farms gave us our dream winter wedding, perfect NYE party space and we have heard from all of our guests how it felt like a winter wonderland, how great the layout of the venue was and how tasty the food was! After seeing the venue, we could not believe LHF still had an opening on 12/31 ten weeks before the date but they worked with us and helped put everything together quickly and expedited their whole planning process to fit our timeline so we didn't need to reschedule our wedding. No one could believe that our "plan B" was that incredible. All I saw of the venue online were photos of summer weddings, so I was blown away when I saw their indoor space. High ceilings in the ceremony room, huge windows, a dramatic staircase, large reception area that was easy to move around. White twinkle lights were in the trees, around posts, all over the venue and it glowed. I felt like we had compromised on our vision for our first wedding venue since they included everything for such a great price, but LHF really helped make our vision come to life!

4) Do you have a favorite memory from the wedding day?

Brandon and I decided to do a first look (110% recommend) so we were able to complete all couples photos, wedding party, family photos before the ceremony. We had a lot of down time before the ceremony, which was nice and eased our nerves. We decided to read our vows to each other before the ceremony so we wouldn't be crying our eyes out. But the part before the ceremony which was most important to us, and now looking back on it, both of our favorite moment from the day, was a pre-ceremony ring ceremony we did with our wedding party. Brandon's sister officiated the wedding and this pre-ceremony gathering in a separate building on the venue grounds. We, alongside our 9 bridesmaids, 9 groomsmen, parents and grandparents, stood in a circle and they were all the witness to our marriage license signing, as well as reading of the Ketubah (Jewish marriage license) and signing of the Ketubah. We then had our wedding bands passed around the circle and each person took a moment in silence to say a prayer, make a wish, or think good thoughts while holding onto our wedding rings. We weren't expecting our people to take this so seriously, but it was so quiet, emotional and powerful, Brandon and I were blown away by their sincerity. Once we received our rings back, Brandon's sister asked the group to cheer for us and our marriage and celebrate with us before our ceremony. The shouts, cheers, whoops, and laughter that came in that moment still resonates with me - Brandon and I burst into tears as our closest friends and family cheered us on. This was the best moment of the day, and an incredible way to kick off walking down the aisle.

5) Tell me about your honeymoon!

We took off for Florida on Friday 1/3 and went on a 7 night cruise throughout the Eastern Caribbean! We actually won this cruise - I had attended the Seattle Wedding Convention in January 2018 and entered a "how many lollipops in this jar" contest for a travel club! I guessed correctly and after sitting through a 90 minute presentation and paying the taxes and fees - we were booked on our honeymoon cruise!!! We made stops in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Turks & Caicos, and St. Thomas. It was so amazing to relax, eat and enjoy our time together! I totally recommend taking your honeymoon right away and riding that high from your wedding!

6) Any advice for others planning?!

We planned two entire weddings in one year so I felt like we learned a lot about wedding planning. What I learned is - it can be planned in a short amount of time only if you're flexible on vendors and options. We did it and it was beautiful. If you're set on a specific venue or vendor, then be prepared to work around their schedule and be open to being flexible on your date. The two vendors that were most important to me when planning initially were the florist and the photographer, which we had booked over a year in advance, the rest I had always been flexible on. I'd recommend thinking about what aspects are most important to you and prioritize those vendors above others.

We also really got to think about what was truly important to us on our wedding day when our fiasco closure panic moment happened. For us, we wanted an indoor space for us to get married, everyone to have fun, not run out of wine and to have epic photos and video to look back on. When we thought about our wedding in this way, we didn't stress as much about the little things and were able to convey the importance of that to our vendors.

I'd also encourage couples to do their research and talk to as many vendors as they can. Everyone will provide something different for their wedding day and even if they're offering a promotion just for that day, it's okay to talk to other vendors and get as much information possible. Your dream venue you saw on pinterest might cost half your salary - is it worth it? There are probably venues in your area that are equally amazing but not all over pinterest, tour as much as you can! Had we kept looking at other venues after our initial one, we may have seen Lord Hill Farms last year and booked our dream wedding venue the first time, instead of having to go through the stress that we did. We had felt pressured to book with our initial venue the night that we toured it to take advantage of a promotion, and I also felt like we compromised some of our vision of our day because of a "deal" - from our experience, if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is!

Lastly - it is your day for the two of you. Make it what you want. You'll hear opinions from people who've been to your venue before, recently planned their own wedding, or may be contributing financially to your wedding and everyone thinks their opinion should be considered in your decision making. Don't get me wrong, if they're paying then it is respectful to listen and discuss with them, however it is your wedding and your day you'll look back on, you don't want to have regrets.