Kristine and Christopher seemed destined to meet one another, even from the time they were young. While Kristine is originally from the Philippines, she grew up in Wayne, NJ—coincidentally where Chris’ mother’s parents lived, so he was always visiting the area.
It took until Kristine’s last year of graduate school at Boston University until their paths actually crossed. Being in the military, Chris never goes to bars, but it was the last night that a good friend was in town, so he decided to make an exception. A few months later, they connected on Facebook—thank goodness for social media—and they started dating.
“I tried to propose to Kristine about twenty times, but her family is very traditional,” Chris says. They wanted her to wait until she graduated and passed all of the board exams to become an occupational therapist.
Being respectful of her family’s wishes, Chris obliged and finally got the opportunity to officially propose during a Christmas dinner in 2011 with his dad’s side of the family. “My grandmother had been in on it with me and had been helping me plot how to do it for months before it happened,” Chris says.
Shortly after they were engaged, Chris had to leave for training, so they put their wedding plans on hold for a few months. “We knew we both wanted an outdoorsy, magical and very ‘us’ kind of wedding with lots of personal touches,” commented Kristine. For example, Chris actually chopped all the wood and drilled one-inch holes for candles for all of their table centerpieces.
Since Chris was training in Groton, Connecticut and Kristine was living in Wayne, New Jersey, they only had Saturdays and Sundays to see one another and to do all the planning for their big day. They had visited a few venues, but nothing really captured that rustic outdoor feel they were hoping for. So when Chris’ aunt suggested they get married at her horse farm in Salt Point, NY, it was the perfect place to fit the image they were looking for.
The ceremony was held in front of his aunt’s fruit orchard on October 5th with all the luscious colors of the changing fall leaves. “We actually didn’t have any flowers during the wedding, except for my bouquet and boutonnieres, because the setting was so majestic, that we didn’t need any” the bride notes.
As mentioned earlier, making their wedding very personal was extremely important to them both, so in lieu of a unity candle during the ceremony, they chose to have a wine union, being that they both love wine. Chris’ grandfather had given him a 1988 bottle of Tuscan San Giovese wine that he decanted and poured from two glasses into one to symbolize their union.
Chris is a real hands-on kind of guy and, the day before the wedding, he drove around his aunt’s property with a 4 x 4 and collected large rocks to create a walkway and aisle for the ceremony. He also cut an old, beautiful sapling tree which he tied jute cord to and hung all the place cards from by the entrance to the large cathedral tent that housed the ceremony. Next to the tent were three of his aunt’s prized stallions, which guests could pet and feed throughout the day.
“I found these old 1920s luggage tags on Etsy—along with a lot of other great items—which we used to write the guest names and tables on for the place cards,” Kristine says.
These uniquely personal touches extended to every area of the day. Each music selection had meaning behind it and all of the menu items for the reception were hand-picked to fit their tastes.
“We had a prosciutto bar, a waffle bar, a banana fosters bar, and chocolate-covered strawberries, all favorite foods of ours,” groom says. They also had options such as a butternut squash ravioli in a butter and sage sauce to blend with the flavors of the fall season.
For favors they gave burlap sacks filled with three different kinds of truffles. Their dog is named Truffle and wanted to include him in a fun way. “At the end of the night we had a gigantic bounce house,” laughs Kristine, “and I went in and bounced wedding dress and all.”
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