J.T. & Karen Yost
August 25, 2007, Stormville, New York
“J.T. and I first met at an illustration conference. We proceeded to send each other letters and strange gifts in the mail for a year or so (he lived in Austin at the time), and dated long-distance until he moved to the city to be with me. Five years later, we got engaged. We decided to have our wedding at my family’s house upstate. It took us five months to plan everything, and we constantly second-guessed ourselves. Our families had very different ideas of what a wedding should be than we did. Nobody understood our vision until it played out on the actual day. People laughed when they were supposed to and had fun. It was a do-it-yourself celebration: I made centerpieces with bric-a-brac animal figurines and plastic flowers I found on eBay—real ones are so expensive and hard to manage. Our friends photographed the wedding. We served a feast of vegetarian barbecue and fake fried chicken from Red Bamboo, and had a Van Halen cover band. It was the hottest day of the summer. Here, we’re jumping into my parents’ pool after the ceremony. I’m wearing the bathing-wedding outfit I made: a swimsuit plus tutu. We stayed in our bathing outfits for the rest of the night.”
As told to Arielle Winnik