Kate and Juan’s College-Reunion-Style Peak Foliage Wedding at Middlebury College’s Breadloaf School of English in Ripton, Vermont

Many thanks to my friend and talented photographer Abby Allaire, who shot both film and digital photos for Kate and Juan’s wedding, many of these photos are hers! And another big thanks to my favorite lab, Phototec Inc., in Rutland, VT for having super speedy film turnaround so I can share some film favorites less than a week after Kate and Juan’s wedding.

Meeting your future husband at college is the best (can you tell I met my husband while at school?)- there are so many shared moments of learning how to be an adult while making life-long friends, and when it’s time to get married, it feels a bit like a college reunion as friends from both yours and your partner’s side share similar memories of a beloved place. Kate and Juan met in their early years at Middlebury College, and brought a large group of Middlebury alumni to their wedding at Middlebury’s Breadloaf School of English to celebrate their sweet, caring relationship with roots in Vermont.

Kate and Juan are the kind of people who put others’ needs before their own, checking on Abby and I to make sure we were fed and feeling good throughout the day. I quickly saw where their sweet natures originated as I fell in love with both their families after minutes of getting to know them. Kate and Juan found many ways to include their families into the day, from Kate’s intricately knit and crocheted sweater, made over the course of a year by her sister (Kate is a triplet!) to the Mariachi band that played at their cocktail hour, a tradition Juan’s family loves at every large family celebration.

A favorite part of the day for Abby and me was visiting Middlebury College for Kate and Juan’s first look. The bell of the church tolled as Kate ran up to Juan and the sunlight shone for 15 minutes as we took photos in front of the college dorm where they first met. It was lovely thinking about the past, present, and future all in one moment for Kate and Juan.