By Kristin Mcdonald
Photography By Hubert Schriebl
The Taft-Pickering Wedding
Their story began on a basketball court. Both were students at Vermont Technical College in Randolph Center, both on the college’s teams, so they saw each other often. Eventually they began playing pick-up together and soon became inseparable. After three years of steady dating, Chris Taft of Springfield asked Amanda Pickering of Arlington to marry him. First getting her father, Fred’s, permission, Chris took her for a walk down a back road in the hollow near Amanda’s family farm. She said yes, and to commemorate their pledge they carved each other’s initials into a large sycamore tree that had split from the original trunk into two separate trees—CCT on one side, AJP on the other. Chris noted the significance: the two trees were joined but separate, and they had grown old together, his plan for the two of them.
But we are jumping ahead. First, they had a wedding to plan.
When they began to think about the wedding over two years ago, they knew they didn’t want a formal ceremony at a grand hotel, or a limousine service to a posh reception hall. Amanda knew she wouldn’t even be wearing high heels. What they pictured was something simple, casual, with a relaxing atmosphere, and, as much as possible, local, homegrown and from the farm.
Amanda’s ties to the farm run deep. Her family has had the farm, 35 acres on Rte. 313 in Arlington, for over 20 years. Her dad, Fred, has a landscaping business, and mom Heidi grows vegetables and flowers. Amanda and her two sisters and brother grew up with farm animals—cows, pigs, a variety of fowl—which were butchered and put in the freezer. Vegetables were canned or pickled for the winter. A young Amanda helped her father with the landscaping, and now works in the industry herself as a grower at a wholesale greenhouse, having majored in Landscape Development and Ornamental Horticulture. Chris, who majored in Civil Engineering and Architecture, grew up in Springfield, not on a farm, but like Amanda, loves the outdoors, especially camping and hiking. For their September wedding, they would grow as much as they could from the farm. What they couldn’t grow, they would buy locally. And they would tap into their friends in an effort to keep the event personal.
For the ceremony they chose the home of a close friend who lives nearby. Amanda had helped her father do landscaping work there and knew the setting. The view is breathtaking. So lovely that they didn’t want to overdo the decorations because they didn’t want to detract from the beautiful background. Heidi grew many of the flowers, scrupulously timing the blooming, and made all the arrangements for the ceremony and reception. Keeping with the pastel palette of the wedding, she grew yellow snapdragons, Cinderella yellow lisianthus, sunflowers, and black cohosh, as well as the Calla Lilies that the boys wore for boutonnières. She purchased lavender snapdragons, lavender lisianthus, yellow roses, yellow daisies and lavender daisies. Russian sage and hydrangea were cut from local gardens belonging to friends.
The couple took their vows under a birch arch Chris had made from trees on the Pickering farm. The officiant was Justice of the Peace Steve Matush, father of Nick, Chris’ best friend from high school and one of his groomsmen. Steve, a guitarist, along with his fiancé Barbara Burns on cello and Jill Newton on fiddle, played contra music before the ceremony and later at the reception, before the DJ came on to get everyone dancing. As Fred walked his daughter down the aisle, the trio played “Amazing Grace.”.....
