There are weddings where the venue is simply a pretty place chosen for everyone to meet, usually on a date that just so happens to be ‘open’.

And then there are weddings where the location writes half of the love story itself, long before anyone even thought to send a save-the-date.

Hannah and Carter’s backyard wedding in Greensboro, Vermont was very much the second kind. 

In fact, Greensboro might reasonably claim the title of Matchmaker Extraordinaire considering the significant role it played in Hannah and Carter even having a love story in the first place. 

The two of them spent entire summers learning to sail together, with long afternoons on the lake that start with someone saying “we’ll just go out for a bit” and end several hours later when someone finally notices the sun has dropped behind the hills and maybe—just maybe— it’s time to head in.

If you’ve ever spent time in Greensboro, you’ll understand how that happens. It’s the kind of place where time loosens its grip just a little, where the same people end up back at the same lake every summer until one day someone realizes they’ve been growing up alongside someone else the entire time.

And, spoiler alert: where friendships have been known to turn into something else entirely, provided you give them enough summers. 

So, when it came time for Hannah and Carter to decide where to get married, the answer was plain as day: 

Hannah’s grandmother’s house in Greensboro. 

A Backyard Wedding That Already Knew Everyone By Heart

A backyard wedding doesn’t move the same way a venue wedding does. 

At a venue, guests arrive and look for directions. Where’s the bar? Where do we stand? Are we too early? Is that chair taken? 

In a backyard (especially one that has spent decades hosting Vermont summers), people already know. 

A grandma drifts towards the porch because, well… naturally. A childhood friend settles directly into the grass like sitting on the ground was part of the seating chart (because it pretty much is). A second cousin twice removed ends up leaning against a fence post while they catch up with someone they haven’t seen since roughly 2009. 

At Hannah’s grandmother’s house, people moved across the lawn like they’d done it a couple hundred times before. Which in some cases, they probably had. 

The house itself seemed entirely unfazed by the fact that it was hosting one of the most important days of someone’s life. Two someones’ lives, technically.

Windows casually tossed open. Early morning light sliding across the floors. Bridesmaids moving between rooms with steaming coffee cups and makeup brushes in hand— an unlikely duo if there ever was one. Someone was looking for a missing phone. Someone else was trying to locate bobby pins, which have a long and proud tradition of disappearing exactly when they’re needed most. 

Meanwhile, Hannah moved through it all with the kind of calm that only happens when a person is getting married somewhere that already feels like home.

The thing about this particular backyard wedding is it wasn’t just a pretty place to hold a ceremony for convenience’s sake. 

It was the place.

Vermont, Doing What Vermont Does Best

Greensboro, for those unfamiliar, does not believe in subtle scenery. 

Fields stretch outward in every direction like they’ve been there since the invention of grass. Birch trees catch the light in that particular way they do in early fall: half golden, half glowing. And somewhere down the road, Caspian Lake was pulling its usual stunt of looking extremely picturesque while pretending not to notice that all eyes were on it.

By the time the ceremony began, the light had settled into that unmistakable Vermont in-between season. You know the one. 

Not quite summer anymore. Not fully autumn yet. Just cool enough that people start thinking about sweaters but aren’t quite ready to commit.

Chairs sat in the grass overlooking the hills. A floral arch leaned casually into the breeze. Someone in the front row turned around to take in the hills before the bride made her way down the aisle and stole the show. 

The whole scene had the distinct feeling that Vermont had already done most of the design work.

(It kind of rolls like that.)

And if anyone needed further evidence that this place had been involved in the making-of for years, Hannah’s vows during the ceremony made it pretty clear. She pulled out a journal entry she had written years earlier, shortly after meeting Carter. Smitten as can be, obviously.

The entry wasn’t written for the wedding. It came from the beginning— back when their relationship was nothing but the slow realization that the person you spend your summers with might end up mattering quite a lot. 

All this time later, those words found their full circle moment, and in the process, just so happened to invert time a little bit. 

The beginning of the story, suddenly sitting right there in the middle of it.

When the Wedding Decided to Go for a Walk

Most weddings transition from ceremony to reception with a polite announcement that guests should make their way toward cocktail hour and a subsequent mad dash to the bar to find out what the signature drinks are.

This wedding, however, opted for a slightly more Vermont-appropriate solution.

While Hannah’s grandmother’s house was perfect for getting ready and holding the ceremony, the reception needed a bit more space to stretch. 

Just up the road sits Circus Smirkus, a local non-profit organization that, true to its name, is in fact… a circus. So after the ceremony wrapped up, the entire wedding quite literally paraded down the road to the circus grounds. (I couldn’t make that up, if I tried.)

Guests spilled onto the road in loose clusters. A couple cars passed slowly, doing the polite Vermont thing where everyone pretends that a full wedding procession walking down the street is completely normal. I dodged traffic as if it’s part of the job description of a Vermont wedding photographer. 

It was a little improvised, a lot chaotic, and exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from a backyard wedding that was made in (and for!) a place like this. 

The Kind of Wedding That Could Only Happen Here

By the time the reception got underway and the evening settled in, it was pretty clear that this wedding didn’t simply take place in Greensboro.

It belonged to it.

Vendors | Florals Florals: Blomma Flicka Flowers | Reception Music: EmaLou & The Beat | Ceremony Music: Catamount Quartet | Hair and Makeup: The Rehair Shop | Reception Venue: Circus Smirkus

Places have a distinct way of shaping the stories that happen inside them.

A backyard holds history. A lake holds entire summers. A small Vermont town holds the particular brand of time that lets friendships grow into something bigger (the biggest, really). The photos that come of it all hold so much emotion, that it practically demands to be turned into an heirloom album the likes of which will sit on a living room shelf for the next forty years while various family members periodically open it and say, “Oh wow, I forgot about this part.”

Hannah and Carter’s wedding was exactly what it was always going to be— a natural continuation of a story that was being penned one summer at a time. 

If towns could talk, Greensboro probably would’ve looked Hannah and Carter squarely in the eyes, nodded once, and said, “About time, you two.”

(A traditional Vermont wedding venue could never.)

Toying With the Idea of a Backyard Wedding Yourself?

If you’re planning a wedding and thinking, “Okay but wait… could we do something like this?” — the short answer is ‘yes’. The long answer is ‘also yes… and can I please come?’.

Backyard weddings will give you something a little different than most traditional Vermont wedding locations. Odds are good that’s why you’re even considering one in the first place.

For one thing, the day tends to unfold more naturally. People spread out across the property instead of clustering around assigned spaces. Guests wander into conversations they didn’t plan on having. People inevitably end up sitting in the grass at some point, which is usually a pretty good sign that everyone’s comfortable.

Backyard weddings also tend to carry more history than a traditional venue, mostly because they happen in places that already know the people standing in them.

The trees have watched years of summers come and go. The porch has hosted more conversations than anyone could reasonably keep track of. The view across the fields has been there for ordinary Tuesday evenings long before it ever agreed to witness a wedding day.

And when a wedding takes place somewhere like that, the day starts to feel less like an event and more like a continuation of something that was already in motion.

There are a few logistical things to think through, of course — parking, a weather plan that goes beyond crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, how to light the place once the sun disappears behind the hills — but all of those have solutions.

What you can’t doctor up yourself is the feeling that an entire place belongs to the story. 

And when you find a place like that? You’re more or less obligated to have your backyard wedding there. 

Just ask Greensboro. It’s been matchmaking for years. 

If you’re dreaming up a backyard wedding of your own somewhere in Vermont — a field, a porch, a lakeshore, a place that already knows your story — I’d love to photograph it. Join my waitlist to be the first to know when my books open for 2027 weddings!