First of all, lemme say that our wedding was totally fun and doing it over an entire wknd was the best move ever. Stone Tavern Farm (STF) was awesome -- their whole family helps out. Their kids are great and very helpful -- John and Danielle's 10yr old son was shuttling people around in the golf cart and his daughters served barbecue and walked us up to the hilltop on horses. We couldn't be happier with the location we chose -- we made our decision based on having been to a friend's wedding there three years ago (which was STF's first big wedding.)

We had our wedding up on the hill behind the house. It was a bit of a walk up there, but totally worth it. We did not have a tent -- it would have spoiled the view. Our back-up plan in case of rain was to do the wedding in the pavilion/gazebo thingy.

We had about 130 guests.

We held the reception in the barn, it was amazing and John was soooo cool about arranging the hay bales in a cool and dramatic way.

We also had an excellent photographer that I would recommend -- in fact, she is now doing a colleague at work's wedding too. Her name is Diane...you can see some of the photos she took here:

http://www.hudsonriverphotographer.com/wordpress/?p=2146

She also includes and 'engagement' shoot so that you are totally comfortable with her.

I highly recommend going with Mary's Cookin' Again as your caterer -- the food was AMAZING. The thing to bear in mind with Mary though is that she doesn't want to do a lot of prep calls and meeting and written coordination. We were a little freaked out about how loosey goosey it was (no real contract...only $100 deposit!) But then it all came together and people are STILL talking about the food.

Her staff of waiters and servers and bartenders were excellent too.

We had John cook a barbecue and do bonfires and tiki torches the night before -- totally awesome. It was great and I recommend doing that too. He makes amazing pulled pork sandwiches.

Oh, and I recommend booking the whole Roxbury Hotel in advance and getting one of your bridal party or groomsmen to collect checks etc. We put the whole hotel on my credit card and then just collected form everybody. Believe it or not there was another big wedding in town that wknd....so glad we did that.

Much of our wedding party stayed on the farm. We rented out John's "chalet" for some of our more party-oriented friends and they hosted a kick-butt after-party there.

Our DJ was amazing too -- www.jtdproductions.com. He really had a great sense for how to get the mood flowing and they have this whole system where you can pick must-play and do-not-play songs in advance. No chicken dance!!! :-)

We rented port-o-lets and I think they were more like $400? We rented them from Sav-On.

John and family at the barn are so awesome, I can't say enough good things about them. They are organized, flexible and they have an incredible sense of integrity. I made an error reviewing the bill (hey, I was hung over!) and they immediately sent me a check with the difference. They are just so on the ball. They just kept on finding new ways to be helpful and delightful. You really get a sense that they love what they do. When we got back to our room there was a very sweet note and bottle of champagne with two glasses. Very classy!

My wife says that she wants to spend every anniversary now on the farm and that she feels like the STF family is our family. Cheesy, I know, but not unwarranted in the least!