Tin Roof Barn Washington Wedding | Mady & Eric

One of the most unique wedding venues in The Gorge is Tin Roof Barn, featuring an over 100 year old barn for receptions. Mady and Eric saw photos and immediately wanted to learn more. They planned their wedding all the way from California with the help of Union Events and some amazing family members who went out to visit the venue. Mady and Eric are Mormon, so that meant having their wedding ceremony at the Portland Mormon Temple. Before the wedding guests took the beautiful scenic Highway 30 all the way out to The Gorge, they congregated at the Temple to support Mady and Eric. Once the ceremony is complete and they were indeed married, Mady and Eric walked through the heavy temple doors to be greeted by excited family and friends. Below the couple explains the Mormon marriage tradition a little more in depth:

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints, we hold private wedding ceremonies inside places of worship that we call temples. These ceremonies are intimate and small, so unfortunately only a fraction of our guests were able to actually attend the ceremony. Getting married in our faith is more than just a temporal commitment, but we believe is a sacred event- one where you make covenants with your spouse and God and are married for all eternity, past this life. It was a simple and sweet ceremony with my family and closest friends, but other friends and family are able to wait outside and cheer for us as we come out of the temple as husband and wife. The temple is absolutely stunning as well, so we chose to take a lot of family and wedding party pictures before we left for the reception.

Make sure to read the rest of the blog post below. Mady and Eric thought of a creative way to help guests feel comfortable at their wedding, plus, they share how they divided and conquered planning a wedding together. Thank you again, Mady and Eric! You two were incredibly fun to work with. Congratulations, XOXO Rebecca & Jerome.

Portland Wedding Vendors | Venue: Tin Roof Barn | Planner: Union Event Co | Florist: Swoon Floral Design | Photography: ANIKO Photography | Caterer: Four and Twenty Blackbirds | Rentals: Riverhood Rentals | Gown Shop: BHLDN

How We Met

Five years ago I was working as a recruiter in Utah, and Eric was one of my candidates. He thought I was cute, but I was in a relationship at the time. Fast forward 3 years and he had moved to Portland while I was in San Francisco. A mutual friend decided to have her birthday party at Disneyland, so a group of us flew out to celebrate with her one weekend. That’s where Eric and I reconnected and hit it off. Seven months later he moved down to SF to be closer to me. 

The Marriage Proposal

When we were cooking dinner together one night, we were listening to a podcast about a company called Constructed Adventures. Its owner, Chris, helps set up custom scavenger hunts for all sorts of different events anywhere in the world. Eric secretly worked with Chris for five months to plan a secret proposal that would align with a birthday trip that we had planned for me (Mady) in San Diego. The morning of my birthday, we were greeted with a note under the door with our first set of instructions for the day. Our good friend Manny was in on the proposal and acted as our driver helping get us to each location in San Diego. As we followed the clues, which included the botanical gardens, pizza, ferry rides, teleshopping with me best friend via facetime for a shopping spree, massages, getting my nails done, etc etc etc… the day ended with a sunset proposal on the beach of the Hotel Del Coronado. If you want to read the full story you can see HERE as adventure number 52 “Pampered Proposal”.

Favorite Wedding Details

We wanted to have an adults only wedding, but I am really close with my nieces and nephews, so we made the exception for them to come. I’m so glad they could be there with us on our big day! My nieces felt a huge responsibility to be the best flower girls they could be and checked in with me all night to hold my train or bouquet and take photos. 

We kept the wedding pretty small, and we were worried that a lot of our friends wouldn’t know many other people there. Eric came up with the idea to create a fun fact about each guest. We took these fun facts and put them on each table, and as an ice breaker the guests at the table had to decide which table-mate the fact was about. We heard over and over again that it was such a fun touch to encourage conversation, and made each of our guests feel involved. 

Eric’s favorite place on earth is Kauai, and one of his groomsmen currently lives here. While we had dessert with the regular dinner service, we also wanted to have a dessert table for people to snack on throughout the night. Eric ordered 5 pies from a pie shop in Hawaii and had his groomsmen check them on the plane and bring them out for the reception. 

There are so many details that we loved about the wedding. The floral, by Swoon Floral Design, were phenomenal. The Tin Roof Barn was beautiful, and the catering was amazing. But the things we remember most are all of our friends and family that traveled from all over the US to be there with us to celebrate. We were so overwhelmed with the love and support we felt from every single person present. 

Favorite Wedding Day Moments

Mady- Every time I think back on our wedding day I’m filled with such love for the strong support system that I have. I wish I could have made the day slow down so I could spend even more time with each person who sacrificed their time to come celebrate us. The toasts shared were extremely touching- it was so personal and intimate but something we were able to share with everyone in attendance. Eric- My favorite memory from the wedding day was walking around to each table during the wedding reception and being able to spend a little bit of time with each person that traveled out to share in our special day.

Wedding Advice for Engaged Couples

Wedding planning is a great preview into what partnering with your spouse will look like for the rest of your life. Eric and I designed a system where we would share on a scale of 1-10 how much we cared about specific aspects of the wedding. If one of us cared significantly more, we’d get to make the decision. It’s important to be flexible with each other, but I also encourage other couples to really stand up for the things they wanted. It was really hard to do an adults-only wedding, as a lot of my friends and extended family have young kids. Some people were unhappy with our decision, but ultimately the purpose of the wedding was to celebrate us. Not all of your choices are going to be popular with your guests, but do what makes you happy- even if it’s nontraditional. And if you are going on a honeymoon, give yourself a 2-4 day window from when the wedding ends to when you leave. We are so grateful we had a few days to sleep!