Weddingbee Blog

I’ve mentioned before that our venue is a pretty special place. One of the biggest things that appealed to me about IslandWood is the fact that they have four lodges on the property, so most of our family and friends who can come for the weekend can all stay in the same place. That means we’ll eat all of our meals together, we can go hiking around the woods together, we can run from lodge to lodge darting through the raindrops together…

This is one of the lodges at IslandWood. All of the buildings have solar panels on the roofs in order to generate some of their own power. IslandWood also grows a lot of the food that they use, and they strive to only use local and sustainable ingredients in all of their meals.

Friday night we’ll welcome everyone with a dinner in which they get to help make the appetizers. Another part of the experience at IslandWood is that they include three educational activities during the weekend—this is an educational facility after all! But for us that will mean an art project of some sort, getting to go out and play in the woods, climb the tower, etc.

*All photos by my father unless otherwise noted

This is the tower—I haven’t been there yet, and I can’t wait to climb it and see the view from the top!

I’m really excited about Friday night, though—after dinner we’ll all gather at the Friendship Circle, which is a fully covered amphitheater where we can have a bonfire and roast s’mores! The fully covered part is the most important, as it’ll probably definitely be raining, and I love the idea of everyone gathered together around a fire, seeing old friends, and enjoying our last night with everyone we love before the wedding. People will be able to stay by the fire as long as they want, and then we can continue the party in one of the lodges or head off to bed.

I’m just so excited to show this little piece of the Island to my family and friends who haven’t been able to visit our little corner of the Northwest yet. And I’m so excited that we can use our wedding as a way to give back to an organization that educates both kids and adults on sustainable living and design.

These pictures were all found at Mithun’s website, here. Mithun designed the site and buildings of IslandWood, and if you want to learn more about the design process and why they made certain choices, I highly recommend checking out their website.

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This is the amphitheater where we’ll spend Friday night gathered around the fire, talking, telling stories, and roasting s’mores. It’s open to the air on the sides but is covered so that we can still have s’mores even if it’s pouring.

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The dining hall is where dinner will be after the wedding ceremony, but it’s also where we’ll eat the rest of our meals. Since we have the site for the whole weekend, that means that we’ll have the welcome dinner on Friday night in here as people trickle in from the airport, as well as breakfast and lunch on Saturday.

What’s even better is that all of their tables are rectangles—exactly what I wanted for our reception. Sure, I would have taken round tables if that had been what they had, but luckily this worked out perfectly.

And finally, some other pictures of places around the site:

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The picture on the top shows one of the collection cisterns, which collect water from the gutters. The photo on the bottom shows the Living Machine (to the right), which is where the wastewater ends up and eventually is recycled for toilet water and landscape irrigation. The other building in the picture is one of the classroom buildings.

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This is the tree house that I really hope our guests will be able to explore while we’re there. In addition to the tree house, there’s a suspension bridge over a ravine, a lookout tower, and lots of hiking paths through the woods. (The buildings only take up six of the 255 acres that encompass IslandWood, so lots of area is left to explore!)