Mike & Alex’s Wedfest

Mike and I had been dating for 5 solid years after meeting at Crossfit. And in 2018, on one of our yearly trips to Maine to visit his dad he proposed to me at the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. He had been planning it for months, and I had no idea – even my parents were waiting at the top of the hike to congratulate us!!

Shortly after getting engaged, I stumbled across a photo of a giant-hat tipi wedding in the UK while exploring Pinterest. It was completely different than anything I had ever seen before and I was hooked. Being outdoorsy folk it wasn’t hard to convince Michael, and so our theme was decided – a whimsy-filled festival with giant-hat Tipis!! We also knew our three doggos needed to have a part in our nuptials. After some research we quickly realized there weren’t any venues in our area (or in the US!) offering the wedding festival we were envisioning without having to hire out every single element, so we set to work putting our own together from scratch.

After 10 months of getting our 20 acre slice of Hill Country heaven ready for “Haws Wedfest” – and tons of encouragement from family and friends – we decided to bring the festival vibes to other couples…at Elm Pass Woods!

If there’s one piece of advice I learned while planning our wedding it’s that this day is supposed to be about you and YOUR love for each other. This means you might be incorporating something in your festival that 99% of couples would never consider – or cutting something that everyone else typically does – and that’s OK. This notion will help keep you sane regardless of where you end up getting married. Mike and I are incredibly passionate about helping you make your day as special and unique as you deserve!

We can’t wait to see you here,

<3 Alex, Michael, and baby Theo + Dexter, Riley, and Sam (our puppers)

Our Anti Racist Pledge

Mike and I acknowledge that we have only recently woken up to the reality of pervasive and systemic racism in many aspects of American life, including in the wedding industry. We firmly believe that when you know better you should do better. We can’t go back and change our actions (or inaction), but we can commit to change moving forward. In order to effect the change we want especially in the wedding industry, everyone has to hold each other accountable to what they say they will do, and that’s why we want to make our action plan public:

Our Commitments:

1. Educate ourselves: It is not the job of other folks to teach us – we have to do the work. To that end, we will not stop at reading How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi or White Fragility by Robin Diangelo. We will actively seek out books, podcasts, articles from BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ creators to learn more about these marginalized communities and their experiences.
2. See something, say something: We won’t let “off-color” comments go unchecked in our immediate sphere of influence. Being uncomfortable with calling them out as wrong is not an excuse to roll our eyes and let it slide.

3. Representation: Ensure that humans of all kinds and abilities are represented in our content when it comes to styled shoots and what we share or show on our website and social media.

Long story short, having black friends doesn’t make us “not racist” and/or somehow more evolved than others who are actively racist. We also know now that “not seeing color” is a polite euphemism for the whitewashing of cultures different than our own which has resulted in a VERY homogenous wedding industry aesthetic that leaves little room for other cultures to be seen as “normal.”

When we opened Elm Pass Woods, we wanted it to be a place that every person felt welcomed – and we truly believed that was enough. But we know now that it isn’t, and we pledge to do the work to make that goal something real and meaningful.