Transcription of Maine Weddings #177
Announcer: You’re listening to Love Maine Radio, with Dr. Lisa Belisle, recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a physician trained in family and preventative medicine, acupuncture, and public health. She offers medical care and acupuncture at Brunswick Family Medicine. Read more about her integrative approach to wellness in Maine Magazine. Love Maine Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See the Love Main Radio Facebook page, or www.LoveMaineRadio.com for details. Now here are a few highlights from this week’s program.
Valerie: When we write, again, commit words to paper, they’re there for a long time and being able to express our gratitude or joy or the tone of celebration graciously in writing is really important.
When people open the magazine, I hope that even before they read the article, that there’s depth there and that they see that there’s more of a story and kind of a bigger person behind every magazine and every issue, every story that we do.
Kate: For me, being engaged and seeing that you have so many different options when it comes to having your wedding from venues to caterers, it was really great to see all these real weddings that we have because we have 26 real weddings in the magazine. Then you can pull different ideas from that and it made the whole process less overwhelming.
Announcer: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth, Maine, Apothecary by Design, Michael Paige and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage. Tom Shepherd of Shepherd Financial, Harding Lee Smith of the Rooms and Bangor Savings Bank.
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to Love Maine Radio:: Show #177 Maine Weddings, airing for the first time on Sunday, February 1, 2015. Hone to Valentine’s Day, February has become known as a month for lovers. With that in mind, Maine Magazine offers its wedding issue each time this year, featuring 26 real weddings and a wealth of information for those who are planning a special day in the Pine Tree state.
Today, we speak with Valerie Kyros, stationer and owner of Papier and Fleuriste in Portland, who has years of experience in the area of weddings. We also speak with Kate Seremeth, Maine Magazine art director, and Kelly Clinton, Maine Magazine managing editor about the enjoyment they have derived from bringing the wedding issue to life. Thank you for joining us.
Here on Love Maine Radio, we understand how important occasions can be and how important it is to celebrate life in whatever form that it takes. Our guest today, Valerie Kyros, also understands this. She is the owner of Papier and Fleuriste, a stationary store in Portland and an individual who helps people celebrate special occasions in their lives, including weddings, which is one of the reasons we have her in today to talk to us. Thanks for coming in, Valerie.
Valerie: Thanks for having me.
Lisa: Valerie, you told me, “When I bought the store, I didn’t just buy a store. I became a stationer.” I want to hear more about that. I think this is something that in this day of age in digital and electronic and sort of non-tangible things, to have a very tangible thing that you are offering to people is important.
Valerie: It is very important. We, from an occasion invitation, whether it’s your wedding invitation to your personal stationery, that you write, I think, to a note on your business card, we actually are in the business of … To some degree, branding, whether it’s the event, the person or the business and we do it on fine print paper with different processes and the tone and the texture of that, as well as the proper etiquette.
There are still rules. We live in a digital world where a lot of the old rules seem to have gone away, but we try very hard to keep social norms and a high expectation of social graciousness. That’s my job as an expert, as a stationer.
Lisa: Tell me how you got to be where you are now. You’re not originally from Maine. Is that right?
Valerie: Nope. I grew up in the Washington, DC area. Married a Mainer who had a busy business and traveled and when our oldest child was about 18-months-old, we said, “If you have to travel, we can live anywhere,” and decided to move home to Maine for him. Then it became my home, too. We ended up here about eighteen years ago. The way we got involved in the stores, we were a customer of the stores, one of the oldest retail stores, so one of the only stores that’s changed hands multiple times and each owner feels a real protectiveness to protect the integrity of the store.
My husband and I … It was actually our dream to buy it as a retirement business, when we first started shopping in the store. That’s how I ended up there many years later through twists and turns.
Lisa: It used to be called Papier Gourmet?
Valerie: Yes.
Lisa: Not so long ago. Why the change?
Valerie: When I bought the store, we really wanted to update it to make it a little bit more relevant. We also, during the holidays, would get calls for Stilton Cheese and food. It was just a little complicated. We decided to become a little bit more concise. We also sell things other than paper, but they have a relevance to paper. If it’s a gift, we make sure that it’s packaged in a beautiful paper or a box. It was a time to just put my mark on it and rebrand it with a new vision for where we are now in society.
Lisa: There is something about paper that I think many people find very appealing. I know those of us who write journals or send cards or send … Hopefully, most of us send thank you notes. There’s something about touching a thick card stock, piece of paper or something about taking a fine pen and writing on a page. That’s so different than typing out an email, as great as that technology is.
Valerie: It’s true. There’s actually research that we’re using a different part of our brains. When we’re connected digitally and we’re using our fingers to digitally put things on our phone, it doesn’t commit to memory the same way that the graph and motor skills of actually writing. In fact, we have people who come in all the time and say, “I know I’m the last person who is using a paper calendar, but I literally can’t remember my life.”
The reason they can’t remember their life is by digitally entering things, you have to use your visual memory to remember your life versus the graph and motor skills that it takes, that goes into your memory in a different place.
Not only for your organizing your personal life, but you also put your energy into what you’re writing by hand, whether it’s that “thank you” note. I also often say we get young gentlemen who come in and say, “I need a piece of paper, because I want to write a love letter.” Because a love text isn’t going to stick around and when they want to declare themselves, they need help and they want a piece of paper and a nice pen and they want to write a letter.
There’s something to the hand, to the paper, to the brain that allows us to unplug from our digital world.
Lisa: There’s also something nice about being able to keep the things that we receive that are written. I’ve had invitations to my brother’s and sister’s weddings. I’ve had notes from patients. I’ve had notes from my children. These are things that you can have, as opposed to something digital, which you can find it on your hard drive, but it’s not the same kind of spirit that’s infused. I think.
Valerie: It is. I worry that we’re no longer going to have scrapbooks, that it’s fun to look back to grandmothers or great-grandmothers scrapbooks and that if we don’t write and keep ticket stubs and do things like that, as well, as a stationer going back to that, I’m involved in every milestone in people’s lives. I do birth announcements. We do christening invitations, bar mitzvah, weddings.
I also, my job is to sit with a widow when she’s lost her husband or a widower and do the proper acknowledgements and things like that. It’s a way. These are historical documents for your life or your family and that … The tactile ability to keep and put them away in that box have generations go back and try to have an insight into our life. I don’t think that’s going to happen with texts and emails.
I feel it’s just very important and it’s part of the mission, the story, to be there and be available to provide the materials. To keep that, I call it a gracious life.
Lisa: It’s interesting that you’re talking about being with people at the time of their milestones. I would imagine that that’s also a time of heightened emotions on people’s parts and it’s something that … It’s not for you, simply, just a sales situation, a sales position. You’re really acting … I don’t know, as someone who helps them communicate things in a way that perhaps they wouldn’t have been able to access otherwise.
Valerie: Yes, I sit with them as a confidant, as a friend. They trust me to give them the right advice of, how’s the best way to communicate what we’re trying to communicate and help them be of the rational piece when they’re in that emotional state? We work as partners and I help them make the decisions by working through that if it’s particularly … The joy of a new baby or the frenzy of a wedding and making sure I keep them grounded in decisions that are authentically them.
We are putting either the person, the event, the couple on a piece of paper and the font, the color of it, the color of the paper is an embodiment of either the person or the event. Weddings. I often ask brides … I’ll try to ask brides what color their dress is. If their dress is a sparkly, bright crisp white, 9 times out of 10, they’re going to pick a bright white paper and if their in a creamy, ivory soft color, I know they’re going to be in an ivory paper because that’s them. We’re trying to make a picture with the words, the colors, the texture, the paper that’s authentically them. That’s my job.
Lisa: I think, recently, somebody wrote and article and I can’t recall where this was but discussing sort of the fact that all of the pictures of our children are now going to be flawless. The pictures that I take of my 14-year-old, they could all be altered, whereas the pictures that I took of my now 21-year-olds, those were the hard copy and what you got was what you got.
The interesting thing about paper is that even though you know there is usually consistency to it, there is that possibility of flaw and there is something about that that makes it more precious, I think.
Valerie: It is. We actually go through rigorous proofing process. One of the things that people, when they come in, brides or couples, particularly younger people, sorely underestimate is the amount of time because we are creating a historical document and we want it to be perfect. It takes time to choose to pick the right paper, to pick the right font and then to take the wording and present it.
When they see it, it may not be what they had in their mind. I have to try to figure out what their imagining in their mind. The proofing process can take five or six rounds. Each of those can take a week. If they’re coming in saying, “I want to send my invitations out in three weeks.” It’s really hard to provide that as perfect because if there’s a mistake, it’s wrong. That’s a huge responsibility for us and it’s a partnership with them.
Yes, you’re right. There may be flaws in the paper or the textures in the paper, but what we’re always trying to do is get the words … for there to be no mistakes and that is a process. It’s part of the creative process and then the proofing process. It’s like a magazine or a book. If it’s printed and that mistake is there, that mistake is there.
Lisa: It sounds like you’re very careful about making sure that whatever can be controlled can be controlled and then if it just happens to be … I don’t know, a card stock … I don’t know enough about paper to be able to say anything, but I’m thinking about the little ridges that sometimes come up or a little nubbin that kind of pokes its way to the surface, but it’s just part of the beauty of the card itself. It doesn’t come out as a flaw, so much.
Valerie: It is. No, it’s the beauty of … the texture and the tone and the texture of paper and it being something real. In letter press printing, particularly, because of the way that the ink soaks into the paper, you can look at three different pieces and the tone or the color will be different because of the print process. Engraving, orthography, you can have a little extra piece of ink that could be on there, that might be out of place, but it’s still part of the piece. As though we’re trying to get to perfect and wording there’s still character that each piece isn’t necessarily perfect. We make a lot of things in-house where we do layered papers and we do all that work by hand.
We try as hard as we can to center them and do all that, but they’re not all perfect, but they’ve been handmade for the people that we care about and our clients and most people accept that as part of the beauty of it, is that not every border is exactly perfect but it’s within … It shows that it’s been handcrafted.
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Lisa: It must be interesting, in particular, to work with wedding announcements because you’re taking two people who have very different … or may have very different views of life or their wedding and trying to come up with some kind of design that works for both of them.
Maybe one person doesn’t really care as much about the invitation or maybe both people care a lot about the invitation and to kind of try to bring that all together, because it is, in a way, almost the opening salvo. It’s the “Here’s the wedding. Here’s the announcement.”
Valerie: It’s the first thing that the guests see. It’s very interesting. Often times, a couple will come in and she may have done Pinterest and looked at a ton of things and he hasn’t looked at all. It could be the opposite too, but it’s more likely to be that. My process is, is I make them look at a lot of things to educate their eye together without me there, so that they have the opportunity to say freely, “I like this. I don’t like this.”
It can be a discovery process. They might not realize how far apart they are, stylistically. Then that’s my job to try to find a mental ground. Wedding invitations, particularly, my goals are three things. One is, when their family or their friends open the invitation that from the moment they look at it, I’ve captured them as a couple and the people say, “That’s so them.”
Two, that it also, then captures the bride and grooms or the couple’s vision of their wedding and the party afterwards, so that the guests know what to expect. That includes social cues of what to wear. All of those things are in the language, as well as in the tone and in the texture, how formal, how informal is going to give people a vision of what they’re going to.
Then my third thing is, I always say to them, once they settle on a couple of choices, “This is a historical document. I want you to look at it in 20 years and be as happy and let it trigger your mind to recall all those great memories.”
If they’re looking at something that’s extremely trendy but I don’t perceive them as being really trendy, I’m going to question that in them because I want to make sure that they’re not unhappy. It would be like the bride in the 80s, super Diana dress and had to have it because it was in and 20 years later goes, “Oh my God. I can’t believe I looked like that.”
Those are my three goals, with any couple, is that it’s authentically them, it’s previews the event and that it stays that historical document that in 20 years, they feel is still that important piece, again, saying, “This is our commitment.”
My last thing is, brides and grooms and couples and men want to come in and they can often be very, very, focused on the party, but the invitation is actually to the ceremony and most of the times, it’s a religious event. I try to ground them back into that they’re getting married and that they’re having a big party afterward, because it really is the marriage and then the big party.
Lisa: That’s interesting, because people could look at the invitation as just more of a superficial thing that goes along with more of a superficial party, but what you’re saying is it’s a very solid, tangible indication of the gravity of getting married.
Valerie: If it’s religious surface, it’s a sacrament. We’re representing the invitation as to a very sacred event. Sometimes they haven’t really thought of it like that. It gives them a new perspective.
Lisa: I like the word that you use. “Graciousness.” This idea that … Life does seem to move very quickly. We’re going from one thing to the next and maybe … The word “mindful” is used a lot these days, but this sense of … I don’t know. Graciousness, gentility. I don’t want to use the word “formality” but just that there is some have to … just being alive and doing things, like having a baby or getting married. There is some celebration of that “have,” I guess.
Valerie: Yes. You say graciousness, it’s also, I think, included in that is gratitude. When we write, again, commit words to paper, they’re there for a long time. Being able to express our gratitude or our joy or the tone of celebration, graciously in writing is really important.
I get e-vites all the time and what I know about myself with email, is if it drops below my screen, I don’t remember it, but if I can put it up on the board in front of my desk, the event, to me, takes more importance. It’s part of my consciousness, or the note or whatever it is. It is, again, that tangible. Digital can feel very intangible and we need more tangible in our lives, I think.
Lisa: You also have become a florist. That’s relatively new?
Valerie: It’s relatively new. We started it in April. We were lucky to hire a known floral designer who had owned a successful business, actually, across the street from us for four years that sold the business and then the business closed and he had been around. I actually hired him to work on the store, thinking he’d work with brides and I could teach him paper and then I realized how talented he was and went, “There’s a real intersection here.”
Again, flowers are something we give for milestone events. If someone has a baby and has been in the hospitals, for funerals and in weddings. It’s another expression. It’s a very alive expression of graciousness. It’s been a great addition to the store and it’s been a great way, I think, to add beauty and thoughtfulness to people’s lives and that would be the people who come in and buy flowers or something for someone else, or sending them or bringing them home.
It’s a bit of, again, slowing down, enjoying something visible, enjoying something tangible. It’s added so much dimension to the store.
Lisa: I love the idea of flowers having some deeper meaning. I think going back to Victorian times, if you sent a color rose it meant one thing or if you sent violets it meant another. There’s something about that that just really appeals to me. The same way, that picking up a journal and having the right paper to write on appeals to me. I can’t really explain why, but I think there is something that touches me and probably many people emotionally and probably in other ways. Is this something that when people come in to talk about their flowers, is this something that you ever get into?
Valerie: I think James has a good sense of some of that historical meaning, particularly in weddings. There are current social connotations to certain flowers and different colors of flowers and yellow roses versus red roses. Red roses are very romantic, sexy thing. A yellow rose is a softer, more friendly. It has a different connotation.
Yes, when we’re taking orders or we’re talking, we are talking about, “Who is it for? What is the context?” We do a lot of corporate flowers. We do flowers weekly in people’s offices and something that a husband is going to send to his wife for his birthday may be a very different feeling, arrangement, than something we put in someone’s office every week.
Yeah, there is, again, tone and texture and the connotation of the flowers and the different colors. It’s very still prevalent and the way we view flowers today.
Lisa: I’m very excited to go visit your store again, having been there a few times already and to see now the florist part of Papier and Fleuriste. I encourage other people to come find your store. How can our listeners learn more about the work that you’re doing?
Valerie: We’re located on Free Street. you can see us at our website, which is papiermaine.com. It’s a great vision into what you can find in the store. We have kept away from e-commerce and all of that, because our goal is to bring you in and interact with you and have a relationship with you. We would love you to come and stop in.
Lisa: Well, I will be there. I will be stopping in. I’m sure that many people, after hearing our conversation, will also stop in. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you today. We’ve been talking with Valerie Kyros, who is the owner of Papier and Fleuriste, a stationary store and florist in Portland. Thanks so much.
Valerie: Thank you.
Lisa: As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth, Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: When was the last time you took a break from what you were doing? From the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up? I know that during the course of my days, I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream. Terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe, but when I do, I feel energized because in those moments, I’m able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow.
Sometimes, those are the “ah-ha” moments. If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we were doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can, in fact, come true. I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need. BoothMaine.com.
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Lisa: Here on Love Maine Radio, we have the opportunity to work with the individuals that make Maine Magazine possible. Today we have, in the studio, two individuals who work very hard on Maine Magazine every month and I work very closely with each of them and I count them both as friends and I’m very fortunate to have them both as co-workers.
We have with us Kate Seremeth, who is art director of Maine Magazine and Kelly Clinton, who is the managing editor of Maine Magazine. We’re going to talk today about the February wedding issue. Thanks so much for coming in and talking with me.
Kate: Thanks for having us.
Kelly: Thanks for having us.
Lisa: The wedding issue, every year, is so beautiful. It just … it makes you want to get married, if you’re not already married or if you are already married, you want to go back and do it again. The visuals are stunning and the examples of how people have chosen to begin their lives together. This might be kind of … it must be an interesting experience for the two of you, because you both are at different stages of this. Kate, you just got married last summer and Kelly, you just got engaged. How has this been for you to work on this as individuals?
Kelly: For me, it’s been really good because I’ve been designing the issue for two or three years. Before I even got engaged, I had just kind of a plethora of ideas in my head from doing this issue. Before even being engaged, I guess, for me it was a good way to collect information and then, of course, planning a wedding, I got to utilize all of it. That was great.
Kate: For me, being engaged and seeing that you have so many different options when it comes to having your wedding from venues to caterers, it was really great to see all these real weddings that we have, because we had 26 real weddings in the magazine. Then you can pull different ideas from that and it made the whole process less overwhelming.
Especially in terms of A-list, we collected a bunch of different venues that are all around the states. We had venues from the Barnett Flanagan’s table, which is in the woods, a little set off but just right outside of Portland and then Spruce Point, which is in Booth Bay and it’s on the coast. Just a different variety of venues that you can look at. When I was looking at different venues, it was really helpful to do that research.
Lisa: We have the A-list that you’ve talked about and what else can people who are going to read the magazine expect to find?
Kate: Our managing editor for Old Port Magazine, which is a sister magazine, put together, Jen DeRose is her name, put together a really great lineup called “The New Nautical.” A nautical is a theme, especially in Maine, that you see a lot but she put kind of a new chic twist on it, so it features … I think there’s about 14 or so products that she goes through and lists where to find them locally. That’s really cool.
Kelly: Then we also have, as I mentioned, 26 real weddings and every wedding is from different places all around the states. You have a coastal wedding, you have a woodsy wedding. You have just everyone who decided to have their wedding in one location and then they really made it their own. It goes into details about what they used, what made their wedding unique and what was their main focus.
We had one couple, who the bride, she really wanted to have her tent feel warm and it was on the water and it was kind of like a cooler day. She talked about her use of lighting within the tent and how she used the vent light pros. Then we had another couple, who it was really important to them that their ceremony was private. They just had immediate family at the ceremony and actually even during the ceremony, they stopped and took a moment and they took pictures of each other and they took pictures of people at the wedding.
That was really nice to kind of get … Everyone looked at their day and looked at their wedding and made it personal to them. Every one was complete different from another.
Lisa: You must have had the opportunity to speak with people who had just gotten married, to talk to them about their special day. What were some of the things that stood out? What types of things did people tell you that maybe surprised you or interested you or those types of things?
Kelly: One wedding in particular that was really interesting to all of us when we saw it … because what happens is the photographers submit the weddings and then we all sort of situation down and then we choose which weddings are unique and different that we think will provide the greater or the most inspiration for that year.
One wedding we came across … It was a couple, who … they got married up in the mid coast and the bride, she was Indian and her parents were Indian. The groom was from Maine and I’m not sure where his family was, so they ended up having two different weddings in one day. In the morning, I don’t know if you want to chime in too, because I know you know them but in the morning they had the Indian wedding where the groom rides on a horse through the streets through downtown [crosstalk 00:34:58].
Kate: Through Campton.
Kelly: Yeah, and they went to Union Hall. They had this sit down ceremony and then later in the day they went to Cellar Door Winery and they had a traditional American wedding, I guess you could call it.
It was just kind of really neat that they were able to blend both of their cultures and backgrounds into this one special day for them and what an experience for the guests who were there because a lot of people wore two different outfits. It was good.
Kate: I think another thing that stands out is all these couples, not all of them live in Maine, they have some type of tie to Maine. They either vacationed here as a couple or maybe they summered here when they were kids or they live here, but there’s always something drawing them back to Maine. Maine is just such a great venue for a wedding, whether it’s the woods or the sea or just in a small farmhouse or a barn. There’s so many different options.
That was interesting to me, just people, almost all of them said, “It’s our special place.” That was really cool.
Kelly: Some who … maybe they went to school here or they used to come here as a kid. That’s exactly what it was. They all had something nice to say about Maine. There was one couple who, Maine, they’re from Texas and Maine wasn’t really a special place for them. They had been there once, visited quickly, but their family is from all over the world. When they looked at a map, Maine was in the center and they thought, “Maine?”
They ended up choosing Chebeague Island Inn as their venue and everyone came together in Maine and she just said … It was really amazing to have everybody on the island and sort of together. Everyone was experiencing this new place together.
Lisa: We’ve talked about the importance of a venue, the place where the wedding is actually held, the ceremony and the reception. We’ve talked about why people would choose Maine in general. What are some other important elements? I’m thinking flowers. I’m thinking food. What are some of the other things that come up as themes?
Kate: Jewelry is a big one. There’s so many local artists around here that it’s great. I think,also, the different … The experience of the wedding. You’re not finding a lot of like classic … You just show up at a venue, have the wedding and then you’re done. There’s multiple destinations, sometimes, which is really cool or they would arrive by boat or how it’s like this expression of their love and showing their favorite people in the world a really great Maine experience. That’s really cool.
To that point, inspiration weddings is another thing that we feature that we should probably mention, where three different designers and photographers group together to really showcase kind of more wild ideas that brides can kind of pull from to formulate ideas. That’s a really cool part of the magazine. It’s just really blue sky thinking of how you can make your day different in Maine.
Lisa: Tell me about those. Tell me about the inspirational weddings.
Kate: Yeah. There were the three photographers that we worked with. We got a bunch of submissions but we usually only pick three every year so that we can blow them out a little bit in the magazine, make them larger. We worked with one with Audra Photography and Amber Small was the designer of Sweetest Things Weddings. Do you want to talk about that one?
Kelly: Sure. What they do is they set up their own wedding and what they think it should look like and it really allows you to get so much information from it and makes you feel like you could do it yourself kind of thing. The designers really lay it out for you and they do such a great job. For this one in particular, they set up a wedding with long farm tables on a piece of land in Cape Elizabeth. A private land trust. It could really be anywhere in the woods or someone’s backyard.
It really felt like a backyard wedding. They had simple table settings and what they did for food is they had food trucks pull up, [inaudible 00:39:08] was one and they do gourmet style pizza and giant salads. What guests would do is … It would be buffet style and you would go up and pick what you want on your plate. That was really interesting. Also, there were table scapes. How they set up their tables was very simple. They picked flowers from around the area and put them into different jars and things along the tables. Everything was really simple.
Kate: Just a point in general about the inspiration sheets, there’s three separate ones. What’s really neat is that each photographer kind of pulls on their own resources, so they maybe go to caterer that they had seen used in a wedding that they had worked on that they really identified with and then go to a designer that really resonates with them and flowers.
They’re pulling from their pool of resources that are close to them, so that always makes for a really beautiful photo shoot.
Kelly: That’s something that as I’m planning a wedding and as people who are planning a wedding in Maine may look at this magazine, the resources that we pulled together. There are so many different companies and just great people that you can pull from to either be your caterer or your cake. That’s always in the back of the book and just going through that is just so useful and helpful.
Kate: Yeah. It really is a resource guide for anyone planning a wedding.
Lisa: Kate, you’ve worked on this for four years. What are some of the trends that you’ve noticed? I’m knowing that barns for a while had been big.
Kate: I was just going to say-
Lisa: Summer camps were big for a while. I don’t know. Tell me.
Kate: Yeah, a couple years ago, it was a lot about barns. Barns were just spreading as a venue all over the place. Nautical always has a presence in the issues, but I feel like there are a little less barn weddings, which there still were some, but more focus on this new take of nautical, which is interesting because we did that story with Jen DeRose on the more chic, nautical style. I would say it’s going back that way.
A lot more private residences that are bringing in a lot of different vendors to their own home. Then venues like … There’s Cellar Door Winery, which is a great one. There’s still camps, that I see. It’s pretty spread out, really, but people are getting really creative with where they’re having their wedding.
Lisa: That’s a really interesting thing because in the past, we thought about church people, wedding, reception hall. It does seem as though people are more willing to go outside the standard locations to do things.
Kate: There are still church weddings, for sure, but I definitely agree. There’s less of them or maybe it’s just the beginning of the wedding but definitely a lot of outdoor weddings. A lot of these venues have beautiful … like a barn on Walnut Hill has a really gorgeous, spiritual setting off in the woods a little bit that looks gorgeous. They’re setting up church-like outdoor environments, which is really nice.
Lisa: There’s still a spiritual element to many of these places that people are choosing to get married?
Kate: Yep.
Lisa: What about the types of couples that you’re featuring? It’s not just 26-year-old females. It’s older people. It’s lots of different … people who are on second marriages. Is this a conscious decision on your part or are you just choosing the best wedding?
Kate: It’s interesting when we choose the weddings, because we’re not just picking one wedding. We’re picking 26. They really have to visually tell a larger story, it’s like the biggest jigsaw puzzle ever, in our magazine world here. I’d say there’s a bit of a conscious effort, just because where we live and we’re lucky to have all of the freedom to do … for all of those weddings to happen. Yeah, they run the gambit, but I wouldn’t say we … No, we don’t really narrow it down in that way. It’s just really visually how it lays out.
Naturally, the vibe of those different weddings comes together as a more beautiful whole than just picking ones that are all really similar.
Lisa: Both of you made a conscious decision to live and work in Maine yourselves. Kelly, you actually live in Massachusetts. Kate, you’re from Maine.
Kate: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa: You left … Went to Savannah College of Art and Design.
Kate: Yeah, I was allover for … I guess 12 years before I moved back.
Lisa: Why did you choose to come back? Kelly, why did you choose to come here in the first place?
Kate: I’d been trying to get back here, actually, for a long time and just different jobs took me all over the country. I was enjoying that part of travel. I knew, growing up in Maine, when I was in high school, I kind of knew that I wanted to get away, to experience more. I lived in New York City and Austin, Texas and all over the place.
I guess my mission was really always to get back. I found myself in a position where I was able to do that. I feel really lucky.
Kelly: For me, what brought me here is definitely Maine Magazine. What I came up here for was the job, but before that, I was living with my boyfriend in Massachusetts. We were sort of thinking we wanted to live somewhere else. We loved New England, so we were looking at just different places in New England. Portland was on our radar, just because it seemed like this growing city that you could go into and be a part of this place that’s developing and growing.
We were both young in our careers, so we wanted to be part of a place that would have companies in place in a scene that was thriving.
Lisa: Do you think that people who are choosing to be married in Maine are also … almost buying into the way that “life should be?” That there is some vibe about Maine, that even if they only come here to get married and then they leave again, that that really resonates with them?
Kate: Yeah. Definitely. A huge part of why I moved here was for that … It’s like the ideal lifestyle. It’s living a dream. Getting to be at work and then run down and get to go on a boat and be out in Casco Bay. There’s this feeling that comes along with Maine that I think people really want to attach to their wedding day, because it’s sort of this dreamlike, idealistic lifestyle that we’re lucky enough to live every day, but for some people, they want that really special day to be in a really special place that resonates with them. Yeah. For sure.
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Lisa: In creating the magazine, Kate, you’ve been doing this now for four years and Kelly, you’ve been the managing editor for?
Kate: Three months.
Lisa: Three months. What is the general feeling that you would like to evoke? What’s your intention? Not just of the wedding issue, but of the magazine in general?
Kate: Maine Magazine, in general, for me, it’s very visual. A lot of visual things transfer to me emotionally and come with a lot of intention. For me, when I design the issue, I always try to make sure it’s very real. We work with a huge, talented … actually, unlimited pool. We don’t really pull from … We have a very special group of photographers that we work with that are just amazing at telling the story. Their photography just speaks volumes.
When people open the magazine, I hope that even before they read the article that there’s depth there and that they see that there’s more of a story and a bigger purpose behind every magazine in every issue, every story that we do. The wedding issue wasn’t an exception at all. There’s a reason that we choose to blow out some of the photography to be larger, to really get in there and showcase some of this beautiful work and hopefully show them the energy of that day in that special wedding.
Kelly: Then on story telling side, in terms of the writing, we also have amazing writers, who we work with, who go in and really get the whole story behind something. In one issue, we have a profile, which tells the story of a person and maybe an entrepreneur and how they got to where they are and on that same issue, we also explore the food scene in Maine and really talk about restaurant owners and their background and how they choose to run their place.
We also like to tell a story about a location. We have Peter Frank Edwards is the photographer and Sydney Lane is the writer. They are such a great team, that they go out to these … whether remote or just popular destinations and they really capture the beauty of the place, both in the photos and in the writing. I guess we try to just tell different stories from all around the state in each issue.
Lisa: What types of things are you noticing in out in the communities? What types of things are people excited about and are sharing with you as you’re out meeting with people?
Kelly: For me, being in Portland and Maine in general, the food scene is definitely something that’s always growing and there are new restaurants popping up. Everyone wants to get into the new place when it opens and there’s a new company that’s started. What are they doing and what are they doing differently and why did they start in Maine? How is it working in Maine? Especially maybe as a startup. That is definitely related to the food issue, which we cover a lot of different restaurants and a lot of people who work in the food industry in general.
The food issue is the March issue, which is the one we’re working on right now. In that issue, we profile Kate McAleer from Bixby & Co. She created … She started her company in New York but decided to move it to Maine when her parents decided to retire here. They started this organic chocolate bar. I guess a lot of chocolate bars are made with … not real cocoa. She started this company where they make actual, real chocolate bars.She sells them in whole foods and different health food stores.
That’s one profile. We talked to her about how she got started and where that passion came from, then we also go to Lolita, which is in Portland. It’s a newest restaurant this year and it’s up on Munjoy Hill. We talked to Guy and Stella Hernandez, who while running their restaurant and also a coffee shop, they’re raising their son, Antonio, and what’s that like and what has he learned, sitting at a table, maybe coloring in the corner, but he’s also watching what his parents are doing. That story is really interesting, too. We also touched on different distilleries in the area.
Kate: Yeah. I think going back to what’s going on in the scene of Maine here … We always, of course, touch on everything that’s going on in our view that’s going on in Maine, but something that’s been evident for several years, and I think it’s sort of summed up in a nutshell of the food scene, that might even be my segway into that, but is that there’s so much inspiration here.
It’s almost like a trend that we’ve seen is a lot of people moving from New York City up to Maine. New York City, we always think they have the newest of the new and the best food, the greatest shows, all of this, the music scene. To me, it seems like Maine and Portland, specifically, but Maine in general, is sort of this constant smaller version of that, except we’re surrounded by the ocean and we’re surrounded by hiking. We kind of have it all. I think people are intrigued by it, in the same kind of way that they want to come here and have their wedding. It’s that same sort of energy that’s attracting people and hopefully, attracting readers, because we’re covering all of that information as it comes in, in an artistic way.
Lisa: Kate, you talked about the eco-system of the Maine media collective, Maine Magazine, Old Port, Maine Home Design. Describe that for me.
Kate: Yeah. Our company is special, in that it’s not just one magazine. We have … Let me chime in here, because we have a lot of things that we do, but we have three magazines. We have an art collector in Maine, which is a new venue for artists. We have, of course, this radio show. Kenny Brand Port Festival, the brand company. Portland Food and Wine Festival.
We’re always growing and I think, again, it just goes back that energy, which we call an eco-system, which is really created on all of these connections that we have by relationships that we formed, here in Maine, are people that have come away to Maine. Maine really attracts a talented person and a person that has a lot of passion for life, no matter what they do.
A lot of our relationships are connected by those people. That eco-system that we developed allows us to get the newest story or know about the newest food thing cropping up. That’s kind of how that eco-system came about.
Lisa: Kelly, I would be re-missed if I did not mention that you’ve been a producer for the radio show for the past year plus. You’ve had the opportunity to work on news in a very different way. It’s lifestyle, wellness, in a very different way. How do these two roles compliment each other and how did they contrast? What is it like being the managing editor of Maine Magazine and also the producer for Love Maine Radio?
Kelly: It’s really great, actually, to be able to talk to somebody before they come in to either the radio show or before a writer goes and interviews them for a story for the magazine, because I get to pre-interview them almost and see things that they might want to share, what they might not want to share and so when we go and we interview them for the magazine, you can only really tell so much of a person’s life and whatever the article is, we’re only touching on a portion of who they are.
With the radio show, if we can also have them come in and then they can be interviewed, you can hear what they sound like. You can hear how they describe things and they become even more real than they are in the story. They get to even add on additional pieces of their story and who they are. They really work together really well, because you can expand on a topic and really kind of get to know a person.
Lisa: Well, I appreciate your both coming in and talking to me today. I know that you’re generally behind the scenes, so to come on in be interviewed is a very big thing and you both did a great job. Remind us of the Maine Magazine website where people can read the February issue, the wedding issue.
Kelly: It was themainemag.com.
Lisa: Thanks for doing such a great job with the work that I’ve sent in as a writer for the magazines. Kate, you do an amazing job at laying things out and coordinating the photography. Kelly, you’re my editor, so you do a great job, helping me sort of wordsmith and both of you have been supportive of the radio show. I agree, it’s a great eco-system for us all to be working with them. We’re very fortunate. We’ve been speaking with Kate Seremeth, who is the art director for Maine Magazine and Kelly Clinton, who is the managing editor for Maine Magazine and also the producer for the Love Maine Radio Show. Thanks for coming in.
Kelly: Thank you for having us.
Kate: Thank you.
Lisa: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio: Show #177 Maine Weddings. Our guests have included Valerie Kyros, Kate Seremeth and Kelly Clinton. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com or read about them in the February issue of Maine Magazine. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes.
For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio page. Follow me on Twitter and see my Running Travel, Food and Wellness photos as Bountiful1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Maine Love Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Maine Wedding Show. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Announcer: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors. Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth, Maine, Apothecary by Design, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Tom Shephard of Shepardo Financial, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms, and Bangor Savings Bank.
Love Maine Radio with Dr. Lisa Belisle is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Susan Grisanti, Kevin Thomas, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Content producer is Kelly Clinton. Our online producer is Ezra Wolfinger.
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