Lindsay Talbot and Christopher Bateman Wedding in New Hampshire
Photo: Sarah Bastille1/55Our invitations came from Crane Co. I chose hand-engraved black script on ecru white paper, with separate reception and reply cards. Each invitation and envelope was pressed by hand at Crane’s paper mill in Massachusetts that’s been around since 1801. They sent us the copper engraving plates, too, which weighed a ton.
Watercolor by Denise Brown2/55A watercolor of the Wild Garden, glass tropical conservatory, and carriage house at the Fuller Gardens, my family’s turn-of-the-century rose gardens on the seacoast of New Hampshire. They were designed throughout the 1920s and ’30s by Arthur Shurtleff and the Olmsted brothers. Our rehearsal lobster clambake dinner and cocktail hour were held here. It’s probably my favorite place on earth.
Photo: Paul Gargagliano for Sarah Bastille3/55Blooming beds of roses, planted in a circular Colonial Revival pattern, around an antique wellhead in the Wild Garden. There are 1,700 rose bushes planted throughout the grounds, and more than 125 varieties of roses.
Photo: Sarah Bastille4/55The front Walled Garden is my favorite spot. It has formal English borders, with perennials and annuals like delphinium, coneflowers, astilbe, salvias, hollyhocks, and cleome—and is surrounded with espaliered apple trees and privet hedges.
Photo: Sarah Bastille5/55The heart-shaped gate leading out to the sea, just across from the Fuller Gardens. Off to the left is the summerhouse my great-grandmother built in 1914—she named it La Vigie, which means “the view” in Italian. You can see the Isles of Shoals from here, and there’s something so tranquil about staring off into the vast endlessness of the Atlantic Ocean.
