Oh my goodness I could not be more excited to introduce Shannon and Steve. These two are 
college sweethearts and they could not be more special. I speak for all of us at Granite Ridge when I say we can't wait to have these two here - I know it's going to be a total blast!
Tell me a little about you and your fiancé
Prepare to swoon over this.
“She is patient and thoughtful while I am more brash and impulsive. She is beautiful, creative, and kind.”- Steve
“He is encouraging and patient, he is always pushing me to follow my passions and most of the time believes more in me than I do in myself. I am definitely more measured in my words and actions than he is, Steve loves people and excitement and I like that he pushes me out of my comfort zone (yoga pants, wine, and Netflix on the couch) and takes me to breweries and fishing in places other than ones I’m familiar with."
"We are definitely a goofy couple, we love to laugh together… or at each other. We like to stay busy and we love the outdoors. Hiking, kayaking, fishing, and gardening are some of our favorite things to do together."
"I took up pottery almost a year ago it started out with a few classes and I talked about buying my own wheel and Steve encouraged me to just follow through and buy one for months until he finally said “If you don’t buy that wheel tonight I will buy it for you and I will probably end up buying the wrong one so you had better buy it.” So I bought it and I taught Steve how to throw and he has now surpassed me in skills, I love that we share that hobby and can teach each other new techniques and get excited together about a new tool, or clay, or glaze. And I feel just as proud of an amazing piece he makes as I would if I had made it myself.”
How did you two meet?
“We met in college at SUNY ESF over five years ago. We were both on the Woodsman Team where we competed in timber sports… pretty much we chopped and sawed wood competitively. It was a ton of fun, and besides meeting each other we made some lifelong friends from that team.” - Steve (THIS IS AMAZING - I had no clue this was a thing!)
“We were both on the team since our first semester in college but practice was held twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, and I had Chemistry lab on Monday nights so I missed those nights and he had Calculus class on Thursday nights so he missed those nights. I had no idea who he was, let alone that we were on the same team until second semester. But we got to know each other that second semester and hit it off pretty quickly. After only being together for that one semester I was set to spend a year at a satellite campus, remote in the Adirondacks, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted to wait out that year since we had only been dating a few months but we both decided that we liked each other enough to give it a shot, I even installed a landline telephone in my dorm room since there wasn’t cell signal so we could talk at night! But we made it through that year and look at us now!” - Shannon
How did you two get engaged?
“It was a Friday in February, it was actually a sunny and warm day for February in Maine and I was at work and Steve called me to ask if I wanted to go hiking to our favorite spot when I got home, I’m a forester and I had been out all day hiking around in my snowshoes and the last thing I wanted to do was more hiking, I was exhausted and didn’t want to go and I told him so but he was so disappointed that I relented. He had had the day off of work and I was pretty sure that he had gone to look at engagement rings so before we left I jokingly patted down his pockets before we left just to be sure he hadn’t bought a ring… apparently it was in his pocket and I missed it! We hiked the mile into Little Concord Pond over in Woodstock, Maine (Little Concord was one of the first hikes we did together in Maine and we brought all of our guests there because it is so beautiful and you can jump off the rock into the pond and swim in the pond which is incredibly warm and clear… just beware the leeches near the edges of the pond lol) and like I mentioned it was February so the trail was icy and we were slipping and sliding everywhere. We finally made it to the pond and Steve convinced me to walk out on the ice with him, I always get nervous walking on ice so it took some convincing to get me out there. I was bent down looking at the air bubbles frozen in the ice and Steve said my name and when I turned around to look at him he was down on one knee with the perfect engagement ring that he had bought only hours earlier.”
What vision do you have for your wedding?
“We aren’t from Maine but we moved her after college and we fell in love with the area, we actually just moved to New York a few months ago and we had no idea that you could miss a place that you spent so little of your life in so much. Our vision is to just show all of our family and friends how absolutely beautiful and fun life in Maine can be. We really want to show off the natural, organic, and effortless beauty of the area and we want to do that through the spectacular mountain views and wildflower bouquets. We want them to see why we loved it here so much and why it was so hard to leave… we are only in our twenties but I’ve already told Steve that when we retire we will have to move back to Maine."
What vendors are you excited about working with?
“All of them! But a few stand out. One of Steve’s coworkers from when he was working here in
Maine is actually going to cater our wedding and we are super excited! He came to our house to cook us a sample of what he is going to make and it was incredible, everything was insanely good but the chicken in champagne sauce was unreal. I came home from work the day after he cooked for us, and all day I had been thinking about the champagne sauce leftovers, but when I got home Steve had already eaten it - it still feels like a bit of betrayal 6 months later (just kidding!) One of the friends that made while in Maine is Ariel Johnson. She owns Ariel Johnson Makeup Artistryand I am thrilled that she was available to do our wedding! She is unbelievably talented. Our photographers are Litrato Studio, we worked with Ed for our engagement shoot and he has a great sense of humor and was such a good sport about hiking the mile into Little Concord Pond where we got engaged. Our videographer, Sophia Aldino is such an interesting and talented woman, I can’t wait to see the story that she will create in her video of our wedding day. We are working with two florists, Broadturn Farms for the bouquets (the arrangements that Broadturn makes are what Pintrest inspiration is made of!) and center pieces are being made out of wildflowers that local woman in Denmark grows. I stopped by her stand every week or so in the summer to get a bouquet of flowers for our house (I love flowers) one afternoon she was outside and I was pleasantly surprised when she agreed to make the centerpieces for the tables. I just spoke with her recently and she was down south for a bit and started a bunch of seeds especially for our wedding while she was down there and transported them back up to Maine! Talk about dedication!”
Why did you choose Granite Ridge?
“We were originally looking at barn and other outdoorsy venues in Upstate New York because most of our family and friends are in that area and we wanted to make the travel easy on them. But then I saw an advertisement for Granite Ridge online, it was a photo of the mountain view out of the windows in the barn, I thought that the venue had to be out west in the Rockies somewhere but it was just so beautiful that I clicked on the ad so I could see the photo larger and when it said Norway, Maine I was in disbelief! I read through the website multiple times just to be sure that it was in fact the Norway right down the road from our house! We visited and we were immediately sold on the mountain views and how friendly Micki was. It’s such a beautiful location and barn, that we decided it would be worth the extra travel time for the guests.”
Photography by Ed at Litrato Photography
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