Real Wedding Ceremonies: 2021
Continuing tradition and looking at all of the ceremony designs and set-ups from our 2021 weddings.
Spring Wedding Ceremony at Dumbarton House
With vaccines brand new in Spring 2021, we had just one micro wedding during the season. It was a sweet Jewish wedding with a pretty chuppah at Dumbarton House in Northwest DC.
Summer Wedding Ceremonies
The summer wedding ceremony shown above and below was at a private home in Virginia. Since we had to postpone a year, the parents took that time to build this gorgeous stone wall that anchored this stunning floral design. It is hard to tell, but we were atop a hill, overlooking the farm, and a solid 1/8 of a mile from the wedding reception tent.
At the Red Fox Inn, above, you have a few options regarding the layout of your wedding ceremony. Part of your decision may be based on how many guests you have. Iif you have a lot, you may need to stand in the center of the garden and have your guests on both sides. But if you are hosting a more intimate wedding (this one had 56 guests) then technically there are 4 spots in the garden you could pick to center your ceremony.
This was our first wedding at Iron Gate restaurant in DC, above and below, and we had such a nice time. We did opt to add the tent over the ceremony area, given a poor forecast, but if we had skipped the tent, we would have been just fine! The restaurant makes this process very easy for you. We had 28 seats set up, and it was very comfortable.
I have had some traumatic experiences with strong winds ruining floral decor. So when I was designing this Spy Museum rooftop wedding ceremony, above and below, I pitched my clients on the idea of doing the florals encased in clear acrylic pillars. Given that the venue is very modern, and the rooftop space is also a glass box, it all fit together. If I were to do this again, I would scale up in size, if the budget permitted.
For our first wedding at The Line, above and below, we knew that we would have a smaller guest count. We also wanted to try to do both the ceremony and the cocktail hour on the roof. We were able to squeeze 69 chairs on this wing of the roof, which was enough for this wedding.
This is a rental chair from Something Vintage, and it is 3 inches wider than a typical chair, so it is possible you could get a few more chairs there if you used a narrower chair. While we wanted beautiful florals, we didn’t want to block the view. So we created this low floral piece that blended beautifully with the existing landscaping on the roof. Next time I would create a custom piece to elevate the flowers more so that guests could see them.
Autumn Wedding Ceremonies
I had forgotten how stunning this Hotel Monaco wedding ceremony design, above, was until I was writing this post. Holy moly, did we knock this out of the park. To be honest, the client just told me what they wanted, and I found the best people to make it happen. Since we had another smaller guest list here, we could seat guests on just 2 sides of the columns. This allowed for a proper aisle in and out and a real backdrop to the ceremony. The maximum number of seats with this sort of set-up would be about 90.
Winter Wedding Ceremonies
This moody, winter, sunset wedding ceremony at Riverside on the Potomac, above and below, was truly a team effort. The chairs, fireplace and lights were from Something Vintage, and DGE installed the lights for us. LynnVale Studios absolutely crushed the florals, greenery, lanterns, and candles. I was thrilled that the clients agreed in advance that the ceremony would be in the Long Gallery, (rather than waiting to see how the weather forecast looked.) This allowed us to create a fully-flushed-out design. The design was a light bulb moment while at the LynnVale farm, with the rented fireplace mantel as the anchor. I’m completely obsessed.
Did you enjoy this post? Awesome. You can see more at our 2019 wedding ceremonies round up. If you want to know more about our 2021 weddings, you can read our reflections post.
Are you planning on writing your own wedding ceremony script but don’t know where to start? I can tell you where: Provenance. This transformative AI will help you create a fabulous wedding ceremony script, including personalized vows! My clients love it, and Provenance can also help with speechwriting!
