Month: July 2017

Color plays an important role in any wedding—it shows up everywhere, from the flowers to the napkins. Yellow is cheerful, white is classic, pink expresses romance and green suggests new beginnings. Especially, as any of the next three couples can tell you, a deep shade of emerald. While Katie Jenkins knew it would pop in pictures (and spent much time finding the exact shade, ordering multiple fabric swatches until she pinpointed one with the right amount of brightness), Jenna Llewellyn had her custom gown dip-dyed the rich color, hoping to capture a natural, bohemian vibe. And then there’s Christine Mahoney and John Kluge, who took inspiration from their Scottish and Irish roots, accenting attire and place settings with a saturated palette. Whatever the inspiration, these couples are in agreement: It’s easy being green.

Ruth Martin & Dan McDonald

September 18, 2016, at Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards

Photography by Jen Fariello

With the views from Pippin Hill as the backdrop, Ruth and Dan knew they wanted to keep the rest of the wedding simple and romantic. That meant lush greenery, white hydrangeas and tons of candles. The bridesmaids were allowed to choose their own dresses in neutral shades of blush, gray, lavender and gold. That ended up being a favorite detail of the bride’s: “I thought they all looked individually stunning,” she says.

For their first spin on the dance floor, the couple had the bride’s sister, a musician, sing as they danced.

Ruth and Dan dated for nine years—including long-distance stints between New York City, Charlottesville and Philadelphia—before getting engaged. “Needless to say, the wedding was a long time coming,” Ruth says. “We were so happy to bring together both sides of our friends and families, who we had each grown so close to over the years.”

A surf and turf menu featured scallops and zucchini ribbons for the first course, followed by roast tenderloin and crab cake entrées. For dessert? Assorted treats, including s’mores.

Event planner: Cody Grannis (Amore Event Co.) Officiant: Cash Beveridge Flowers: Anita’s Flower Shop in Stafford, Virginia Dessert: Chandler’s Bakery Music: Miriam Martin of Alice & the Reverie (ceremony); DJ Derek Tobler (reception) Dress: Liancarlo (wedding and reception), Alexis (reception and after-party) Rings: Independent jeweler in New York City Hair: Top Knot Studio  Makeup: Gohar Makeup Videographer: Kelley Van Dilla

Christopher Matvey & Michael O’Connor

July 30, 2016, at Veritas Vineyard & Winery

Photography by Tom Daly

Classic, elegant and timeless: That was the goal of the wedding. So Christopher and Michael chose a white and gold color scheme with black accents. Inspired by The Great Gatsby movie, the couple asked Blue Ridge Floral Design for large flowing centerpieces and candelabras on the tables.

The rainbow LOVE sign, a last-minute purchase that was popular with guests, was the couple’s favorite detail. “It spoke volumes to the nature of our wedding,” says Christopher. Other stand-out details? A live painter and MoxBox, a traveling photo booth that automatically posts to social media.

The couple lives in Bermuda but chose to marry in Charlottesville based on an ad they saw on the Internet: “Thought about a beautiful vineyard wedding?” “The first one we chose to visit was Veritas,” Christopher says. “When we first walked into the tasting room and saw the large LOVE sign, all in corks, we immediately fell in love.”

Just after the ceremony, it started pouring down rain. But that turned out to be a blessing: During dinner, the couple returned outside for photos and the skies were pink, the clouds were low and the sunset was amazing. “Couldn’t have been luckier!” says Christopher.

Event planner: Colleen Miller (Colleen Miller Events) Officiant: Adrian Beasley (friend) Catering: Veritas Vineyard and Winery in-house catering  Flowers: Blue Ridge Floral Design, LLC Cake: Favorite Cakes Music: JG Entertainment Grooms’ attire: Tom Ford Shoes: Tom Ford Rings: David Rose (Bermuda) Hair and makeup: Jeanne Cusick of Cville Makeup Videographer: Tom Daly Photography Photo booth: MoxBox Live painter: Jamie Peterson (Fine Oil Paintings)

Katie Brazeal & Halston Kirkpatrick

July 2, 2016, at Blue Ridge Farm

Photography by Jen Fariello

Once they decided on a location and date, they fully embraced the “summer” theme: “Blue was a defining color,” Katie says. “We created an atmosphere that was more on the informal side, while still being very wedding-appropriate. And we gave an ever-so-slight nod to the Fourth of July!”

The escort card display was one of Katie’s favorite details. An animal-lover, she had gone to Georgia with Halston in fall 2015 and they visited the fair, where she won a goldfish. It survived the trip back to Charlottesville, had a long and happy life and provided inspiration for the display—with live fish!

Katie, a wedding planner and creative, had a hand in most of the wedding details: welcome bags, custom cocktail napkin design and escort card display. But Halston had a hand in it, too, building the corn hole boards and signage and hanging a canoe over the head table. “What a rock star!” Katie says. To cater, the couple chose The Catering Outfit, which provided catfish and hush puppies, grilled chicken and Mexican-style street corn, fried okra and fried green tomatoes. In other words, “Southern comfort food with a creative twist,” Katie says.

Event planner: Meghan Streit (Shindig Weddings & Events) Officiant: Stewart Swain (family friend) Catering: The Catering Outfit Flowers: Southern Blooms Music: The Adrian Duke Project Bride’s attire: Family heirloom Shoes: Anthropologie Groom’s and groomsmen’s attire: Jos. A. Bank, Banana Republic, The Tie Bar Bridesmaids’ dresses: BHLDN Hair: Top Knot Studio Makeup: Rouge 9 Tent: Skyline Tent Company Rentals: Festive Fare, Stonegate Event Rentals Transportation: Southern Star Valet

As they say, lovelies, a picture is worth a thousand words. And Candy Girl has quite a few choice ones for when a night of being fabulous and having a blast turns up on Facebook with everyone looking somehow both washed out and blotchy, and a bit like they were hanging out in a condemned bowling alley. Or for the moment when the phone, much too close to the face, turns out to be on selfie mode, revealing a new chin and a couple of whiskers in the worst possible angle known to ancient and modern man. “Why,” you may wonder as you filter and untag and delete, do I not have someone following me around making sure I look as great in photos as I do in the flesh?

Well, you lucky little ducklings, your wedding day provides the opportunity to find just such a somebody! This is likely the one time in your life that you will be attended by a professional who is literally dedicated to providing flattering, lasting evidence of just how beautiful you and your loved ones are. And as you will no doubt discover while budgeting, that evidence is worth more than just words, so finding the right person for the job is even more crucial. But how?! Don’t worry. Candy Baby has you covered.

Photographer Jen Fariello knows how best to track down the perfect photog for your big day.

“After all is said and done,” she says, “the images are there for a lifetime and so properly investing time, research and funds should be a top priority.” She advises investing more in coverage up front, rather than products. You can always have a shot you love from the day of reprinted. Going back and doing it all over? Not so much. Look for work that speaks to you while shopping around.

Robert Radifera of Robert Radifera Photography highlights the importance of looking through photos of an entire event before committing. “Make sure you’re looking at a real wedding and not a styled shoot,” he says. “They produce very different images and it’s easy to become smitten with highly produced and styled pictures.”

After falling in love with the art, Fariello and Radifera both recommend falling in love—at least a little bit—with the artists themselves.

“The wedding photographer will be with you the most on your wedding day, so finding someone who has a great personality and will let you shine is key,” says Fariello. An engagement shoot is a great way to build rapport. “Any communication kinks can be worked out,” says Radifera, “and the couple gets a good feel for what it feels like to be in front of the camera.”

When all is said and done, you get your photos back, they’re everything you’ve dreamed and you live happily ever after with the perfect wedding album! Hopefully. But, what if it doesn’t quite work out that way? “Any reputable and professional photographer wants to make their client happy,” says Fariello. “So just open up a dialogue and figure out what didn’t go the way you wanted and see what can be done.” Doing your research and building a good relationship before the big day means that anything disappointing in your finished product is likely a matter of circumstance (bad weather, sticky jam-fingered nephews), and a follow-up shoot can help fill those gaps in your dream day coverage.

Candy Girl is C-VILLE Weddings’ resident wedding advice expert. She’s been doling out helpful bon mots since before you were dressing up salt and pepper shakers and making them kiss, doll.

One day last winter, Cathy Stapleton attended a wedding. Everything was, as she puts it, painstakingly planned (“even the weather cooperated”). But when it came time for the wedding toasts, things spun out of control.

“The best man gave a lengthy speech that started out fairly amusing but went off the rails rather quickly with some inappropriate jokes,” Stapleton says. “The bride began to cry and the father of the bride was livid. It almost ruined the most important day of her life.”

Having already been helping folks with public speaking in the executive realm, it occurred to Stapleton that she might expand her business, Speakeasy and Company, to the wedding world as well.

“I can prevent disasters like that by teaching people how to give speeches at weddings,” she says.

Her services run the gamut—speeches for the father of the bride, the best man or maid of honor and, of course, for the couple themselves.

In the case of Morgan Kain and her husband, Noah, it was the vows that needed some work.

“As soon as we made our plans, I was immediately intimidated by the prospect of the ceremony and vows,” says Kain, a teacher who, despite performing in front of students every day, had a bad case of the jitters when thinking about voicing so much sentiment in front of a crowd. She reached out to Stapleton, a longtime family friend.

The process begins a month before the wedding and takes about three to five hours, starting with editing or composing an authentic, well-timed speech. Stapleton draws on her theater background to help the client learn how to stand, breathe and project (“so the whole audience gets the full benefit,” she says).

Looking back on her April wedding, instead of recalling her nerves, Kain remembers the more important details of the day: “The sky was blue, my babies were giggling, the trees were pink, my husband’s eyes were the most beautiful shade of blue in his gorgeous face and my face hurt from smiling.” And scene.

An officiant could be considered the conductor of your wedding ceremony. And whether you want one that’s classical or something a bit jazzier, our area offers many options. We asked Dave Norris and Claire Frances to tell us more about how they set the tempo.

Dave Norris (above)

How long have you been officiating? My first wedding was in April of 2009. I was mayor at that time and had a weekly radio show about current events. One morning the show’s host, Tad Abbey, asked me on-air if I would officiate his upcoming wedding to his lovely bride, Grier. Without hesitation I said yes, then immediately went home and Googled “how to officiate a wedding.” I’ve performed hundreds of weddings since then.

What’s your specialty? My weddings tend to be simple and sweet and personalized to each couple. Many people choose a minister or a priest or a rabbi to officiate their wedding, so what they get is a worship service that doubles as a wedding ceremony, which is great for them. I, on the other hand, am a civil marriage officiant, so with me, you just get a wedding ceremony—one that feels true to the couple because we have worked together to design it. I think of weddings as a celebration of love and happiness and they still make me teary-eyed on the regular.

What’s a stand-out moment in your career as an officiant? I was especially moved by the ceremonies I was asked to perform in the days and weeks after marriage equality finally became the law of the land. A powerful combination of love and justice and freedom and triumph pervaded those weddings. One couple even included the beautiful concluding paragraph of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s prevailing opinion in Obergfell v. Hodges as a reading in their ceremony: Love won.

Any disaster stories or strange details that come to mind from a local wedding? Not a disaster story per se, but a couple once asked me to start their ceremony with that famous wedding quote from The Princess Bride (“Mawwiage. Mawwiage is wot bwings us togetha tooday. Mawwiage, that bwessed awangement, that dweam wifin a dweam…”). Half their guests got the reference right away and broke out in laughter. The other half thought I had a serious speech impediment and surely wondered how I ever got hired as a wedding officiant.

Claire Frances, Sacred Ground Ceremonies

How long have you been officiating? I’ve been officiating since the summer of 2004, when I graduated from seminary and was ordained. I already knew I was going to love doing wedding ceremonies so luckily was able to actually have one or two booked before my graduation. At this point I’ve done around 950 ceremonies.

What types of ceremonies do you provide? I am not from a Christian denomination, I am an interfaith minister. So, I guess you could say my specialty is bringing people together who come from very different backgrounds as opposed to both from the same. For instance, I’ve done a lot of Christian/Jewish ceremonies as well as Hindu/Christian; Buddhist/Jewish; atheist/Christian; Christian/pagan and just about any other combination you can imagine. But more than any other single type of ceremony I do a lot of “spiritual but not religious” ceremonies. I love the experience these kinds of ceremonies provide for the guests…often it is something completely unique for them and gives them an opportunity to experience a religion or culture that they’ve never been exposed to and so it, hopefully, opens hearts and minds to another equally beautiful tradition.

Any favorite moments or clever ideas you’ve seen executed at local weddings? Many years ago I had a bride who loved the Indiana Jones movies, so she chose the theme song to Indiana Jones as her processional music. With a string quartet playing it it took some time to recognize the melody, but when they did, the guests couldn’t stop laughing. Once I had another couple who wanted to get married on a really high peak out in the Shenandoah National Park, so we had quite a hike (a couple of hours) to do their ceremony high up with a 360-degree view. That was a fun experience.

Butterflies fly away

Big nerves on your big day? Here’s what these officiants say to couples to ease the jitters.

From Claire Frances…

• Take a deep breath. Breathing deeply can really help.
• Keep your focus on each other and on me; don’t worry about your guests right now, you will have the entire evening to spend with them.
• Remember, this is your wedding ceremony; it’s not a performance, so you can’t mess up or do it wrong. However it goes will be just perfect and at the end of the day, you will be married to your best friend.

From Bhavani Metro, an associate at Sacred Ground Ceremonies…

• Breathe and know at the end of this day, you will be married.
• Relax and know that whatever happens today, it is all for good.
• Your day will hold its own special memories and some of the funny things that may happen are part of that memory.
• I have you covered. If you cry, I’ll have a tissue. If you forget something, I’ll guide you through it.
• I always recommend that the couple take time alone immediately following the recessional without photographers, family or friends. It’s their private moment to celebrate with each other. It is important to take that sweet moment, full of the love and energy of the ceremony and share with each other before their attention turns outward to greet their family and guests.

And for words of wisdom
that last a bit longer, from Dave Norris…

• Be generous with your love and compassion for each other.
• Remember that you were friends first. Always treat your partner with the same respect and kindness that you would a friend.
• You can be happy, or you can be right. Choose one.

A lot happens between the moment couples say “Yes!” and “I do!” There’s choosing a date, finding the perfect venue, crossing your fingers that the perfect venue is open on that chosen date, cake tastings, dress fittings, suit tailoring, picking a DJ (or do you want a band?). Even something seemingly inconsequential like choosing cloth napkins—ivory, off-white or cream?—can send a couple careening on the fast-track to Stress City.

So, how do couples chill the heck out? The key, it seems, is to think about love.

Elizabeth Derby and J.T. Newberry, who were married in May at Camp Holiday Trails, had many details to stress over—from a welcoming reception on Friday night through Sunday brunch—but together they planned an entire weekend of events for themselves and 80 guests.

“At some point, I just wasn’t relaxed” about the whole thing, says Derby, who suspects that the stress of putting together a wedding, big or small, can’t be helped, but hiring a planner would likely help, if you can afford to do so.

Derby’s steady wedding stress shifted into overdrive a few days before the event, when her volunteer day-of coordinator fell through at the last minute. “Fortunately, I had friends and family who dove in headfirst to help me accomplish everything,” Derby says, adding that one of their vendors, Shaun Jenkins, who runs SJ’s Events & Staffing, stepped in as day-of coordinator.

In the end, it worked out splendidly, and while couples might not be able to avoid stress entirely, Derby says that feelings of love far exceed any day-of anxiety. “The best antidote to wedding planning stress is the love and support you feel during the event,” she says. “Being enveloped in this bubble of love for a weekend is pretty remarkable.”

Caitlin and John Terry, who were married November 6, 2016, at St. Paul’s Ivy with a reception at The Local, had just eight months to plan, and they say that most of the details were easy to figure out—getting married at St. Paul’s was a no-brainer, as Caitlin had grown up in the congregation and, after meeting at UVA, both sang in the church’s choir. What wasn’t easy was planning a modest reception in Charlottesville, an uber-popular (and thus expensive) wedding location, says Caitlin.

“We weren’t very stressed beyond the cost of certain things,” says John. “How could we be, when we were so excited? But any time you organize with so many moving parts, you’ll have your moments.”

So, they prioritized, made a budget and stuck to it via a Google spreadsheet that helped them keep track of costs and other details, from the most important (great reception location with great food) to what they could do themselves (invitation calligraphy, seating charts) and what friends generously donated (reception flowers, music). They also baked and cooked in their Atlanta home to help alleviate some stress—nothing quite like kneading, chopping and mixing to let out some frustration, says Caitlin.

It helped that the Terrys planned everything together—“we are a team,” says Caitlin—and remained focused on the most important thing of all: that they were getting married. She adds, “A friend of ours who got married a few months earlier gave us some really good advice: Every time you stress about the dollar figure, remember that this might be the one chance to gather so many supportive friends and family in one place, at one time, and that’s priceless.”