One Year Later: The Five Best Decisions We Made About Our Wedding Day

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It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since Rob and I tied the knot. We could not have imagined a more perfect day and we love hearing from family and friends how much fun they had at our wedding.  

Looking back a year later, here are the 5 best decisions we made about our wedding day (besides having a planner, of course 😊): 

1. Doing What Fit Us, Not What Was Expected: Wedding days can often turn into a fun but exhausting marathon. To break up the day, we decided to have a late morning ceremony followed by a brunch reception. We took a break after the reception while our guests explored DC and then met up again in the evening for drinks at a pub. We incorporated traditions we enjoyed like walking down the aisle with parents, but skipped things like bouquet tosses, getting ready separately and dancing that weren’t meaningful to us as a couple. 

2. Keeping It Small: It was important to us to be able to spend quality time with all of our guests on our wedding day. By keeping our guest list to 60 guests, we were able to have real conversations with every guest at our wedding.  

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Photos by Stacy Smith Evans Photography

3. Meaningful Location: We wanted to celebrate the life we had built together with our closest family and friends. By having our ceremony and reception in our neighborhood, we were able to share that with our guests. We love being able to walk by Lincoln Park on our daily commute and say “Remember when we got married right here?!”

4. Sustainability: Our hotel, ceremony and reception were all within a short walk of each other which eliminated the need for shuttles and encouraged guests to walk (another big part of our lives!). We purposefully chose to work with vendors that could source food and décor locally to reduce the environmental impact of our wedding. Our fabulous coordinators (Jessica & Kate) made sure items were composted or recycled properly and Petals for Hope repurposed our centerpieces for a Mother’s Day Brunch at a nursing home the next day.

5. Scooters: I have to give Rob all the credit for this one. We were fans of the scooter craze in DC from the start and thought it would be fun to scoot from the ceremony to the reception. After reaching out to every scooter company in the city, Rob convinced SPIN  to drop off scooters for our guests and we had a blast getting to the reception! 

To celebrate our first anniversary, we’re going to have a picnic in Lincoln Park and then take some scooters for a spin!

Want to read more about our wedding? Check out the posts below, and the photo gallery!