Five Wedding Planning Tips for a Meaningful and Loving Celebration!

Are you interested in a meaningful wedding celebration? You have been to beautiful weddings, expensive celebrations and wild wedding receptions. But, what makes a wedding memorable; the perfect wedding planning checklist, unique wedding invitations, an outrageous theme wedding?
FAMILY INVOLVEMENT
If you and your beloved have family members who are ecstatic about your engagement and insistent on being involved in the wedding planning process, then you should allow them to. This is the perfect opportunity to be very communicative and hand out very specific tasks, such as locating sites to purchase wedding invitations, help set up a personal wedding website as well as general help with wedding ideas. Involving your loved ones in this way will set a loving tone.
MEETING EVERYONE'S NEEDS
Think through who is on your guest list and make thoughtful preparations for them. If you have elderly people attending your wedding, then make sure you have comfortable seating, shade if they will be outdoors and hydration if it is warm. A great tip, found on many wedding websites, is that if you have children attending, you will want to prepare for them as well. Some wedding venues will help with a low table, crayons, snacks and cups with lids to help make the little ones at home. Your guests are sure to feel cared for.
A MEANINGFUL WEDDING SERVICE
One of the greatest wedding tips you will receive is that you must picture yourself walking through your wedding day. Think through your service and decide on the mood you want to create. For example, consider filling the church with hundreds of white candles and twinkly lights to set a mood of romance. If you desire a memorable service, then you may want to write your own vows, exchange heirloom rings and have someone you love sing a beautiful ballad as you light your unity candle.
A LOVING RECEPTION
During the busyness of wedding planning, you don't want to lose sight of all those you love and those who have contributed to your life. You may want to prepare a slide show of all the family and friends along the way who have helped make the two of you, who you are. Dedicate the show to your loved ones and show it at the reception. It is sure to bring tears of joy to all.
DELICIOUS AND SIMPLE
As you use your wedding planning tools to create a reception menu, remember to keep it simple. Choose heavy appetizers, fresh seasonal salads and great breads, paired with the perfect wines. A rich wedding cake and thoughtful wedding favors with a personal message from the two of you will top off a loving wedding celebration everyone will remember!

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On Love: Anne Burnley weds Chris Robinson

Anne Burnley & Chris Robinson

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(Roman Grinev) - Anne Burnley and Chris Robinson at their wedding reception at the Hotel Monaco in Alexandria, Va., on August 6, 2011.

Anne Burnley, 27, works for a political fundraising firm. Chris Robinson, also 27 , works for IBM. They live in Alexandria.

Wedding date: Aug. 6.

Location: Hotel Monaco, Alexandria.

Guests: 130.

How they met: Burnley and Robinson met in 2000 during their sophomore year at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria and quickly became close friends. Although they admitted romantic feelings for each other after graduating, college on different coasts discouraged them from dating. But in August 2005, while both were on break, they joined friends at a bar and danced together all night. “The stars fell into place,” Burnley says. After they went back to their respective schools, they spoke every day.

The proposal: They returned home from a party on New Year’s Eve and, over a toast, Burnley said 2011 was their year to get married, something they had been discussing. Robinson admitted that he already had the ring; Burnley confessed she had searched for it, to no avail. So Robinson pulled it from a hidden box, got down on one knee and proposed. They didn’t make it official until the next day, when Robinson called Burnley’s father to get his permission.

The wedding: Instead of a maid of honor, Burnley had a brother of honor. The flowers were white hydrangeas, set against Burnley’s favorite colors of hot pink (for the bridesmaids) and navy blue (for the groomsmen). Bartenders served drinks in plastic cups that said “Meet the Robinsons” and sported a silhouette of a basset hound, a nod to their beloved dog. They chose “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green for their first dance.

The honeymoon: They went to Ogunquit, Maine, where they walked a scenic cliff path, visited lighthouses and ate their fill of seafood at Barnacle Billy’s lobster pound.

On Love: ‘Love cannot be stopped — not even by Irene’

Lyndsey Thornett was aggravated when she got word that the condominium she was renting was being put up for sale. She’d only been back in the area for a year and was just beginning to feel at home in Arlington.
So, in July 2009, the Potomac native, who spent eight years in Texas for college and business school, started searching for a new spot. Though her parents didn’t love the idea of her living in the District, she settled on a place at 18th and S streets.

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The night she moved in, Thornett invited a friend to come by for a drink. As she bounded out the door to wait, she spotted a casually dressed man watering flowers on the property.
Edward Zielinski explained that he was president of the condo board and welcomed Thornett to the building. After trading numbers in case Thornett had problems with her unit, she invited him to sit down for a beer.
“Hey, this gorgeous girl moved into the building,” Zielinski, now 30, later told his roommate. But he didn’t know if she was single. Fearing he’d create an awkward situation, he decided not to use her number for anything other than official condo business.
But Sasha Rosen, the friend who was with Thornett that night, was sure the attraction was mutual.
“He seemed like a really nice, super-cute guy. And Lyndsey was excited but didn’t really know what to expect,” Rosen says. “We’re both pretty skeptical of really nice, super-cute guys.”
Thornett’s interest grew through chats with Zielinski, who told her he was a finance professional at Fannie Mae and one of five siblings from Oregon. He’d also started a walking tour company, DCByFoot.com, with one of his brothers.
But even after months, neither was sure where the other stood. Once Zielinski asked whether he could check out her apartment, and, he recalls, “You could feel the tension of ‘Is he gonna make a move?’ But I failed to make a move.”
In late October, Thornett, now 29, was watching a football game at Buffalo Billiards when she got a text from Zielinski asking whether she wanted to join to his birthday celebration around the corner at James Hoban’s, an Irish bar. She did, and as they stood by the jukebox, Zielinski told Thornett he thought she was pretty.
A week later, they went out again with a group of friends and eventually found themselves alone. At another jukebox, this time at Darlington House, he kissed her.
Before their first official date, at Hook in Georgetown the following weekend, they met up at a U2 concert they’d both planned to attend. That night, the two posed for a picture that Thornett developed and gave to her mother, who knew about her daughter’s crush on Zielinski.
The two began spending evenings together and exploring the city on weekends. “From the moment I met him, it was so comfortable,” Thornett says. “And it reminded me of being in college. Just being able to go upstairs at night. It was just really fun.”
Within weeks, he was invited to her parents’ home in Potomac. He saw the picture of him and Thornett at the concert displayed among family photos on the mantle. Her mother was embarrassed, “but I liked that,” Zielinski recalls. “It was cool that she had our picture up.”
Though Thornett often told Rosen the relationship “seemed too good to be true,” she let down her guard quickly. “I was so happy,” she says. “It was just finally easy, and I always was kind of hoping that I would find something that would just feel right and be easy.”
And it was apparent that Zielinski felt the same. “I just knew that he adored Lyndsey,” says Rosen. “Every other word out of his mouth was, ‘Isn’t Lyndsey so beautiful?’ ”
By the time they went to Jamaica together the following March, he was sure he wanted to marry her. “Everything felt different,” he says. “I was completely excited. Where I would do anything to spend time with her, to make her happy, to have fun with her.”
In October 2010, he took her back to Hook. And later, on a bench by the Georgetown waterfront, Zielinski got down on one knee and asked Thornett to be his wife.
The two planned an Aug. 27 wedding at Meridian House, where cocktail hour would be held among the property’s linden trees. But plans changed when an earthquake struck four days before the event, causing slight damage to the building. And weather reports indicated Hurricane Irene was barreling toward the region. As they worried about their 145 guests’ travel plans, their wedding planner, Jamie Sears, prayed the electricity would stay on at least long enough to get through dinner. But it stayed on all night. And every vendor and all but a small handful of guests made it to the wedding.
As blowing branches scratched against the stained-glass windows of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church on Connecticut Avenue NW during their ceremony, Pastor Jan P. Lookingbill addressed the couple. “Earthquake, wind and rain cannot stop love,” he said. “Love cannot be stopped — not even by Irene.”
Resource: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/weddings/on-love-love-cannot-be-stopped--not-even-by-irene/2011/08/29/gIQALci6wJ_story.html

On Love: Lindsey Mehan weds Matthew Graham

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George Burke - Lindsey Mehan and Matthew Graham after their wedding ceremony at the Thomas Birkby House in Leesburg, Va., on July 9, 2011.

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Location: Thomas Birkby House, Leesburg

Guests: 130

How they met: In mid-June 2007, Mehan landed an internship with the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors; Graham was working for Connolly, who was the board’s chair. On Mehan’s last day, Graham asked her to meet him for a drink at Coastal Flats. They continued on to dinner at Uncle Julio’s Rio Grande Cafe and talked into the wee hours in the restaurant parking lot, discovering a shared passion for history.

The proposal: In December, Graham re-created their first date, taking Mehan to the same bar and restaurant. When they got home, Mehan commented that the date was just like their first. Yes, he replied as he pulled out a ring, except he hadn’t asked her to marry him that night.

The wedding: Connolly, who was there when they met, officiated at the ceremony. The couple’s first dance was to Jason Mraz’s “Lucky,” which Mehan chose because the lyrics — “lucky I’m in love with my best friend” — fit their relationship. With their wedding so close to July 4, they decided to have apple pie instead of a traditional cake, and when they left the reception, guests brandished sparklers.

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/on-love-lindsey-mehan-weds-matthew-graham/2011/08/02/gIQAvy1SBJ_story.html

On Love: ‘As soon as we got together, it was the easiest thing in the world’

Mark Gail/TWP - Alexis Johnson and Joseph Walpole married at the American Visionary art Museum on July 16, 2011 in Baltimore, Md.

Alexis Johnson knew Joseph Walpole’s type. She’d lived on a floor full of engineering majors her freshman year at Boston University. “They were nerdy,” she says. “And not in a fun, nerdy way, just in a really weird way.”She and Walpole had mutual friends and went to the same bars and parties, but they rarely spoke. I’m sure he’s just like the rest of them, she thought. Their most intimate conversation came when Johnson needed help with her shoe as a group of friends prepared for a formal dance.
“I was like, ‘You’re an engineering major, right?’ You can fix this,” she recalls.

He used a steak knife to carve a new hole in the strap of her shoe and passed it back.
Walpole, who was a year behind Johnson in school, didn’t form much of an impression of her. But in April 2006, he was the first of his friends to buy the video game “Guitar Hero.” When Johnson, a game-lover, heard that a mutual friend was going to Walpole’s place to test it, she exclaimed, “I’m coming over!” and proceeded to hold her own with the guys all night.
“I was, like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool,’ ” says Walpole. “And that was the first time we hung out with just three or four of us, so we actually had time to chat.”
The next week they saw each other at a bar. Johnson, whose father was an enthusiastic home brewer and now owns the Judge’s Bench Pub in Ellicott City, noticed that while others were drinking Bud Lights, Walpole was sipping a glass of La Fin du Monde, an ale from Quebec.
“It’s a beer I knew and a beer that I kind of respected,” she says. “It was just interesting, like, ‘Wow, I wouldn’t have expected that.’ ”
They talked for much of that night and met up again after a pub crawl four days before her graduation. As they walked home together, he kissed her.
They started spending every free moment together but knew their time would be limited; the day after graduation, Johnson would be setting off on a two-month cross-country excursion before trying to find a job back home in Maryland.
“I just remember being really excited during this time and trying not to think about her inevitably leaving,” says Walpole. “But it was also, like, ‘I can’t believe this — how long have we known each other that we never got together?’ ”
The morning of her departure, Johnson sped over to Walpole’s place to say goodbye. He gave her a mix CD to play on the road, but their goodbye hug was interrupted by Johnson’s dad, who called to say he was double-parked and it was time to go.
“I remember very distinctly the feeling after her leaving,” says Walpole. “Being, like, ‘I don’t know what just happened.’ ”
“I felt the same way,” she says. “We left it very unresolved.”
The next day, he e-mailed, saying, “So, we should still keep in touch, right?”
Walpole became Johnson’s virtual traveling companion as she drove through the continental United States, visiting state parks and music festivals. “It was definitely nice to have someone to check in with and have that comforting voice,” she says.
Their rambling daily conversations uncovered quirky senses of humor and similar musical tastes — she found herself listening again and again to the CD he’d given her. And while he is laid-back and reserved, he was drawn out by her chatty effervescence.
Read more :http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/weddings/on-love-as-soon-as-we-got-together-it-was-the-easiest-thing-in-the-world/2011/07/21/gIQAVEWgfI_story.html

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OnLove: Jennifer Mitzner weds Gregory Curtiss

Jennifer Mitzner, 27, is a speech language pathologist in Silver Spring. Gregory Curtiss, 29, is an engineer for Sprint Nextel. They live in Rockville.

Wedding date: July 2.

Location: The Willard, Washington.

Guests: 150.

How they met: Mitzner and Curtiss met on a blind date in September 2005 in Syracuse, N.Y., where she was a college senior and he was a systems engineer for Carrier. At dinner at Chili’s, Jenny ate her tacos messily; Greg, on the other hand, cut his chicken into perfectly even pieces. She thought, “This is never going to work.” But they ended up talking all night, until the restaurant asked them to leave. They continued to date through Mitzner’s three-year graduate program at George Washington University and Curtiss soon joined her in the District.

The proposal: In November 2009, two days before their families would get together for Thanksgiving, Mitzner came home to an apartment covered in candles and roses. Her favorite song, “Falling Slowly” (from the movie “Once”) was playing in the background while a slideshow of the couple played on the TV. He popped the question, she said yes, and they celebrated afterward with dinner at Palena, their favorite restaurant.

The wedding: Curtiss is Catholic and Mitzner is Jewish, so they arranged an interfaith ceremony. Lace from her mother’s wedding dress was incorporated into the chuppa, and multi-generational family wedding pictures were displayed at the reception. For their first dance, they were serenaded by Mitzner’s brother, a professional musician. As guests left, they received mini-milkshakes — a nod to Greg’s love for the icy concoctions.

The honeymoon: They went on a two-week trip to the islands of Moorea and Bora Bora, where they enjoyed a sunset boat cruise, spa treatments and a Polynesian fire show.
Read more : http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/onlove-jennifer-mitzner-weds-gregory-curtiss/2011/07/20/gIQAh7mWfI_story.html

OnLove: Kalena Alston-Griffin weds Ben Costa

In 2007, Kalena Alston-Griffin’s life was just as she’d planned: She was married, living in New York Cityand pursuing a lucrative business career. Ebony Magazine even named her one of the country’s most promising young leaders.
But by 2008, things were coming undone: Her father died. Her marriage was fraying. Her mother had a serious heart attack and needed 31-year-old Alston-Griffin, the eldest of five children, to take in her two middle-school-aged brothers.

Amid the chaos, she was also planning a move to Washington to start a publishing business. “I have been known to be one of those people who doesn’t set limits, so to speak, in terms of how much I can handle. But this was definitely beyond my comprehension,” she remembers.
She enrolled her brothers at Westland Middle School in Bethesda that fall and met with Vice Principal Ben Costa. Kalaii, 13, and Zeke, 11, had been through a lot, she explained, and warned that they might act up. Costa said he understood. He gave her a book about the psychology of adolescent boys and a phone number to where she could reach him when things came up.
“I was like, ‘Wow, he’s great,’ ” she recalls. “I just thought he was really empathetic and understanding.”
Costa’s reaction wasn’t only about the kids. He’d been taken with Alston-Griffin’s beauty. But when his boss warned it would be inappropriate to date her, he resolved to keep flirting to a minimum. Still, Kalaii gave them plenty of reasons to stay in touch — before long, Costa had become a mentor to the boy and was talking almost weekly with Alston-Griffin about his behavior.
“But what was cool about it, to be honest, was that it gave us the opportunity to know each other without the physical part confusing things,” he says.
Their friendship was growing and so were his feelings. She, in turn, had detected Costa’s crush. Though she admired the joking, candid way he related to students and parents, she wasn’t ready to date and felt she needed to keep some distance.
But in February, when Costa informed her that one of Zeke’s favorite teachers had died, she started to view him differently. “I’ve never seen him look so serious and so sad,” she says. “I just felt so moved at how emotional he was about it. And how honest he was with me about his emotions.”
When Alston-Griffin called Costa a week later to see how he was holding up, he invited her to meet for a drink. Neither was sure if it was a date. A few days later, she swung by his house to borrow a DVD. Sitting in his living room she seized up and launched into why they shouldn’t date.
He listened quietly, then stood up and asked her to dance. They moved closer and closer to each other until he finally kissed her. “And it was pretty much the best kiss I’ve ever had,” she says. “It was like he was completely vulnerable — like he gave himself to me. It felt very pure and very open, and I trusted him completely.”
They began dating discreetly, and every day he would send her a poem he’d written. “I realize why adults start going back to church,” he wrote in one. “To thank God for having found that person — for the love in their lives.”