Susan Lacz has seen it all: weddings on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons; unusual venues like the Bumper Car Pavilion at Glen Echo Park; and ever-increasing numbers of “destination” weddings. Many couples are eager to replace old customs with fun or personally meaningful themes, says Lacz, a principal of Ridgewells catering. She calls these “anything goes” weddings. “Everything is up for grabs. It’s whatever you want it to be, and it’s all totally acceptable,” she says. “Couples have minds of their own.” Here are four out-of-the-ordinary nuptials.
Masquerade ball
Gwen Wunderlich-Smith and Darrell Smith wanted their Sept. 29 wedding to be magical and unusual. “We’re both very theatrical and we wanted to push the envelope,” says Gwen, 32. Darrell, 35, an actor with several episodes of the Baltimore-based HBO series The Wire to his credit, and Gwen, until recently an event planner, knew they needed to create an extravaganza their family and friends would never forget.
The Rockville couple decided on the perfect theme for their wedding: a masquerade ball. Darrell wanted a historic setting, and after a lengthy search, Gwen found the Evergreen Museum & Library in Baltimore, owned by Johns Hopkins University. The Gilded Age estate, on 26 landscaped acres, is in the style of The Great Gatsby, she says.
The wedding took place in the estate’s garden at sunset. The bride wore an oyster-colored dress with a matching, off-white, half-face mask, while the groom’s face was partially concealed by a black and gold mask. The bride’s bouquet featured deep red flowers, crystals pinned to the stems and centers, black feathers and red ribbons. Members of the wedding party—the bridesmaids were dressed in ruby-red gowns; the groomsmen wore matching red ties—were permitted to choose their own masks, each decorated with ornate combinations of sequins, beading and peacock feathers.
Adding to the drama, the couple’s 80 guests disguised themselves with masks and boas provided by the bride and groom. “We wanted it to be black tie and gorgeous—and it was really fun to add the masks and boas,” Gwen says.
For the wedding ceremony, the garden was lined with wrought-iron lanterns and strewn with thousands of red flower petals. The 4-year-old flower girl walked down the aisle dressed in a lavender fairy costume complete with wings, a wand and a mask on a stick that she held up to her face. The bride’s arrival was heralded with “Sadeness,” a song by New Age group Enigma and reminiscent of Gregorian chanting, with words in both Latin and French.
At the reception in the estate’s 1870s carriage house, the anchor tables were comprised of two long, dark, wooden planks decorated with huge gold candelabras, red flowers, black feathers and masks, red votive candles and flower petals. Other tables were covered in deep purple satin cloths with matching napkins. The entire room gleamed with red, pink and amber specialty lighting. Chef ’s Expressions of Timonium, Md. catered the sit down dinner; a disc jockey provided dance music.
An 8-foot mahogany bar with a gold-leaf top was brought in for the occasion and lit by additional crystal candelabras. Shelves behind the bar were filled with flickering red votives. Guests lounged and had photos taken on a dramatic gold velvet chaise trimmed in black and sprinkled with red petals.
As a final touch of mystery, Gwen rented a “wedding crasher,” a masked young man from DC Dream Date who was hired for two hours to dance with her single friends. According to the bride, “It was everything we wanted.”
Exotic nuptials
Jennifer DelPonte, 32, of Kensington had gone the traditional route for her first wedding, with a classic 10-foot train on her gown, 300 guests and a lot of anxiety. For her second wedding on Sept. 6, Jennifer and husband Paul, 46, chose to have a small family wedding on the Isle of Capri off Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Paul, a Washington, D.C., public relations executive, is from a large Italian-American family with roots in the Sorrento region.
“We did it our way—and I had no stress. It was amazing,” Jennifer says. With the tourist season waning, the couple selected a September date. Since only citizens are permitted to marry in an Italian church, the couple needed to arrange a civil ceremony in Capri’s town hall, set in a grand piazza hundreds of years old. They started the paperwork with a visit to the Italian consulate in Washington, two witnesses in tow. The same witnesses—Jennifer’s mother and aunt—were required to be present at the wedding in Italy.
Jennifer searched the Internet to find her Capri event planner, Francesca Aprea. “That was key—you really have to trust them from such a distance,” she says. With Aprea’s help, Jennifer was able to arrange for a chef, flowers, a cake and transportation. She also hired acclaimed photographer Umberto D’Aniello and rented two adjacent villas for the weeklong celebration that included 25 family members and friends.
Jennifer and Paul planned a week’s worth of outings for their guests, including scooter rides around the island, a chartered boat tour of the Amalfi Coast and a visit to Pompeii. The wedding took place on a Thursday morning with a traditional march through town before and after the ceremony. Shopkeepers and bystanders showered the couple and their guests with confetti.
The wedding reception was held on the terrace of one of the villas, with a stunning view of the harbor. The couple hired a five-piece band from Naples and hosted a sit-down dinner featuring a bounty of Italian food and wines.
Several years ago, Jennifer—who had been diagnosed with lupus—began to realize that her 80-hour workweek as a corporate attorney was not good for her health. “Planning the wedding changed my entire outlook and launched a new career,” she says. She was so excited arranging her Italian destination wedding that she quit her job and, in the fall of 2005, shortly after getting engaged, launched a new business as a wedding planner. She also formed a partnership with her Italian wedding planner.
As it was the second marriage for both Jennifer and Paul, the couple wanted a wedding that was a reflection of them, with the focus on their blended family of four children and not, she says, on the choice of tablecloths.
The evening of their wedding, as the sun set, the couple saw not one, but three rainbows, spectacular and unplanned salutes to their new life together.
