Photos by Rebecca Adler Rotenberg of I Love You Too Weddings
The couple: Maggie Rose, 28, grew up in Potomac and graduated from Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. (She was Margaret Durante before taking her stage name.) Austin Marshall, 32, grew up in Sikeston, Missouri. They live in Nashville, where Maggie is a country music artist, songwriter and producer, and Austin is the manager and director of artist development for Starstruck Entertainment.
How they met: In 2014, Austin’s then-business partner was co-producing one of Maggie’s albums. “Austin just kind of kept showing up everywhere, at the rehearsals and things like that,” Maggie says. “I think partly he was doing his job and on the other hand he had a different agenda.”
The first date: Austin invited Maggie and her friends to a Cinco de Mayo party at a club in Nashville. “I thought he was cute from the beginning but I didn’t really know that we were going to hang out that night and I was going to be his date,” Maggie says. “We ended up going to another bar and talking for two hours, and the following weeks we became inseparable.”
The proposal: During a concert at Bethesda Blues & Jazz Supper Club in March 2015, Maggie was preparing to sing “River Road,” a song she normally performs with her bass player. Then Austin came onstage and started singing. “I just started laughing,” she says. “There was a little bit of shock but we also had talked about the fact that we both wanted to get married. It was so much fun and he was doing air guitar and air piano and running around the stage.” When they finished the song, he got down on one knee and proposed, with her parents and many friends looking on from the audience. She found out that earlier in the day, when Austin had said he needed to get batteries, he’d actually gone to Boone & Sons Jewelers in Chevy Chase to pay for the engagement ring. After the proposal, the couple celebrated with champagne at the club and then went on to Caddies on Cordell.
The wedding: Maggie and Austin were married on June 4, 2016, at Our Lady of Mercy in Potomac, where Maggie had attended elementary and middle school and where her parents had gotten married. A reception followed at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda. “I spent a lot of my childhood years there, on the swim team, playing tennis,” says Maggie. The priest who led the couple through their marriage preparation and ceremony—Monsignor John Enzler, the CEO and president of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington—is a family friend who had married her aunt and uncle, and her sister and brother-in-law.
Number of guests: 240
Making plans: Maggie’s mother, Lizz Durante, acted as the wedding planner. “My mom and I did so much of the planning through Pinterest and sending pictures,” Maggie says. “She and I got to have a project together, where we were talking about flowers and appetizers and how great the night was going to be instead of me calling her like I usually do, lamenting something in the music industry.”
City cuisine: Maggie and Austin asked the chef at Congressional to create a recipe for a seasoned chicken sandwich called hot chicken, one of Nashville’s signature dishes. The snack was served at midnight. Out-of-town guests received Maryland-themed welcome boxes that featured edibles seasoned with Old Bay.
Pre-wedding prep: The day before the wedding, Maggie and her two sisters got their hair done at Drybar in Bethesda. “The Notebook was on and we had our champagne,” Maggie says. Then they went to get their nails done. “We don’t have a lot of Dunkin Donuts in Nashville so I insisted on getting my iced coffee from Bethesda that morning too,” she says.
The gown: Maggie Rose wore a mermaid-style gown with an illusion neckline, custom made by Nashville designer Olia Zavozina.
