Local Love: Alexandra and Vincent

July 31, 2019

THEIR LOVE STORY

There was a long and winding road from the time we met in 2009 to our wedding day in 2019. We met in one of our junior year classes at James Madison University, partners on a short film project. During our senior year, we started dating but ultimately broke things off after graduation when the relationship became long distance. Although we kept in touch for a few years after (including when we both found ourselves living in Vince's hometown of Pittsburgh in 2012 – a brief rekindling of friendship which ended very cinematically, on a fire escape, with Vince saying he couldn't just be friends), we ultimately lost contact and dated other people. In August 2016, roughly four years after we had last spoken, we reconnected on social media and decided to catch up (Vince slid into Alex's DMs, to be honest). A spontaneous visit was scheduled, Vince came from Pittsburgh to New York City on Labor Day weekend. We realized we never stopped loving each other but did become a whole lot wiser, and tried that long distance relationship thing again. This time it stuck, and the rest, as they say, is history!

1 of 3

2 of 3

3 of 3

THEIR INSPIRATION

I work as an archivist in New York City – and have always been deeply inspired by history – and we are both pretty creative people (as undergrads, we both studied media arts and design). The late 1890s through the 1920s is my favorite period design-wise, and a seed was planted while I was looking through invitations from that time period that we have in the archives. Vince knew I had a certain vision in my mind and let me run with it to create this romantic art nouveau meets early art deco dreamscape. Our colors were taken from works by Alphonse Mucha, who is famous for creating these distinctively stylized theatrical and advertising posters in Paris at the turn of the century. His art also has a lot of floral elements in a way that is both chaotic but harmonious and soft – essentially what I asked for from our florist, Shayla (of Tulips and Twine), who really knocked it out of the park. Our venue, Linwood, is so beautiful. The grounds and reception area were an already-lovely canvas to build off of.

I did a lot of DIY and left some things to the professionals, like our invitations. Anyone who wants invitations authentic to a certain time period should use Gilded Swan Paperie. The rest of the paper products I designed, mostly with ephemeral pieces that I came across on the internet, with the help of some fabulous typefaces! My absolute favorite would have to be the paper doll place cards that I put together using digitized fashion plates from the Costume Institute collection at the Met (all in the public domain!).

We had some "big" decorative elements – like our circular arch and moon photo booth - that were made from scratch and couldn't have been possible without the help of some family and friends. (I've long been obsessed with old moon photo booth photos – some of the signs made for people to hold in the photographs were the same phrases used in those old images.) It was also super fun to have found a DJ (Dapper DJs) who added to the atmosphere with their gramophones for the cocktail hour.

1 of 2

2 of 2

THEIR FAVORITE PART

My favorite part of our wedding day was the immediate aftermath of the ceremony. All of the guests were ushered off to the cocktail hour and we were given ten minutes to just be together and reflect on everything that had led up to that moment. The waitstaff brought us one of our signature cocktails and the photographers took some fun photos of us with a decorative "JUST MARRIED" umbrella that my wife crafted herself. Eventually, we were chauffeured across the grounds of the estate on the back of a golf cart, cocktails and umbrella in hand. In that moment, I really felt like we were the stars of the show ready to make a grand entrance to our reception!

THEIR ADVICE

You always hear that you shouldn't stress about the details, that guests don't remember that sort of thing. I'm here to say that it's okay to stress about the details that are important to you. If a lot of your passion has to do with, say, history and design, then this is your chance to do your thing and show off your skills! Spend time on the details that matter to you - not the ones you think should matter to you, and not the ones other people tell you should matter to you.

If you can, choose a venue that allows you to take over the property for the whole weekend, with plenty of lodging on-site. Definitely consider this if your family and friends and yourself are all from different geographic areas. It gives you so much more time together, and it kind of feels like fancy summer camp, and who doesn't love that?

Writing your own wedding ceremony is possible. We used a lot of resources online and enlisted help from loved ones to come up with something that was uniquely us, and then had Alex's brother officiate.

Planning a wedding from afar isn't easy. We didn’t have a wedding planner but we did have Alex's mom who, as one of the stakeholders and a local to the area, served as the wedding "momager" and worked with the venue's coordinator. It's very tough to pull all the things off without having someone other than the bride and groom keeping all the details.