Dusty Rose and Emerald Wowed at This Meridian House Wedding in Washington, D.C.

Although Lindsay and Patrick were living in London at the time of their wedding, a key priority for them with their nuptials was to bring "bring together our friends and family." As such, the couple settled on hosting a wedding in Washington, D.C., the city where they "both met, went to college, and lived for years after graduation... and very close for our mostly east-coast based family. We wanted to show our out-of-town guests why DC is such a great city to live in, and also to have a party that felt elegant without being stuffy," Lindsay shares. 

To make the most of their destination wedding in the nation's capital, Lindsay and Patrick planned a weekend full of events. "The whole weekend was one never-ending special moment," recalls Lindsay of the celebration in Washington, D.C. "A lot of the wedding was trying to achieve balance," explains Lindsay of the varied levels of formality present across the weekend's events. "Since we knew the ceremony itself was on the fancy side, we tried to balance that out by making sure some of the other events were more relaxed. We're both big music fans, so for the welcome party we rented out the Grateful Dead themed back bar at one of our favorite concert venues in Georgetown, Gypsy Sally's, had them put out flatbreads, popcorn, and dips, and hired a live bluegrass band to play. We had a blast getting to hang out with everyone before the wedding day, and some of our closest friends gave incredible toasts. For the after party, we wanted to evoke the sort of dance parties we remember having with friends in high school and college, and we knew we wanted it to be walkable from the venue, so we rented out the basement space at Songbyrd on Eighteenth Street, had tacos and sliders and an iPhone hooked up to the sound system, and changed into sneakers.For the final event, our brunch on Sunday morning, we wanted to show off DC. We'd rented the monument suite at The Line, which has a private balcony that you can see the Washington monument from, and we brought in a ton of bagels and lox from Call Your Mother and donuts from Astro Donuts. I think we converted a few people to the DC food scene just based on brunch! We also tried to share a few personal favorites with the wedding party and our guests throughout the weekend. For example, in addition to the usual drinks and snacks in the bridal suite, we made sure to stock the fridge with our favorite champagne, which we ordered specially (we also saved a bottle to have at our table in a bucket at the reception), and put out mince pies from Fortnum and Mason that we'd carried over from London in our hand luggage. We also knew that many of our guests were whiskey drinkers, so we supplemented the official bar with a few special bottles that we picked. The bar was actually one of the most fun parts to plan."

"In terms of color palette, we tried to evoke some of our love of London with forest green and gold, and then lots of gem tones and autumnal colors. Neither of us are especially religious, but we both actually majored in religious studies in undergrad, and we ended up asking one of our favorite professors to officiate the wedding. It was a secular ceremony, but the fact that it was officiated by one of our theology professors felt appropriate. The wedding hotel was The Line which used to be a church, and we did both the rehearsal dinner and the brunch on Sunday there, so our guests ended up spending plenty of time in a church, just not for the ceremony," says Lindsay.