Tented Maryland Wedding Reception: Lauren + Adam

We’re back with part two of Lauren and Adam’s Maryland wedding from Timmester Photography! (Did you see their classic, outdoor wedding ceremony?) This couple really showed their love for Washington DC, naming their tables after their favorite local neighborhoods! Purple also made it’s way into this blue and white palette for a pretty pop that really complimented Antrim 1844‘s style.

Our biggest priorities for the wedding were that we wanted everyone to have a good time, and we wanted gorgeous photos to remember the day. To make that happen, we put a lot of thought into the food, the band, and photography. Adam and I are big foodies, so we chose a venue that would allow us to customize our own delicious menu through direct consultation with the chef at Antrim’s on-site restaurant. Working with Chef Michael Gettier to create our perfect menu was a great experience, and our food was amazing! Having a band was one of our non-negotiables from the beginning, and we chose to work with Free Spirit whose members were super energetic and made sure that folks had a great time on the dance floor.

In lieu of traditional wedding favors, we created a candy buffet that guests could enjoy throughout the reception, as well as create a bag to take home with them. The buffet was truly a labor of love from many of my family members; my parents and I spent months collecting apothecary jars from various locations and selecting and hunting down specific types of candy, and my aunt, uncle, and cousins spent the morning of the wedding creating a display that was more perfect than I could have imagined. The candy was a huge hit with all of our guests from kids to adults, and I loved seeing everyone chowing down on some sweets and making bags to take home.

Lauren’s advice to other DC-area couples:

Choose a great team of vendors, and then let yourself relax knowing that you have hired a great team of professionals who will do a great job. I am pretty Type-A and wanted to fully keep track of every detail of what every vendor would be doing and when on the day of the wedding. I could have saved myself a lot of stress (and probably would have pestered our vendors a lot less) if I had just let go and trusted that everything would be okay. We chose highly experienced and talented vendors, and they did an unbelievable job at making our wedding day run smoothly and more perfectly than we even expected.