Romantic Purple and Gold Virginia Wedding Reception: Mary + John

After a hefty dose of romantic florals and personalized details this morning for their outdoor wedding ceremony, are you ready for round two!? Because the second part of Mary and John’s wedding from Ethan Yang Photography is here to give you just that! The couple combined more traditional and elegant wedding elements with not-so-typical details that spoke to them. The soft and vintage-inspired florals by Holly Chapple Flowers continued and were swathed in vibrant purple lighting. John selected a custom and unique choice of beers for guests and to cap off the night, in addition to wedding cake, Pinkberry was served!

From Mary: One of our guests’ favorite parts of our wedding was the selection of microbrew beer. My husband is an avid beer drinker who loves traveling all over the country and the world just for beer. One of the requirements for our venue was the ability to obtain a wide selection of beer. When it came to our special day, my husband thought long and hard on picking a special selection of beers, but didn’t want to get too crazy where it may turn people away. The only thing we did know is that we did not want to give our guests the standard selection that you see at typical weddings. It was a great way to make our special day, just that much more special.

We loved Holly’s idea of using John’s favorite beer bottles to make flower arrangement for our cocktail hour.

Shoes for Wedding Dancing

We decided to go with a simple display cake (two tiers where half of it was styrofoam). One of my favorite cakes of all time is the lemon cake from Del Frisco’s Grille. The executive chef was able to tweak the lemon cake recipe to sheet form and for less than a wedding cake maker would charge, we were able to give our guests an amazing tasting cake.We also served Pinkberry with toppings that we bought from the grocery store. Other than you’re wedding was beautiful, the second compliment we heard the most was WE LOVED THE PINKBERRY!

Mary’s advice to other DC-area couples:

I would say that the biggest tip is to consider the venue coordinator when picking your venue. I would say 55% of the decision to go with 1757 Golf Club was because of Lindsay Rash. Her personality matched ours so well and we just seemed to click since the day we met. She made the wedding planning so smooth that she kind of played the part of wedding planner as well. We were able to ask her small questions, big questions, and bounce ideas back and forth about our wedding. Want to service microbrew beer? No Problem! Need extra tables? I’ll make sure that there are extra linens just in case. There’s something to say about a venue coordinator that you can trust and connect with. She just made wedding planning that much easier.