Dawn & Zach || A Surprise Wedding at The Something Vintage Warehouse

How excited am I?!?!? Our surprise wedding is up on Washington Bride & Groom today! About a month ago, we were featured in the Spring Issue of the magazine and today we’re up on the blog! Almost three years ago (and two babies later but who’s counting?!), Zach and I had our warehouse “launch party” at the Something Vintage warehouse and surprised our guests with a wedding!

I felt A LOT of self-imposed pressure to make our wedding incredible because we are in the wedding industry, I wanted it to be creative, beautiful, and an intimate party but I didn’t want to spend the two years planning it. So thinking out of the box, we decided to have it here at our warehouse because Something Vintage brought us together, he proposed to me here, we have a shared love of vintage pieces, everything DC, and creating pieces with reclaimed wood (from DC!). Let me just say, that it took a lot to get this place ready because we had just moved in two months earlier and it was a mess. We also decided to call it our warehouse “launch” party because it has plausible deniability and would get our friends and family who lived across the country to come! And they did and neither of our sets of parents or friends knew! Despite the torrential downpour that scuttled my vision for an all upholstered seating ceremony, everything else that day was perfect!

Can we talk about these amazing wood invitations Sugar Taylor designed AND hand painted. INSANE TALENT!!For the wedding, we focused on choosing things that meant a lot to us—we had catering from Kangaroo Boxing Club in DC (where we had our first date and is in our neighborhood), flowers from our good friend Holly Chapple, favors from Uncle Chip’s cookies in DC, our beloved Sticky Fingers Cake (located in our neighborhood in DC), hand-painted wooden invitations made by Zach’s brother and painted by Sugar Taylor (Taylor and Hov), and photography by our good friend and super talented photographer Anne Robert. Oh and we used tons of our inventory! 🙂 Did I mention we planned and pulled this off in under two months!? It was nuts.
I absolutely adored my BHLDN dress and our Barbara Royal Blue Midcentury Sofa was the perfect backdrop to display it in all its glory! I don’t think our office has ever looked so good!!
I really can’t thank Holly enough for providing all of these gorgeous blooms!! She outdid herself and they were the perfect accents on our big day!

I had the idea to transform our pretty rough space outside our warehouse into a ceremony area by making a giant reclaimed wood backdrop outside for the ceremony that we’d adorn with flowers and flank with upholstered seating for the ceremony. As what always happens with Zach and me, I come up with crazy ideas for inventory and he makes it happen. In this case, I wanted a 25 ft wall of reclaimed wood bolted to cinder block for the backdrop, and somehow he figured out a way to make it happen….in like three weeks. And he was still bolting it on the morning and afternoon of our wedding and got sunburnt doing it! That’s why I love him 🙂 Of course, it started raining cats and dogs an hour before the wedding, we had to move in all the furniture/bars etc…and then move it back out— that’s why people were standing during the ceremony. It wasn’t exactly how I planned, but we rolled with it anyway. Story of our lives 🙂Zach might have gotten a sunburn while building our Kennedy Backdrop, but we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out! We used it for our ceremony, but it’s also great for photo booths or just as a decorative accent wall!Our Davenport Gold Steamer Trunk and Toto Aqua End Table got all decked out for the occasion! How fun is that bright blue color?! The Toto can brighten up even the dreariest weather!

AWWWW!!!!

One of my favorite parts from the wedding was the ceremony when our minister Chuck McCort read our separate memories of how we met and how we knew we wanted to marry each other.We decided to keep our wedding small and intimate, and we were so grateful all of our closest friends and family could join us on our big day! It was so important to have them all there, and we had a blast springing a surprise wedding on them!

We brought out our Charles Card Catalog and Corby Wood Crate despite the rain and they helped to make the space in front of our warehouse feel homey and festive!
We used our District Reclaimed Wood Table and our Baldwin Gray Tufted Chairs for our sweetheart set-up! Then we topped things off with a mix of or clear and amber goblets and our Lumiere Candlesticks!

How cool does one of our Leora Brass Candelabras look here?! It definitely gave our tablescape a unique feel!
For the rest of our guests, we set up a mix of chairs with our District Reclaimed Wood Tables! We combined our Seine Bentwood Chairs, Hamilton Mixed Vintage Chairs, and Bradshaw White Vintage Chairs for a whimsical and one of a kind look!
We were so excited to provide our guests with Uncle Chip’s Cookies and our Richmond Wood Factory Cart was the perfect way to display them! YUM!!

Glowy light + Holly’s flowers + our Commodore Carved Buffet = PERFECTION!!! And can you spot one of our bird cages in the background? So much pretty all in one pic!

Thank you to Zach for choosing me and being down for the idea of a surprise ceremony- I still feel bad that he got sunburnt before our wedding because he agreed to make and install a massive reclaimed wood back drop! And a HUGE thank you to our friendors who made our launch beautiful and possible