Emily & Brian

Occupations Emily is a financial analyst; Brian is an engineer.

Wedding date October 14, 2023

Number of Guests 100

Number of Attendants Six bridesmaids and six groomsmen

How You Met We met at a bar in Fells Point.

The Engagement We got engaged in December 2019 at Longwood Gardens. We went to see the Christmas light display, which Brian thought was the perfect backdrop for a proposal.

Wedding Design Inspiration We’re a very creative and sentimental couple –we love making handmade gifts, we hold onto mementos from our dates and trips, and our home is filled with eccentric art and décor that speak to who we are as a couple. We wanted to have an elegant wedding, but still showcase our personalities and pay tribute to our relationship through our design choices.

What Was Unique and Special About Your Wedding Day There were a couple of things that were truly unique about our wedding day. Our wedding coincided with the Baltimore Running Festival, which injected some additional stress into the planning process but it turned out to be a very fun addition to our day.  Brian ran the half-marathon the morning of our wedding day and we included his bib number on our wedding website so that guests could track his progress. It was a fun start to our day to have friends and family cheering him on!

We also made some unique design choices, especially with the florals. Emily loves dried flowers and usually has a couple of arrangements in our house and she requested that we have colorful dried flowers for the wedding. We also designed and created a lot of our wedding décor and incorporated many unique and personalized touches, down to the smallest details:

• We have lived in Baltimore for many years now and wanted to include our love of the city into our wedding. We designed a seating chart using different types of Baltimore rowhomes, we built a bar panel that showcased the Baltimore skyline, and had other small details like displaying vintage Baltimore postcards and serving local drinks at the bars. We also built a miniature salt box to act as our card box and commissioned Juliet Ames, the local artist that started the Baltimore salt box street art initiative, to design the front panel.
• We both work in the aerospace industry, which you can see reflected in our wedding cocktail napkins featuring our dog as an astronaut and in Emily’s wedding dress, which was called Galaxy and came from Pronovias’s cosmic themed wedding dress line.
• We both love music and have been to countless concerts throughout our relationship. We chose our first dance song “Love You Like That” by Dagny because we’ve been to her concert and we’ve met her. We also got our toasting glasses engraved with “Love You Like That.”
• We handed out mini pop tarts as our favors because we split a pop tart of our first date at a brunch restaurant.

Favorite Details

• Our good friend officiated our wedding. She was there the night we met and that allowed her to put together a heartfelt, humorous, and personalized speech about our relationship that made our ceremony truly memorable.
• Our dog wasn’t allowed in the library for the ceremony, but we did take pictures with her beforehand and those are some of our favorite photos from the day.
• The day before our wedding, we did an additional wedding photoshoot at the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower. We got some amazing photos and this gave us a chance to step away from the wedding stress and refocus on our excitement and joy for our big day.
• We put together a customized dinner playlist of songs by some of our favorite bands that we’ve seen in concert and included a QR code in our décor that guests could scan to gain access to our wedding day playlist.
• We had a string quartet playing classical covers of pop music during our cocktail hour, which the guests loved.
• Brian built our wedding arch and the wooden bases for our centerpieces, into which he hand carved the table numbers. We also made the centerpieces themselves, which were pop-up book art displays representing moments from our relationship like getting engaged during Christmas, going on camping trips together, buying our first house, etc. We included a blurb on the back of the dinner place cards that explained the scene and included a QR code to view a photo album with our pictures from those moments. We had a lot of customized décor, but the wedding arch and the centerpieces were our standouts. They made our wedding feel incredibly special and personal, our guests loved walking around and looking at our centerpieces, and we now have amazing sentimental pieces to include in our home décor.

Most Unexpected Event On Your Wedding Day It rained on our wedding day, which led to some unexpected issues like our dog getting muddy paw prints on Emily’s dress. Take it from us, that bridal emergency kit really does come in useful!

Piece of Advice Don’t be afraid to think outside the box –we having so many unique and personalized details incorporated into our day and our guests loved that they saw our relationship reflected in all of our choices!

Beauty Tiffany Lumpkin (bridal hair/makeup, bridesmaid makeup); Vintage Veils (bridesmaid hair) Bridesmaids Cocomelody Caterer & Cake The Classic Catering People Dance Lessons In Home Wedding Dance Lessons & Choreography Floral Design Tilled Studio Groom and Groomsmen Enzo Custom (groom’s suit) Generation Tux (groomsmen) Invitations Alpha Graphics (save the dates); Just Ink on Paper (wedding invitations) Lighting Event Dynamics Location The George Peabody Library (ceremony and reception); plus, The Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower (additional wedding photographs) Music Two Rivers Chamber Music (cocktail hour); DJ Kopec (reception) Officiant Abbott Matthews, friend of the bride & groom Photo Booth Snap Happy Photo Booth Photographer Anna Schmidt Photography Transportation Jay’s Valet and American Limousines Wedding Day Dog Care Furever & Always Wedding Dress Pronovias (bridal gown) and Sassi Holford (Bromo Seltzer photo shoot dress) Wedding Planner The Otherside Creatives