A fANNEtastic Wedding

They’re married!

CONGRATS, Anne and Matt on a BEAUTIFUL wedding day! Here’s to a lifetime full of love, family, friends, and happiness.

Before the wedding, Theodora and I spent the afternoon exploring a little of the Virginia countryside. After hitting up Target to purchase some extra-warm wraps, we used my Yelp app (I <3 Yelp!) to track down a spot for lunch and discovered adorable downtown Winchester.

We soaked up the perfect fall weather before locating a German place for lunch.

Hello, friends.

We split a Pumpking (a GREAT pumpkin beer, I like that it’s heavy on the pumpkin and light on the spice).

And I ordered the cobb salad with crab for lunch.

I also had a piece of Theodora’s german pizza.

I wish we could have continued exploring for hours (so much to see – so little time!), but we had a wedding to get to! After a quick change at the hotel, we hopped the shuttle bus to the wedding site.

We found an old friend along the way. Hi Heather!

Thank you to everyone who weighed in on my dress dilemma on Friday. Even though some comments suggested otherwise, this wedding was not a black tie affair and the bride gave her approval on all of the dresses I was trying to decide between.

(though, I’ll be the first to admit all of the dresses did look deceivingly short on the hangers, I assure you they all went to my knee!)

I ended up selecting the floral navy number based purely on comfort. I almost forgot I had this dress until I stumbled upon it in the back of my closet. It’s from Target circa 2008 and I’m a fan of all the ruffles.

The wedding was held at a gorgeous manor. As the guests arrived, we were asked to wait in the carriage house, then a few minutes before the ceremony started we were escorted to the back of the manor for the main event.

Check out the view!

The wedding ceremony was a tear jerker. Matt and Anne did a beautiful job making it their own. It was sweet, personal, and very them.

A few weeks ago Anne received the unfortunate news that her brother who is currently serving overseas would not make it home in time for her wedding. Even though he was thousands of miles away, she was still looking for a way to have him at the ceremony either by phone or video, but wasn’t sure how that would work logistically or who would do it. As soon as she told me what was happening, I immediately volunteered to use my Samsung Galaxy S3* to Skype her brother in for the ceremony.

The whole process was seamless. Right before the 4:30pm ceremony start I was able to connect with Anne’s brother (1:30am his time) and – thanks to Verizon’s speedy 4G LTE network – he was able to watch his big sister marry the man of her dreams in real time. He stayed on for the entire 40 minute ceremony and even had a chance to say hello to his grandmother and mother before signing off.

Though her brother could not attend physically, he was still there in spirit, and it was an honor to ensure he was still able to take part in the day.

Introducing the new Mr. and Mrs.!

After the ceremony we headed back to the manor for cocktail hour.

I stuck to red wine for the rest of the night. I think I had 3 glasses total?

Theodora and I split a plate of yummy appetizers.

The dinner portion of the reception took place in a large open tent on the side yard.

CAKE!

The plated salad was delicious. I loved the herbed goat cheese and candied walnuts. (don’t worry, I didn’t dig in until after the first speech )

Dinner time!

Anne told us the morning of that all of the food was sourced locally and the tasting had been the highlight of wedding planning since the food had been so good. She told us to look forward to a good meal and she was not kidding. Everything was wonderful, my favorite was the roasted chicken, it was so moist and flavorful.

We moved to the carriage house to dance the rest of the night away.

Lemon cake with raspberry filling – OMG good.

Congrats, Anne and Matt! Thank you for inviting me to be a part of your perfect day.

The only sad part of the evening was not having Derek there to share it with. I can’t wait to dance the night away with him at our wedding in January! Only 2.75 months to go!

*Disclosure: As part of the Verizon Wireless Ambassador program I have been provided with a wireless device (the Samsung Galaxy S3) and three months of service in exchange for my honest opinions about the product.