Circe & Brandon’s Wedding at The Line in Washington, DC

I don’t think I’ll EVER forget this wedding. We had to push it THREE times due to COVID, and then we finally went for it – JUST as DC was re-opening (we literally were the first wedding at The Line that was allowed to have dancing again!). It was the first indoor anything I had been to (much less unmasked) in over a year … and it was such a mixed emotional feel. It helped that Circe & Brandon were SO laid back, SO understanding, SO chill … and really just wanted to have a damn wedding. I couldn’t have asked for a better vendor team to work with and make the insanity of everything surrounding this event as incredible as it could be. Thank you to Brandon & Circe for sharing their day with us AND their insights.

From the couple: “We knew we wanted to have the ceremony and reception at a venue in DC. We love how vibrant and diverse DC is and thought our wedding would be a great opportunity for out of town friends and family to see where we call home. We looked at a few venues but nothing really felt right until we saw the roof deck at The Line. It is such a beautiful and unique space in the heart of DC – we just fell in love. The view is just fantastic, and we love how it came out in our ceremony photos. We honestly didn’t feel that strongly about much else! I told our florist to just have tons of colors and textures in the flowers, and those also turned out fabulous with zero direction. The Line is really already a beautiful space there wasn’t much that needed to be done.”

My sister and Brandon’s brother walked down the aisle before us and stood up during the ceremony with us. Our good friend, Alvin, was our officiant. He is how Brandon and I met! It was such an honor having him be our officiant. My parents were unable to travel to DC, as they live in Texas, but they watched the ceremony on Zoom. Our DJ recorded the ceremony, first dance, and speeches to send them – I didn’t even ask them to do that. They went above and beyond, and I’m so thankful that I could send the videos to my parents.

We didn’t have a wedding party because we wanted to keep things simple. We walked each other down the aisle, which fit our personalities. We took dance lessons and worked with a choreographer (Christen Svingos) to plan a ballroom style dance for our first dance. That was really fun and I’d recommend other couples do that. It was a fun project to work on together before the wedding and I think guests were really impressed by it. We also had a roving magician during the cocktail hour and reception! Our recessional song was Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepson, arranged for violin and cello.

Due to the pandemic we had to delay our wedding three times, and it was basically like planning a wedding three separate times. It was a ton of organizing, and I’m thankful our vendors were flexible throughout everything. Communicating with guests was hard – we sent out 4 (I think?) separate things to them including a save the date, an invitation, and then 2 date changes. Of course, that was over the duration of almost two years, so people moved etc. Eventually we just had to call/text/email everyone individually and it was a ton of work. We also had to cut our original guest list by over half due to occupancy restrictions, so choosing who could come and who couldn’t was difficult. Thankfully, everyone seemed to understand, and I don’t think anyone was mad at us? I hope? I guess my advice would be to use tons of spreadsheets and lists and assume you’ll have to follow up with guests one by one, so budget time and mental energy for that. We had a super sleek, handy, RSVP tool on our wedding website, but due to the multiple date changes we just didn’t know if someone’s RSVP was for the first date or the third date! It was a mess, but also when it finally happened, it was beautiful and fun and worth all the work! Also, another piece of advice would be to just be flexible. Be flexible with your venue, and your vendors. Expect that local restrictions will change, and you’ll have to dramatically rework something at the last minute! For about a week, we thought we wouldn’t be able to have dancing at our reception! So, just have confidence in your venue and vendors to deliver a beautiful day – it may not be exactly what you pictured, but it will happen regardless.