Capitol Wedding: Andrew & Araceli’s Intimate, Vintage Mexican-Inspired Wedding in Virginia

A mariachi band, a vintage Mexican theme, and a Zombie-themed grooms cake? Why yes, I do think I would LOVE to feature this wedding :)

Andrew & Araceli’s Warrenton, Virginia wedding at the Airlie Center is just downright awesome. They drew upon Araceli’s Mexican heritage to give their wedding day a vintage Mexican theme, with white, green & kelly green colors and some seriously fun details. The whole wedding was brought together beautifully by Roberts & Co. Events and captured by Amber Reinink Photography.

I think one of my favorite details of their wedding (other than the Mariachi Band) was the Zombie inspired grooms cake and cake topper. Just wait until you hear how much detail Araceli shares about the Zombie details (since it’s a part of their every day interests). I am probably biased on this though because my husband and I just recently got sucked into the Walking Dead, so talk of crossbows & machetes actually make perfect sense to me :) Enjoy!

Andrew & Araceli’s Offbeat, Intimate Mexican-Inspired Virginia Wedding at the Airlie Center

Andrew is in Federal Law Enforcement and was transferred to Los Angeles from DC. He originally was told he was going to be assigned to LA for 3 years but it turned out to be an 8 year commitment. Which was great because I met him! I was born and raised in LA. Andrew and I met on OkCupid! and I found only 1 thing interesting about his profile, the fact that he liked Tenacious D. He liked that I worked with kids, at that time I was mental health therapist, providing family therapy to children and their families.

On our first date we had planned to get together for coffee in Long Beach, CA and it ended up turning into an 8hr date because we hit it off so well. After dating and moving in together, Andrew received notice that he was being scheduled to transfer to DC, so he invited me to come along, and I did.

Their engagement:

We were engaged in August of 2012, Andrew asked for my parents blessing… in Spanish for my parents benefit! And proposed to me later that night. We had a 1yr and 3month engagement due to Andrew being on a work established leave restriction.

Click inside for the rest of this awesome intimate, Mexican-inspired Virginia wedding from Amber Reinink Photography.

The wedding details:

For our wedding, we knew we wanted to host a weekend wedding because all of our guests would be traveling from other states. Our wedding planner gave us several options, but we fell in love with Airlie in Warrenton, VA. Airlie was full of charm, good food and lots of nature! They have gorgeous landscaping and were able to host our rehearsal dinner, wedding ceremony and reception all at Airlie. All of our guests were also able to stay on site, which was perfect!

Andrew and I decided on the color scheme early on- black, white & kelly green. We chose the black and white because they are classic and figured our wedding party could save some money, because everybody has a black suit or a black dress. The green we chose to add as a pop of color. The black lace that was incorporated throughout, was our wedding planner Tabitha’s idea, and made everything softer and gave the wedding a vintage feel.

Andrew’s niece and nephew were the ring bearer and “flower girl”. Also Andrew’s uncle officiated our ceremony, giving it that extra special touch.

We incorporated the lasso ceremony during our ceremony as they are traditional in Mexican-Catholic weddings, anytime I thought of a wedding I thought of the lasso.

We definitely wanted to have fun at our wedding, so we hired an amazing musician for the ceremony and reception, Timmie Metz and had a Mariachi during cocktail hour. The vintage-Mexican details were added because of my heritage, and since we were having a mariachi, why not incorporate Mexican touches, including the papel picado.

Andrew and I both have this weird zombie apocalypse preparedness obsession. We enjoy playing zombie video games, love the Walking Dead, and we have read several zombie apocalypse preparedness books. I thought it would be a great surprise to give him a groom’s cake, and found the perfect cake toppers, through Garden Ninja Studios.

I have seen other couples fashion toppers as zombies themselves, symbolizing that they would be together forever, even as zombies. But that is not our style, we have this agreement that if either one of us became a zombie, we would shoot the other in the head. I know its not very romantic. I even got him a crossbow for Christmas one year. So I ordered a wedding cake topper to look like Andrew and myself on our wedding fighting of zombie wedding guests. He was holding a crossbow (because its light and quiet) and I was holding a machete (because you don’t have to reload it!).

And now for the elegant, black lace wedding cake!

 We had a really hard time deciding on favors, but we figured edible was the way to go! So my bridesmaid, Andrew and a mutual friend helped us make batches and batches of Mexican wedding cookies and biscochitos 2 days before the wedding. It was a fun experience and made the favors even more special!

We kept hearing throughout the wedding process that we were not wedding people, and I think that is pretty accurate. There were things we didn’t want at all- no veil, no bouquet toss, no garter toss, no hours wasted on cheesy posed pictures. We wanted to remember being there with our guests and we wanted to be there to experience all the awesome aspects of our wedding…mostly the cocktail our and Marachi.

Congratulations Andrew & Araceli! Thank you so much for sharing your awesome Mexican-inspired, intimate Airlie Center wedding with us! A truly personalized Virginia wedding feature. A special thanks again to Amber Reinink Photography & Two Bright Lights for the submission.