Colva & Jake’s Intimate, Rad Northern Virginia Wedding at Liberty Tavern

Images: Chris Ferenzi Photography

I thought I would be able to finally start running again yesterday, but this cold is STILL hanging around and between the tundra temps & WIND, it just didn’t happen. But I haven’t run in a WEEK now and I need to run 10 miles in a 3 weeks, so it HAS to happen today. So please send me all the motivation you can spare. For today though, we have an ADORABLE intimate wedding that has so many pops of fun, and the most chill engagement story ever. Plus I am in love with the bride’s ink (of course) & the bright colors for the reception. Take it away!

We met on OkCupid, in Spring 2012. We pretty immediately realized that we both worked at Georgetown and lived within a mile of each other. We’ve known each other since April 2012, were together from about May 2013, and really together from March 2014. It happened in stages.

Jake proposed. We were at Chipotle on M St having lunch and discussing the impending nuptials of two of our very good friends. I articulated that I thought it was a good idea for them to get married, as they met all the criteria I find reasonable for determining if a relationship works. Jake asked me what I thought those things were: That the people are adults, not nearly adults, or freshly adults. That they have faced some challenges together, and overcame those. They have lived together and shared a limited space. They have met each others friends and families.

Jake then said that based on these criteria we should get married. He initially wanted to do it that weekend, but I intervened and expressed that what he was really thinking about was engagement.

We then went to Forever21 on M St and bought a pack of 9 fashion rings for $5, and then walked back to campus where Jake got down on one knee in front of the statue of John Carroll (the founder of Georgetown) and asked me to marry him. Students and tour groups cheered, and I’m sure it looked very well planned to everyone who saw it.

We chose the Liberty Tavern in Clarendon for our wedding venue because it wasn’t a whole wedding, it was a reception, and really just a party that followed a wedding in a lawyer’s office in Courthouse the day before. When we were first engaged Jake expressed that his one request was that the wedding itself be nothing more than the ceremony required by the Commonwealth of Virginia and performed by a lawyer and not religious or ceremonial. Further, he only wanted family to be present.

On the flip side, my biggest wish for a wedding was to have lots of flowers, finger food, cake, and get to wear a really fun dress, so we settled on the civil wedding – restaurant cocktail party set up. I immediately thought of Liberty Tavern because it hit the right tone, tasteful but casual and I’d always really liked the food there, additionally, it’s less than a mile from where Jake and I met, live, and had our first date, it’s a staple of North Arlington and a familiar place. It was the first place I visited and because of how enthusiastic the staff were about a wedding, and how wildly accommodating they were to my ideas and schemes, it was an immediate perfect fit.

The other vendors for the wedding grew out of the first choice, the bakery LeoNora Gourmet Bakery and the florist, Galleria Florist are part of a family of businesses with Liberty Tavern, this made coordinating desserts, cake, and flowers very easy. It meant that everything was where it needed to be, and I didn’t have to think about any of that.

The idea was really to take all the bits people like about weddings (the food, the dancing, the free drinks) and make that the part people got to experience, and take all the things that are a bit exhausting (ceremonies, speeches, a long mass) and put those things aside. I plan events as part of my job at Georgetown, and so the idea of being able to create an event to my specifications with a great team of professionals who were excited to work on it was really fun. Also being in Virginia in August, there was just no way for it to be very formal, so people were encourages to wear whatever they want, be comfortable, and have fun.

We kept everything bright and playful and did our very best to work with local companies, all the beers we chose were from local breweries! This also let me do a lot myself, particularly when it came to conceiving what the evening would feel like, just like a really good party!