Amanda and James got married on June 10th, 2023 at The Seclusion in Lexington, VA! They have been together for 8 years and met in college at Washington and Lee University, also in Lexington. They even lived down the hall from each other there!
When I asked Amanda how he popped the question, she said,
“He timed it perfectly to be his over a girl's weekend (a couple of my college girlfriends were visiting us in Morehead). Because they were in town, I had a whole itinerary planned, including a sunset cruise on James’s family’s boat. Since the boat ride had been my idea, I wasn’t at all suspicious until we were heading back to the dock and James, who was driving, asked our other friend to take over for a sec. At that moment I was 90% sure it was about to happen but I was trying to act cool in case it didn’t. One of our friend's sons, who was just about to turn one, was holding himself up on the cooler, learning to stand. James said ‘Hey Charlie, can you grab the champagne out of the cooler? But we can only open it if she says yes’!
Amanda would describe her wedding as rustic and romantic. Their two-year-old black lab, Grady, was involved in the wedding too – he was on their napkins and a bunch of their props for the reception!
They had the Silver Bullets as their entertainment for the night, and as always, they absolutely killed it! Another fun detail they had were some tambourines and fun light-up sunglasses from Pumpkin Seeds in Lexington. Amanda never took them off!
They had the partial planning package from us, so we worked with them for a while on their big day. When we asked Amanda what was most important to them when planning their wedding, she said,
“Hiring vendors who I could totally trust and who knew the venue well was key to being stress-free on the wedding day!”
Amanda’s advice for couples planning their wedding would be,
“Hire vendors you can trust. And to the extent possible, vendors that have worked with your other vendors and at your venue. That really helped ease my anxiety because I trusted people would pretty much know what motions to go through, etc”.
She says the best part of their wedding day was, “eating dinner with James at the sweetheart table. It was the first time that day we got to totally relax together and talk. I was indifferent before the wedding on sweetheart vs large head table, and I’m glad we went with sweetheart!! Also, the dancing portion of the night- again, silver bullets were amazing!”
Venue: The Seclusion
“Since we met each other and so many of our friends in college at W&L, we really wanted to do it in Lexington, Va. We decided to do a rehearsal on campus but wanted a bit more of a scenic option for the actual wedding. I stumbled upon the Seclusion from researching venues around Lexington online (this was in 2019, years before we got engaged haha) and fell in love with it. Once we got engaged, I looked at a couple of other venues in the area but liked how so many things were included with the package (tables, chairs, flatware, etc), how beautiful it is inside, and the views are hard to beat!”
Amanda dress:
“Little White Dress in Denver Colorado (where my mom and sister live). We went just to look over Thanksgiving because my sister was about five months pregnant and wasn’t going to be able to travel to the east coast later that spring to look. I ended up falling in love with the second dress I tried on which I was lucky that they just happened to have on loan. The designer is Savin London (possibly rebranded to House of Savin now).”
James’ tux: local place in Morehead
Bridesmaids dresses: Anthropologies BHLDN
Merch: Grady cups (their dog) and coozies were from “Sip Sip Hooray”!
Invitations: Minted
Amanda and James were such a wonderful couple and had an awesome group! We wish them a long and happy marriage and we were so glad we got to help them make their dream a reality!
