Real Weddings: Kyosha and Deric

In late summer 2006, Kyosha Johnson and Deric Canty were strangers attending freshman orientation at Howard University. They were both new to the area—she’d moved from Arizona and he from South Carolina—and though they met before school started, sparks didn’t fly right away.

However, by sophomore year, they’d joined the same professional fraternity and developed a close friendship, hanging out almost daily. By junior year they’d been on their first date (to Vapiano in Chinatown), and in May 2011, Deric proposed.

Last September, Kyosha entered a “Get Hitched in Georgetown” contest sponsored by the Georgetown Business Improvement District (BID) with 49 other brides-to-be, hoping to win a Georgetown wedding. The competition was made up of four rounds that tested luck, knowledge, and skill, and Kyosha emerged on top—thanks largely to a mind-blowing performance in round two, when she housed five cupcakes in 60 seconds. Her take on the toilet paper wedding dress was pretty fab, too.

As the lucky winner, Kyosha and Deric had some of the city’s best vendors helping with their big day, which took place on June 16. Still, says Kyosha, “we really stayed true to our personal styles.” The reception at Sequoia (which offered a $15,000 soiree for up to 100 of the couple’s nearest and dearest) was a fun-filled bash with lots of smiles and best wishes.

The couple, who live in Arlington, were married at the Georgetown Waterfront in a ceremony Kyosha calls “beautiful, with a nod to family traditions.” The groom, a government employee, and the bride, who works in retail and is a freelance fashion stylist, got the ultimate Georgetown wedding treatment: dress, tux, invitations, cake, decor, flowers, even a fab wedding suite at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Kyosha’s favorite details? Her own bouquet of peonies and calla lilies, the one-shoulder, mustard-yellow bridesmaid dresses, and her younger brothers’ dance floor takeover.