Reem Acra's new collection featured romantic and whimsical gowns like this one—see them all (and meet the designer) at Unveiled! Photograph courtesy of Reem Acra

If you got a little something extra with your turkey over Thanksgiving weekend (we’re talking about an engagement ring, not a third helping of sweet potatoes), congrats! We totally understand that you probably want to just enjoy being engaged for a while and not start your wedding planning until after the holidays—so that’s why we’ve scheduled our Washingtonian Bride & Groom Unveiled wedding showcase for January 22, 2012, from 11:30 AM to 3:30 PM. And we really hope you’ll be there.

We’re so excited about this year’s event. First of all, it’s being held at the Mandarin Oriental in DC, a great wedding venue in its own right. You’ll be able to meet with the area’s best wedding florists, caterers, planners, makeup artists, hair stylists, photographers, and other super-talented vendors (we'll have a full list for you soon!)—it’s truly a one-stop shop for wedding planning (check out these videos from last year’s showcase to see what we’re talking about).

You can catch a runway show featuring the latest gowns from Reem Acra (yup, the Reem Acra who has created wedding gowns for the likes of LeAnn Rimes, Marcia Cross, and Jennie Garth)—and the designer herself will be making an appearance.

And (bonus!), there will also be Champagne, cocktails, cake tastings, and giveaways.

Sounds pretty amazing, right? Here’s where it gets even better: The first 75 people to buy tickets will be entered to win an invitation for two to the exclusive Rehearsal Dinner party. So click here to buy your tickets, and we’ll see you at Unveiled!

Graphic designer Eden E. Denevan started creating wedding stationery for her own nuptials in May 2008. After she was laid off in 2009, she started her own corporate design firm and created her own Etsy shop, Eden Wedding Studio, to sell some wedding invitations on the side.

“My invitations really took off and while I still do some corporate graphic design, most of my business is now wedding-related,” Denevan says.

Her Etsy shop features a variety of wedding-related paper goods from invitations to bridal shower recipe cards to “guestbook alternative cards” (guests write well-wishes on the cards for the couple to view on their first anniversary).

Aaron Cohen met Miriam Schneider on a blind date at a New York City restaurant in the spring of 2006. Earlier that day, Aaron’s grandmother had passed away, but he chose to keep the date. “She had been sick for a long time, and my family knew it was coming,” says Aaron, 30, a television sports writer and producer. “But we had the dinner scheduled, and the last thing—literally—my grandmother had said to me was to go find a nice Jewish girl and get married. So I figured it wouldn’t be right to cancel.”

His grandmother might have had a premonition, because less than three years of dating later, Aaron was ready to pop the question to Miriam, 30, an attorney. “We had been talking about marriage, so I needed to find a way to catch her off guard,” he says. So he told her that a last-minute work event had come up—a cocktail party—and she should come.

Jodie Song and Rafal Tokicz’s love story began on a kickball field near the Washington Monument. In October 2006, they found themselves placed on the same team but didn’t get to know one another until Jodie accidentally left her T-shirt behind after one of the games.

As the team was walking to a bar for some after-game drinks, Jodie, 28, an IT analyst, realized she’d forgotten her shirt but decided she was too far away to go back for it. Just then, she saw her teammate Rafal holding an extra white shirt. “I figured it was someone’s from our team,” says Rafal, 28, a private trainer, “and because a few of us were going to the bar, I was going to ask the teammates there if it belonged to any of them.”

So Jodie approached Rafal to tell him it was probably hers. “After the initial conversation about the shirt,” she says, “I asked him if he was headed to the bar because I hadn’t seen him there after our games.” Rafal said he was going, and the two headed on to the bar with the rest of the team.

Julie Wean and Jeffrey Partridge love to travel. The book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die is a favorite at their Mount Airy home—one by one, they’re checking locations off the list.

In January 2008, they were on a cruise to the Caribbean, a yearly tradition with friends. After they’d been dating for almost two years, the thought crossed Julie’s mind that Jeffrey, better known to his friends as Opie, might propose. Despite a 13-year age difference, the pair, who met when Julie’s sister married Opie’s best friend, had hit it off right from the start.

But after formal night on the ship came and went with no proposal, Julie, 24, a contract specialist with the Naval Medical Logistics Command, assumed she was wrong. So when they were docked a few days later in St. Lucia, she was suspecting nothing. Julie and Opie, 37, a Maryland state trooper, spent the morning ziplining through the rain forest with their friends. Later on in the day, the group decided to hike up the side of a mountain to a scenic overlook where the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea collide.

Tiffany Richards arrived at the library at Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law at 4 AM on her first day of class. In order to reserve a study carrel for the semester, students had to be there at 6 AM to put their names on the list. Tiffany had picked out her spot the night before, and when she arrived at her carrel, Mike Kudravetz was sitting at the one next door.

“He kept looking over at me, and finally I introduced myself,” says Tiffany, 28. “He had a girlfriend, and I wasn’t looking for anyone, but I didn’t have any friends, so it was nice to meet someone.” Tiffany left some Jolly Ranchers on her desk and a Post-It note for Mike telling him to help himself to the candy. He left a note back: “Good call on the Jolly Ranchers.”

Tiffany and Mike, 29, said hi to each other as they passed on campus over the next two years. The summer between their second and third years of law school, Mike bumped into Tiffany as she was moving things into storage and offered to help. After the semester began again, Tiffany and Mike started seeing each other almost everywhere. “I’d be walking to the YMCA to teach swim lessons and he’d be on a random street,” Tiffany says. “I’d go down a stairwell that nobody ever used, and he’d be there. He was literally everywhere!” Tiffany felt a connection between them, but Mike hadn’t made a move. “As I was getting up the nerve to ask her out, she e-mailed me to ask if I would like to go out sometime,” Mike says. “I called her and made the date.”

When Katie Carr and Chris Payne arrived at a mutual friend’s house to watch a football game on a September day in 2006, he knew they were being set up. She didn’t. “Hence the lack of makeup and shower,” says Katie, 28, a public-relations consultant. “I thought Chris was cute, and I was especially drawn to his blue eyes and witty banter. But I had no idea he was single and didn’t know he was interested in me until he invited himself out to dinner with my friends and me.”

Well Chris was interested, and he was completely hooked after Katie gave the waiter her dinner order: red meat. “Not a vegetarian—awesome!” thought Chris, 29, a graphic designer. “Is that steak she ordered medium-rare? Wow.” He didn’t ask for her number that night, but he did successfully stalk her on the Internet, Katie says, finding her e-mail address and contacting her the next day.

Fast-forward two years of dating bliss, and Chris wanted to make sure this one didn’t slip away: “I spent a lot of money on a handmade ring, slept with it under my pillow the night I got it, and bit my nails the entire next morning. I couldn’t wait to get the proposal over with and start celebrating.”