The Centerpieces at This Halloween Wedding Featured Real Bugs and Butterflies

A year and a half after they discovered each other on Hinge, Jason, a nonprofit development coordinator, proposed to Sunitee, a video producer, in a hammock under the stars during a trip with Sunitee’s family to Grand Cayman.

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Over a Halloween weekend, they wed in a “moody, romantic, gothic fairytale” affair at Bethesda North Marriott Hotel. At the multicultural ceremony, dramatic purple draping and jewel tones set off the brass chuppah/mandap. The Victorian-themed cocktail hour featured candelabras and otherworldly decor, plus a showstopping escort display with larger-­than-life gilt portraits of their pets and stylized skulls, bones, and bugs offset by laser-cut, calligraphed butterflies that directed guests to their seats. Black-­velvet drapes transformed the hotel ballroom, a neon til death sign identified the sweetheart table, and seven “creepy yet beautiful” trees, says their planner, created a vampire-inspired forest punctuated by a massive tree overhanging the four-sided black bar. Real butterflies and other bug specimens were integrated into the centerpieces. Before the big day, the couple got matching tattoos of a death’s-head hawkmoth, and guests took home shot glasses etched with the same design.

The Details

This wedding originally appeared in the June 2022 issue of Washingtonian.

Amy Moeller

Fashion & Weddings Editor

Amy leads Washingtonian Weddings and writes Style Setters for Washingtonian. Prior to joining Washingtonian in March 2016, she was the editor of Capitol File magazine in DC and before that, editor of What’s Up? Weddings in Annapolis.