An “Old World”-Themed Wedding at Anderson House

Ben, vice president of enrollment at St. John’s College, and Dave, a partner at the advisory firm the Brunswick Group, met in DC in 2015. They hit it off on their first date, noting “immediate bicoastal differences” in their outfit selections: Ben, from Massachusetts, donning a sports coat, and Dave, from Washington state, in a henley. Four years later, Ben proposed to Dave at the intermission of a performance of King Lear at the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris.

For their New Years Eve wedding, the pair chose a “historic, old world” theme decorated in black, white, navy, and gold, and chock full of personal details: the invitation font and style mimicked that of Ben’s great-grandparents’ wedding invitations; menus included historical maps of each groom’s hometowns; coat check tickets were printed on brass tags and featured the couple’s wedding monogram (a “B” taken from the signature of one of Dave’s ancestors); a custom-written ceremony that they say “celebrated the long history of same-sex unions;” and centerpieces of moss and pinecones that paid homage to Dave’s Pacific Northwest roots.

Following the wedding, the newlyweds roadtripped from Milan, Italy, through Parma, Bologna, and Rimini to San Marino.

The Details

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.