“Jess and I met in Brooklyn, New York, maybe a week after the Women’s March on Washington. We were both at an event at which we wrote hate-mail (basically) to the White House. We got engaged exactly a year later, and about four seconds later moved from Brooklyn to Bloomington, Indiana. From Bloomington, we began loosely planning our wedding, but we were distracted with other life events—namely another move. That’s right: At Christmastime, we moved again, this time to my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, which we’d mercifully settled on as the wedding venue. If it had been up to Jess alone, we would have eloped in Italy or something. But it was important to me that we had as many of our friends and families present as possible. We got married in the church down the street from the house where I grew up—one of I think four churches in the state that will marry same-sex couples under its roof.
We didn’t have any particular theme in mind, although a lot of little details made their way in that made the day feel like ours, and not generic: Jess insisted on Jordan almonds (an Italian wedding tradition) that her mother hand-packaged with little cards that described the meaning of the Jordan almonds. This ended up being one of my favorite details about the day. We had an Irish ring warming at the ceremony, an ice cream truck instead of a cake, and I wore a jumpsuit with pockets because I friggin love jumpsuits. We kept the color palette to green, because Madison in May is resplendent with all the plants coming to life, and I especially love how natural and clean this turned out in our photos!” —from Charlotte, one half of the couple
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Photographer: Ueda Photography
Event Venue: The University Club
Alaina Leary Lavoie
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