An Dreamy, Intentional Wedding Day at Lovingston Winery

Tell us about being intentional when deciding on your wedding outfits.

As we were planning our wedding, we really wanted our big day to tell the story of ‘us,’ and because of this, we were very intentional about the vendors we worked with including the salons we purchased our wedding outfits from.

We chose Church Street Bridal not only for its location but also because of its mission. All proceeds from Church Street Bridal go toward supporting victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, and knowing that our gowns not only made us feel beautiful but also supported some of the most vulnerable among us, made them all the more special.

Along with our gowns, Lauren had always dreamed of wearing a custom suit on her wedding day and was thrilled to work with The Tailory New York, a woman-owned, gender-inclusive bespoke clothing company. The team at The Tailory NYC believes that clothing is genderless and strives to create custom pieces that capture the essence of the men, women, and non-binary individuals they design for.

Both sets of outfits made us feel romantic yet powerful. Soft but striking. But most importantly, they made us feel like ourselves, and there’s nothing more we could have hoped for.

Tell us about your wedding day theme, light.

Keeping in line with the lantern festival proposal Lauren planned, we would say the theme for our wedding was light. The kind of light that makes you feel safe and warm because that’s what we are to each other. A warming light.

We walked each other down the aisle to the song ‘Golden Hour’ and said ‘I Do’ under a majestic oak tree just as the sun was sinking behind the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Our reception decor was minimal as we really wanted to emphasize the small flickers of candlelight around the room that seemed to hug our guests in a warm romantic glow. We asked our guests to dress in the warm colors of fall, and as we looked around the room at the faces of our favorite people, our hearts glowed as they filled with endless warm love.

Tell us about any DIY projects.

We designed our entire invitation suite as well as all wedding day signage on Canva, and it was smooth sailing until the night before our wedding when Dan attempted to make our mirror welcome sign.

1000 YouTube and TikTok tutorials, a few tears, lots of pleading with the Cricut machine, and a “the words aren’t THAT crooked. You can barely even tell!” from Lauren later, and our wedding sign came to be. Perfectly imperfect, just like us. Crooked words and all.

Along with our invitations and signage, we found other fun ways to add personal touches to our special day. Lauren spent many nights hand-pouring the candles we gave as gifts to the friends and family who spent the wedding weekend with us, and Dan spent hours creating individual inspiration Pinterest boards for our vendors and a special Guest Style Guide board with our desired fall color palate and outfit ideas for our guests.

With our relatively small budget, these DIY projects started as a way to help us save money but quickly became some of our favorite elements of our day!

Tell us about your wedding day.

When we think about our wedding day, words fail us. A true dream come true. We never take for granted how incredibly lucky we are to have been able to celebrate our love out loud and vowed to always honor this love we fought so hard to protect and nurture throughout the years.

We wouldn’t say that our wedding was untraditional per se, but we were very intentional about doing only what we felt honored our journey. We opted not to have a traditional bridal party stand beside us at the altar and instead spent the wedding weekend in the vineyard’s historic farmhouse with our closest friends who surrounded us with so much love and light all weekend.

Our brothers were our ring bearers, our sister and best friend our flower girls, some of our closest friends toasted us during the reception and even our bouquets were made by a dear friend.

We spent the night before our wedding together in the farmhouse’s primary suite and on the morning of our wedding while everyone else in the house slept, we quietly snuck away to watch the sunrise over the vineyard and have a quiet cup of coffee together, soaking up every last drop of that first light of day magic.

We spent the rest of the morning getting ready on opposite sides of the farmhouse and excitedly counted down the minutes until our reunion during our first look. Instead of being walked down the aisle and “given away” by our parents we instead opted to have Dan’s mom and Lauren’s Godfather walk us from the farmhouse to the aisle where we then walked each other down the aisle hand in hand.

All our guests along with our officiant, Marissa, Lauren’s cousin who she grew up with and has become like a sister to us both, cried with us as we exchanged vows and showered us with dried rose petals as we danced our way back up the aisle for the first time as Mrs. and Mrs. Moore-Lewis.

The rest of the evening was filled with good food, great wine courtesy of Lovingston, dancing, laughing, and more crying as we danced to Dan’s youngest sibling singing our first dance song. It was all such a powerful outpouring of love and support from our favorite people. So much of who we are, both individually and as a couple, is because of the village of friends and family who poured life into us over the years, and we could not have imagined a better way to celebrate our love than with them.