Today – we start the week of where you normally start your wedding planning process – THE VENUE!

Looking for an eco-friendly wedding venue can be difficult in the DC area or very easy – depending on what you are looking for. Since the majority of the beautiful mansions in the DC area are historic – you are typically paying to rent a facility that is also used for outreach programs to the local community or for the upkeep of the museum it may hold.  For example – Dumbarton House and Decatur House both are historical landmarks in Washington, DC and both have museums that they run.  Both are beautiful locations with different aspects. (Above is a photo at Dumbarton House taken by Documentary Associates).

We love doing weddings at the Ronald Reagan Building as the chef is dedicated to sourcing environmentally friendly and locally sourced food.  In fact, he took Blue Fin Tuna off the menu as he signed a petition to conserve this dwindling family of fish.

Another wonderful location for an eco-friendly wedding is the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Annapolis.  You can have your ceremony on their beach with the reception inside their LEED certified building.  Even comes with a tent for the outdoor patio for dancing!  Lots of wonderful locations to take photos and part of your proceeds go to help keep the bay clean!

The Arts Club of Washington is another one of our favorites!  (I got married there!)  A non-profit that also does catering in-house.  It supports the local arts community – an acutely dwindling breed of organizations that has stayed strong in James Monroe’s old residence!  This building is also a National Historic Property. (photo by Deb Lindsey)

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is a beautiful venue for your wedding.  A portion of the rental fee is tax-deductible.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art is another location that is on the National Registry of Historic Properties and houses one of the best art colleges in the DC area.

Constitution Hall’s Library and O’Byrne Gallery and Portico is a perfect Washington, DC setting. Run by the Daughters of American Revolution – their non-profit is service oriented and educational.  A non-profit along with being on the National Registry of Historic Properties.

The Warne Lounge at the Cosmos Club is one of the most unique and ornate rooms in all of Washington, DC.  It is about to undergo renovations, but if you are planning your wedding for 2012 and know a member at the club – call them immediately!  Totally one of the most unique and interesting venues and so few brides know about it.  Know anyone in the sciences?  They might know a member there!  We have a wedding there in May – stay tuned for those photos! (Also on the National Registry of Historic Properties).

Not into a fancy old building?  Why not something super new and LEED certified?  The Nationals Park offers a variety of fantastic and modern rooms to choose from to host your wedding.  Even if you are not a baseball fan – would you not love to have this fantastic bar at your wedding?  Their caterers use local resources and the view of the baseball field is not too shabby! (Photo by Amie Otto Photography)

Halycon House is another favorite among brides also found on the National Registry of Historical Properties.  Fair warning here that the property has been on the market for a while and none of us really know what will happen once the the building gets sold.

You’ve seen all the engagement shoots (like this one from Documentary Associates) around the Tidal Basin.  Why not have your actual ceremony there?  On the West Lawn of The Thomas Jefferson Memorial – you can have your wedding!  All you need is a permit.  You get a limited time frame to have it – so it can’t be anything super elaborate.  But where else would you ever have this opportunity to get married next to Thomas Jefferson??? It’s “free” as you pay taxes for it!

The Mayflower Hotel is one of the oldest and most ornate hotels in Washington DC. Also on the National Registry for Historic Properties, the venue is great for all of your out of town guests.  Even better still, you can do both your ceremony and reception in one building and your guests just have to go upstairs afterwards – no buses or shuttles needed!

The absolutely stunningly gorgeous Meridian House is run by the non-profit Washington International Center dedicated to strengthening international understanding through exchange of people, ideas and culture. (Photo by The Observatory)

The National Cathedral is one of the most ornate and glorious churches in Washington, DC  (also on the Registry)!  It’s incredible architecture mixed with its rich history really gives a great sense of grandeur.  (NOTE - The cathedral will perform weddings only when one of the following criteria is met: 1. The bride, groom, or immediate family has made, over a period of time, a noteworthy contribution as a donor or volunteer to the life and ministry of the cathedral; 2. The bride or groom is an alumnus of one of the cathedral schools (Beauvoir, National Cathedral School for Girls, or Saint Albans School for Boys) or is the child under 30 years of age of an alumnus; 3. The bride, groom, or immediate family member is a member of the staff of the cathedral for at least two years at the time of application.)

Josephine Butler Parks Center is possibly one of the most underrated wedding venues in DC Proper.  The Washington Parks and People runs the facility which is all about protecting parks, greening community projects in DC and community outreach in general.  A beautiful space at a reasonable rate.

Woodend Sanctuary has to be one of my favorite places to do weddings.  Nestled in Chevy Chase just of the beltway – it is the home of the Audubon Society and many educational and children’s camp opportunities for the community.  With an amazing grove and mansion with an attached tent – one of the best deals in the DC area as well. (Photo by Heather Z)

The Sewall-Belmont House is actually one of the 4 items in Congress’ “Save America’s Treasures” Program (along with the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Star Spangled Banner).  Again – underrated but a much loved property right on Capitol Hill has a wonderful yard with a tent out back.  This building was the headquarters for the National Woman’s Party where Alice Paul forged forth the woman’s suffrage movement.

This is by no means a definitive list of venues – but a great place to start for you.  There are tons of venues all over Virginia and in MD that I have not covered here (warranting another blog post in the future).

___________________________________________________

EARTH DAY CONTESTS TO BE AWARE OF TODAY:

Going to San Francisco this weekend (or want to plan a last minute getaway for the two of you)?  Then get to the Green Glam Go Facebook Page to learn how to win an Earth Day Weekend Getaway in San Francisco by clicking here and “Liking” Green Glam Go on Facebook!

Also – on the Eco-Beautiful Weddings Blog – we have a metal water bottle up for grabs – Click here to learn how to win!

Stay Tuned for more eco DC goodies all week!

We were very excited to see Ed and Erwin on the cover of Rainbow Wedding Network Magazine!  Ed and Erwin were the recipients of the 1st grant from Wish Upon A Wedding in Washington, DC.  We were happy to be a part of the wedding by providing flowers and supporting such a great organization and lovely couple!

Erwin is suffering from cancer and is currently back in chemotherapy.  We wish both of them all the best and pray for a quick recovery.  To see more details from their wedding and to read the article, click on the cover above.

I have finally found the time to showcase Janice and Anna’s wedding from Woodend from earlier this year at Woodend!

Janice and Anna chose matching bridal bouquets comprised of ranunculus, green cymbidium orchids and white lisinathus – perfect for their green and white toned wedding!

Janice and Anna had a book theme for their reception table numbers and each table had slightly different floral designs with pops of orange and pink tones to compliment the white and green colors from the ceremony! (Above white mums, orange gerbera daisies, burgundy mums with limes inside the vase – on the table with one of my favorite books of all time!).

Congrats to Janice + Anna!  To see more of their wedding, check out the more extensive blog post on Legally Wed DC.

photos by Barbara Salisbury

Our Anniversary Issue of Eco-Beautiful Weddings is live!  Click above to see the new issue!

We are pretty jazzed that Ed and Erwin’s wedding was featured on So You’re Engayged yesterday!

Their Wish Upon a Wedding wedding in Washington, DC was so special!  Click here for all the details!  Be sure to check out the flowers that we donated to this special couple!

Here is the final installment from Ed and Erwin’s wedding.  A big thank you to Laura Luis for her beautiful photography that she donated on this day.  Janice at Bellwether Events did such a great job in coordinating the day as well.  So many vendors came together to make this wonderful wedding happen!

Although the flowers were pretty simple for us for their wedding day – it was the way they wanted it.  Simple white flowers with a mix of purple and greens along the way.  We had white rose bouquets for the two female attendants and all the male lapels were made of white roses or these beautiful white spray roses.

Of course, we love doing weddings at Meridian House!   The natural beauty of the garden and the Linden trees along with the charming and elegant mansion!  We donated our manzanita branches with delicate orchid blooms for the escort card and buffet tables.

We loved being able to provide our lanterns for the Linden tree grove for Ed and Erwin – if only for this amazing photo for them!!!  We also provided simple purple stock cocktail table arrangements and white hydrangea centerpieces for the tables.

A wholehearted congratulations to Ed and Erwin!  Our staff are praying for you and your lives together!

Take a look at yesterday’s post to learn more about Ed and Erwin!

Here is another installment of Ed and Erwin’s wedding from earlier this month!   I just wanted to show you some of the fun details from this wedding in this post – stay tuned tomorrow for the floral designs and decor!  I adore the Wish Upon a Wedding handkerchief above!  If you did not get a chance to read all about Ed and Erwin’s wedding from earlier posts – Erwin is suffering from a terminal disease and Wish Upon a Wedding’s mission is to grant couples like Erwin and Ed a chance to wed in the middle of dealing with illness.  Click on the photo to learn more about the organization!

Of course, we adore Paloma’s Nest!  She makes the most incredible ring bearer bowls – which was perfect for Ed and Erwin’s two adopted children to use!

Take a look at the wonderful video from their wedding day and about their family below – be ready to cry!

Erwin and Ed Wedding Film from William Gaff on Vimeo.

Photos courtesy of Laura Luis

We love this photo from our 1st legal gay wedding in Washington, DC.  It was a proud moment for the staff at Elegance & Simplicity to be helping Matt and Paul for their wedding day.  Deb Lindsey captured the moments of the day perfectly.  Stay tuned for more photos from their wedding at the Arts Club of Washington!

Tomorrow we finally get to be part of history!  Our 1st legal gay wedding is tomorrow! We have done plenty of commitment ceremonies – but now that gay weddings are legal in Washington, DC – we have been brimming with excitement about Matt & Paul’s wedding. We have a couple more in the fall as well!

We are excited to showcase their engagement photos here today and on Legally Wed DC!

Stay tuned for their wedding photos!

Thanks to Deb Lindsey for providing these beautiful images – taken at Meridian Hills Park in DC!

Congrats Matt & Paul!

Cupcakes were handed out from Hello Cupcake and it was smooth sailing. This particular couple (Jim & Joseph) have waited 17 years to be married.  Truly a bittersweet day for couples.

Since our own Tara was in the DC Agenda and we have been running Legally Wed DC – we have gotten a lot of calls from people in the LGBT community about the excitement that is rising in DC!

We have elopement packages ready to go for couples that are wanting to fly in for the day to get married!  We hae spoken to the courthouse about how to make it as easy as possible.  We will be adding a new page to our  main website as we know several couples will want to fly in from around the United States to make it legal in Washington, DC and we are excited to be a part of it!

Congrats DC – This is YOUR day!

~Cheers!

Katie Martin

Katie – the owner of Elegance & Simplicity – plans to be at the courthouse tomorrow (the first day the law goes live) to just be part of this momentous occasion in DC’s history.  Whether you are an advocate of gay marriage or not, almost everyone in the DC area can agree that this will be a huge boost to the economy in the area and many wedding professionals are chomping at the bit to get a piece of the new pie.

Our  main concern at Elegance & Simplicity is not to make money off same-sex couples anymore than any of our heterosexual couples.  Yes – we are in business to make money like any other wedding professional…but we simply want to provide quality and consistent products and services.  Having spoken to a few out of town couples that wish to get married legally in DC – they are concerned with the waiting period and how it will affect couples coming in from other cities.  It is difficult to travel when you are getting married – but if you are getting married during the week at the courthouse (in a hurry) – it kinda takes the romance out of it! Then – how to deal with the waiting period and possibly not having to get married at the courthouse!

We have spoken to the DC courthouse and have been able to make it easier for our same-sex couples to have a simple elopement here in DC.  We want to to keep the romance in same-sex weddings in DC.  We want to make things easier while making sure love is honored in the process of eloping and getting legally married in DC.

We have developed three very distinctive elopement packages just for same-sex couples coming in from other states to take advantage of this law!  We are honored to have been educated by Bernadette Coveney Smith of 14 Stories to learn the ins and outs of elopements as she has been the leader in same-sex elopements in Boston and beyond!

We are also excited to let our readers know that Katie’s first book, The Everything Mother of the Bride Book, is the first-ever mother of the bride book to even mention anything about same-sex weddings.

We are excited about this new law going into effect and we hope that you can celebrate with us!

Cheers!

There are many blogs and major national websites for same-sex couples to get ideas for their weddings.  However – we run the only DC based blog on how to get married in DC for same-sex weddings.  Legally Wed DC is a blog with no pretenses other than to let same-sex couples know which vendors in the DC area are LGBT-friendly and to blog about them.  The blog will also only showcase DC area LGBT weddings along with giving important information.  Struggling to find the right vendors and knowing the proper channels and procedures should not be what your engagement is about.  While it is a newer blog which will be growing over the next year…it is the only DC based blog that has DC-only based vendors that have experience doing commitment weddings here in DC!  These vendors will come online and blog about the same-sex weddings that they have been a part of and we will start letting couples like you go online and blog about your experience here in DC.  We are excited about Wednesday and the law going into place!

Congratulations!

Come and get Legally Wed in DC!

]]> http://www.eleganceandsimplicity.com/blog/announcements/getting-legally-wed-in-dc/feed/ 0 http://www.eleganceandsimplicity.com/blog/announcements/2009-2010/ http://www.eleganceandsimplicity.com/blog/announcements/2009-2010/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:29:59 +0000 Katie Martin http://www.eleganceandsimplicity.com/blog/?p=1881 Hello everyone – long note here – but worth the read!  So get your glasses (whether reading or wine) and hunker down for this one!

A few of us here at Elegance & Simplicity, Inc. are off traveling for the holidays.  We hope to still bring you a few more posts before the end of the year though. Sorry for the lack of posts here over the past few days, we have been prepping for many new things for 2010 for you!  Including the relaunch of our website incorporating our wonderful new logo!

I am actually just about to get on a plane to Florida to meet the wonderful Lara Casey of Southern Weddings Magazine.  I hope to bring back a few copies of the magazine – so be sure to pick up a copy when you stop by the office!

Here is a list of some major things for you to know for 2010!

1st – My 1st book, The Everything Mother of the Bride Book, 2nd Edition (an Adams Media Publication), will be coming out in February or March.  If you have not done so yet, please click on the big ‘ole sidebar jpeg of the cover of my book to the right.  Let my mom and I know why you have the best mother-of-the-bride (or mother-in-law to be or grandmother) to win $250 to go towards your wedding!  I can’t wait for my 1st book to hit bookshelves!  It will be the only mother of the bride book to talk about eco-friendly weddings and same-sex weddings.  Truly current, especially for DC area weddings since same-sex weddings are about to go legal in DC!  It is also easier to read and more inclusive – hard to explain, but will make more sense when you pick up a copy!  I have already gotten some great reviews from those who have gotten a sneak peek!  Can’t wait to share!  My mom typically posts about mother of the bride or groom issues every Wednesday – so check back every week moms!

2nd – We hope to post more content about the wedding that was featured in the Washingtonian.  They really only allow two pages worth of photos in their magazine per real wedding and there are so many more wedding goodies from Kate’s wedding that I cannot wait to share with you!    We also have an amazing feature in the new Bride and Bloom Magazine!  I also can’t wait for you to see our new listing in the Grace Ormonde Magazine!  Yippee!

3rd – I am in the final stretch of finishing my second book – The Everything Wedding Book, 4th Edition, which is another Adams Media publication. That book is set to hit bookshelves at the end of  2010!  So, this will be the reason why I will be “off to write” offline for the remainder of the year.   Then in January and February I will finish my 3rd book Eco-Beautiful Weddings!

4th – I am excited to let you know that we will be launching a website all about same-sex weddings here in the DC area.  There is a huge buzz being created around the world (literally) about same-sex weddings going legal in DC.  We will be hand-picking wedding planners to cake vendors that are gay-friendly and reviewed and approved by the nation’s leading gay wedding planner: Bernadette Coveney Smith of 14 Stories in Boston.  It is an exciting time in DC!

5th – We have had a fantastic year filled with exciting new things!  With over 40 staff members (and growing) serving brides and grooms for wedding planning and floral designs, we cannot wait to show you the new eco-couture and fashion-forward designs we have to offer for weddings in the DC area. There simply is no other wedding planning or floral design firm in the DC area that has the know-how and the passion for creating multi-faceted, multi-cultural, stylish and eco-couture events.   We are the  wedding industry’s leader in eco-friendly wedding design with the launch of our new magazine Eco-Beautiful Weddings.

The website houses our online magazine and blog.  While I am the editor-in-chief and publisher of the magazine, I will be taking on a select amount of clients every year to focus on greening their weddings and events along with helping other wedding professionals become green (or greener).  We have an amazing team of wedding planners and floral designers led by Tara Davis (aka “Katie Part 2″) and Keya Beale.  Tara leads our team of 6 weddings planners on staff and Keya leads our floral design team!  All wedding planners on staff are trained in floral designs as well.

I will have more announcements for you in January!  We have 3 new projects in the works!

Our staff strives to provide only the best in Washington, DC weddings and Eco-Beautiful Wedding Style!

Stay Tuned!

Have a Happy Holiday!

Cheers!

Katie Martin