Andrea & Austin

“We met at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute, or what we call ‘Shakespeare Camp.’ It’s a month-long teaching intensive in Washington, D.C. for English teachers. We were both looking forward to spending a month in the city, and neither of us was looking to meet someone. I don’t think the National Endowment for the Humanities typically functions as a matchmaking service, but that’s how it happened for us! We spent that entire month together, and by the end, we knew that this was just the beginning. We were married exactly one year later – our first day married was the anniversary of our first date!

We had a six-month engagement, and I was incredibly nervous that we wouldn’t be able to find a venue that we actually liked and could also afford on such short notice, but as soon as I visited The Villa, I knew it was the perfect place for our wedding. First of all, Ashley was the only sales person I met with who asked for my budget before we even met, so I knew going in that it was affordable. Once that was out of the way, I had the freedom to fall in love with the venue. I loved all three spaces at The Villa, but we chose the Tent. The gardens, the pergola, the fire pit, the Tent itself – it could not have been a more perfect space for our June wedding. I was also excited to get married at The Villa because it is an actual wedding venue, and the people who work there are experts. They knew all the right questions to ask and thought of everything I didn’t. I felt like I could trust them with my wedding, and everything turned out more beautiful than I ever could have expected.

My favorite part of our wedding day was my father-daughter dance. We danced to ‘Believer’ from Shrek, and after my dad and I danced for the first part, my sisters jumped in, and then my mom, and then my husband – that kicked off the dance party and all of our guests joined in. It was the most fun way to start the evening!”