Lauren and Ian Brown didn’t have much time to plan their wedding – Ian popped the question outside the rose garden in Old City, Philadelphia on a day in late August 2015. After nine years of dating, the couple knew they didn’t want to wait much longer.
“Ian wanted to get married that spring,” Lauren, a Mount Laurel native, explains. “We spoke to The Mansion on Main Street, and they still had some May dates available.”
They picked a date and started planning in October. Planning a wedding in eight months was stressful, Lauren says, but the couple had a lot of help from parents and friends.
“We wanted a traditional wedding, nothing crazy,” Lauren says. They were married at Trinity Episcopal Church in Moorestown, and the reception was held in The Mansion’s Versailles Room. Lauren chose blue and silver as her colors, so she carried a bouquet of white hydrangeas, calla lilies and lisianthus, with bold blue flowers to accent the white. The Mansion included what she calls “Cookie Monster blue” up lighting for the party.
“It was very elegant – so many people came up saying it was one of the most beautiful weddings they had been to,” she says.
The guests – 225 of them – dined on salmon with teriyaki sauce, walnut and almond crusted chicken and Chateau Briand. Then the dance floor opened up – and though neither Ian nor Lauren call themselves big dancers, they enjoyed themselves in their first dance, swaying to “Sensuality Parts 1 & 2” by the Iseley Brothers.
“Ian doesn’t like a lot of attention on himself, but he did it for me,” Lauren says. “I love him and appreciate him for that.”
Though the low-key couple didn’t have much time to plan the wedding, they managed to sneak in a couple of meaningful details.
“Ian really wanted a Tudor Rose – the symbol of the Tudor House of England – for his lapel,” Lauren says. “It’s a white rose inside of a red rose, and our florist was able to make one for him.”
Lauren’s personal detail was a bit more out of the galaxy.
“I’m a huge ‘Star Wars’ fan,” she says. “So my bridesmaids came out with light-up lightsabers for their grand entrance, to DJ Khaled’s ‘All I Do Is Win.’”
“It was a blast,” she continues. “I went back to the bridal suite for a minute during the reception, and I had a moment to myself for the first time since that morning, and I had a moment to take it all in. I could hear the music in the background, so I knew everyone was still dancing and eating and having a good time. I just thought, ‘Wow, everything was perfect.’”
