Sarah and Matt chose to celebrate where their life already felt full — in the neighborhoods they call home. On a Friday afternoon in West Seattle, guests found their seats in the garden at the Hall at Fauntleroy as the couple walked in together, following both sets of parents. The bride carried flowers clipped straight from her mother’s garden, and the ceremony arch bloomed with sunflowers arranged by family hands. Their officiant — a close friend from Matt’s years playing in a punk band — read vows the couple had crafted collaboratively, keeping true to the way they build things in real life: side by side.
From there, everyone drifted into a courtyard cocktail hour where the mood shifted from ceremony to social experiment — in the best way. Guests were handed bingo cards designed to spark conversation, and they dove in quickly, comparing squares, trading stories and hunting down strangers with shared hobbies like it was a championship sport.
Inside the reception room, tables held driftwood and oyster shells collected over months, houseplants grown by friends and tiny toothpick platonic solids — a wink to the couple’s shared math background. Carpenter’s pencils engraved with their names sat at each place setting, clever and unfussy, the kind of favor that actually ends up in a junk drawer and gets used. When the DJ dropped “Message to Rudy” for the first dance, the night kicked up. Shoes came off, and a mosh-pit-meets-wedding-dance floor formed without hesitation.
