Sean Marvin and Caitlin Briere aren’t single-tracking through Washington anymore.
On Saturday, the couple celebrated their marriage at Alexandria’s River Farm with a Metro-themed party. Each guest received a name card that looked like a single-fare Metro ticket and said, for example, “Please deboard at McPherson Square.” Tables were marked with a life-size Metro sign that might as well have been plucked directly out of a local station: Huntington, King Street/Old Town, and Woodley Park/Zoo/Adams Morgan were all accounted for, among others.
“This makes us seem like we’re bigger public transportation nerds than we really are,” Marvin tells DCist/WAMU the Monday after the event. His wife chimes in: “We were just trying to make things easy for our guests and a little bit fun.”
The couple, who met on Bumble, have spent their entire relationship in D.C. Marvin, 40, grew up in the area, and Briere, 35, has been a Washingtonian for 13 years. They were officially married in September at a small, pandemic-safe ceremony. Perhaps fittingly, the big celebration – much like your average Red Line train – was later than they would have liked, delayed until it was safe for groups to gather again.
“Since we were bringing so many people in from out of town, we thought it would be cool to incorporate some local color,” Briere says. “We started talking about the different places that were significant to us and realized that we could use Metro stations as table identifiers.”
To help guests learn more about the couple, each table featured notes about their special connection to the station the table was representing. (They sourced all their Metro-themed items from Etsy.) Marvin and Briere had their first date at a bar near the Mount Vernon Square-Convention Center Station, for example, and got engaged near the Gallery Place-Chinatown Station. “And then we each had a station for where we work,” Marvin says – Capital South for him; Federal Triangle for Briere.
Also represented: Navy Yard, since the couple enjoys going to baseball games, and Braddock Road, which is their home Metro stop.
“People seemed to get a kick out of it, and we did some strategic seat assignments – there were a few people we could sit at station tables that were significant to them,” Briere says.
Wedding guest Tracy Hadden Loh, who’s on the board of directors at Greater Greater Washington and deeply interested in public transport, was surprised and delighted by the theme. “I had no idea it was going to be so amazing,” she tells DCist/WAMU. “One thing that’s really cool about Metro is that it’s something that we all share, but it’s also something that feels so personal to each of us because it connects us to all the places that matter to us. And what’s really cool is how Sean and Caitlin expressed that through their wedding.”
Loh – who was seated at the Federal Triangle table – posted a photo on Twitter. She figured the “five train nerds” she’s friends with would enjoy it. By the time she remembered to check her Twitter mentions the next day, “the train had already left the station,” she says, and more than 1,400 people had liked her tweet.
On Twitter, people were amused, impressed, and had plenty of questions:
Did the bride come down an incredibly long escalator???
— DRM (@travelgal239) July 25, 2021
https://twitter.com/cara__jackson/status/1419282913938579458
No stations – er, tables – caught on fire during the event, and nothing major went off the rails. But throughout the evening, some of the stations lived up to their stereotypes. “Navy Yard got a little rowdy,” Loh says. But there were no big service delays. “A lot of people were tweeting, hoping that people seated at Red Line stations got their food late. But I didn’t see any systemic Red Line issue at this occasion.”
At the end of the evening, wedding guests were given wands attached to red, orange, yellow, green, and blue ribbons that they waved, forming a tunnel for Marvin and Briere to pass through. “That was how we said goodbye to them and sent them off,” Loh says.
And, naturally in this ode to Washington transportation, there was some grade-A transport: A King Street trolley that said “Caitlin & Sean” on its front message board transported guests between the venue and their Old Town hotel.
Marvin and Briere recycled most of the Metro signs, but they’re displaying the Braddock Road sign in their apartment. Though they haven’t ridden the Metro together since becoming husband and wife, they suspect it night hold some extra sentimentality going forward. It is, after all, their tunnel of love.
