Lindsey Hawkins and Connor Ambrose
October 22, 2005

Lindsey Hawkins had just finished work, and her plans for the evening included babysitting for a couple who often counted on her help. But when she walked into their house, she knew instantly something was amiss.

Instead of toys strewn across the floor, she saw rose petals everywhere. There were no kids clamoring for her attention, but rather her boyfriend, Connor Ambrose, who stepped from the shadows and into the glow of the Christmas tree and asked her to marry him. She and Connor had been dating only five months, but some things are just meant to be.

Like their West Virginia wedding. They’d planned a spring 2006 wedding in Dallas, but circumstances conspired against them; the couple had to come up with plan B. When Lindsey’s parents took a late-summer vacation to The Greenbrier in West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains, a favorite of the Hawkins family, they discovered that the resort had an open date: October 22. Coincidentally, Dallas event designer Todd Fiscus had the same weekend free. After a whirlwind of preparations and just seven weeks later, the bride and groom said, “I do.”

Lindsey and Connor are the laid-back sort. They wanted the wedding to be polished but without pretense, focused on family and friends. “I didn’t want to be newly introduced to anyone that day,” Lindsey says. So the couple kept the guest list to about 100, and they gave Fiscus and his crew free reign to work their magic. The result was a sublime celebration of the season—and a whimsical yet sophisticated backdrop for their union.

The bride specified squares, simply because she “loves the look,” and colors: apple green, chocolate brown, and ivory. A leaf motif was an obvious, easy choice, and the mountain location lent itself to an event that was elegant and intimate.

Fiscus worked site unseen, relying on his creativity and his client’s flexibility to pull it all off. “We’d never done that before, but I just figured we’d work it out when we got there,” he says.

And work it out he did. From the hand-painted canvas runner down the aisle of the picture-perfect chapel to the gold-velvet banquettes at the reception, from the custom-built chandeliers and the leaf-shaped chargers on the tables to the drifts of fallen leaves around the reception tent, Fiscus and company carried a natural, seasonal palette throughout the affair. “Lindsey and Conner’s wedding was a chance to do pretty for pretty’s sake,” he says. “And it felt like a throwback to another time.”

In keeping with the design, both the b ride’s and groom’s cakes were boxy, tiered confections decorated with sugar leaves. All of the tables were square, and rather than numbered, they were named after trees, “so no guest felt less important,” Lindsey says. Centerpieces were understated bunches of green apples, cabbage roses, camellias, hydrangeas, and maple leaves freshly gathered from TheE Greenbriar grounds, all arranged in rough-hewn containers.

Every detail came together in the most delightful way, and long after dinner, guests danced into the night. I’ve never seen that many people have that much fun for so long,” Fiscus says.

Lindsey’s take on her wedding: “I’ve never seen anything so lovely or so perfect.”

From the Fall/Winter 2006 issue