From the Editor

Madoline with her sister-in-law and brother, the bride and groom

ON THE COVER

Conrad-Martin Wedding

Katherine Conrad and Martin Daugherty started dating when they were students at Hoover and Spain Park high schools, respectively, and married in September 2020. Photo by Eric & Jamie Photography Design by Kimberly Myers 22020 started off with a bang on Jan. 18 as I watched my brother’s bride process up to him at the altar of the Episcopal church where she’d grown up in Richmond, Virginia. A few hours later, the two of them— not usually ones for the spotlight—were up on the stage at their reception singing along to my brother’s favorite Tom Petty songs as the band rocked out behind them. In front of them danced a crowd clad in colorful hats, boas, sunglasses and balloons that my cousins and I had passed out to pump up the party ala a family tradition that began when one cousin married a Peruvian and introduced us to the Latin American “hora loca” (“crazy hour”). Two months later, the New York Times posted a set of readersubmitted videos of “powerful scenes from crowded places that feel almost unthinkable now.” Though I didn’t send one in, that dance floor would have been mine. Looking back at pictures, it’s so apparent that we had no concept of social distancing in our minds and no idea of what was to come. I didn’t know that by spring, I’d attend my cousin’s wedding ceremony on Zoom, putting on the dress I’d planned to wear (the first time I’d changed out of stretchy pants in who knows how long), pouring a glass of wine and opening my computer screen. I didn’t know that by summer bridesmaid duty would look like dropping off surprise gifts at the bride’s doorstep on wedding week and showing up to her parents’ house on wedding eve with a four-layer cookie cake I’d made. In the moments that followed I chatted on the back porch with their immediate family that made up all of the wedding guests, all of us in T-shirts and shorts. To the brides and grooms of pandemic-era 2020, your resilience astounds me. And while this wedding issue may, at first glance, look similar to ones we’ve published in years past, a closer look reveals its words and images are distinct to the pandemic year we’ll never forget. Dates were moved, guest lists were cut and unknowns were rampant. And yet, as the couples in this issue recount, after all the stress of changed plans, they were full of intimate, meaningful moments as they began their married lives together. Be sure to read all their accounts in the pages to come in this issue, along with our coverage of inclusion in the wedding dress industry, hair styles on trend, reader-submitted engagement stories and more wedding prettiness that will hopefully brighten cold winter days for you. Wishing you a warm and healthy start to 2021,