“Dear PoPville,
If you’re thinking about a local wedding or other special event, Petworth (and 16th Street Heights/Brightwood Park) has many gems. On September 28th, Moreland’s Tavern transformed into a festive, floral setting with an elegant dining room, delicious buffet, hopping dancefloor, featuring The Experience Band and Show, and tented outdoor patios for cocktails and jazz. The staff decorated to the nines with wisteria and candles, and the service was spectacular. Afterward, the dance party continued down the street at Neptune Room, a funky dive bar on Georgia Avenue. The wedding ceremony took place earlier in the evening in the intimate garden of Friends Meeting of Washington in Dupont, which has beautifully-lit indoor and outdoor spaces for photos. San Matteo, another Petworth hot-spot, served as the venue for the Friday welcome party, offering signature cocktails and a variety of tasty Italian dishes. All vendors were local, making the wedding easy to plan and low stress, and with neighborhood charm. Check out the vendor list (Rich & Clara Wedding Vendors PDF) if you would like inspiration and information for some terrific local venues and artists.
The couple, Clara Haskell Botstein and Rich Martinelli, met in DC and live in Petworth with their orange tabby cat Lyonel, featured in PoPville in March of 2020.
Wedding information:
Wedding date: September 28, 2024
Wedding ceremony: Friends Meeting of Washington in Dupont
Wedding party: Moreland’s Tavern at 14th and Colorado Ave, NW
Music: C Street Collective (classical), Mike Yehle Duo (jazz), The Experience Band and Show (funk, pop, R&B, jazz, go-go, and rock fusion)
Welcome party: San Matteo in Petworth
Vendor list (Rich & Clara Wedding Vendors): all local
Rich and Clara connected in fall 2022 through an online dating app (Hinge) in DC and shortly thereafter discovered their shared area codes. It turned out they were both from New York (Clara from Manhattan, Rich from Yonkers) and attended high school in the same neighborhood in New York City and exited from the same subway stop for years without meeting. Rich and Clara lived in New York and DC at different times during their adult lives and finally overlapped after the pandemic when they both fortuitously were single and fully settled in the District.
Clara serves as the Senior Director of Policy for the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education, volunteers on the board of the Petworth Main Street, and co-founded Petworth Porchfest, a neighborhood-wide music festival. Rich is Director of Public Policy at Diageo, the company that makes Guinness and Johnnie Walker. He went to The George Washington University for undergraduate and law school.”