Teresa and Jack Berlin threw the kind of wedding that reads like a private estate deciding to throw open its doors for one night only. There were monogrammed matchbooks in guests’ pockets, fig trees standing in for centerpieces, and a bar with custom signage reading Bar Berlin pouring French 75s and Negronis. Capturing all of it was Daria Mustiatsa, who came to photography from architecture and design, which is why she could read a room built by a landscape architect and shoot it like a fashion story instead of a checklist.
Location: Greenville, Delaware, United States
Style: Curated, Ethereal, Vintage
Time of planning: 14 months
Number of guests: 200
Setting: Gothic Church and Historic Estate
Season: Fall
Teresa is a landscape architect and Jack is a physician, and it did not take them long to work out where things were heading. After only a few months of dating, much of it spent getting courted all over the Brandywine Valley, they both landed on the same conclusion that this was the soulmate kind of situation. They also knew they wanted scale. Teresa comes from a massive family and Jack has a long list of friends, so a quiet ceremony was never the plan, and they set out to throw a party of the century that, by their own account, they pulled off.
The proposal happened on July 11th, 2024, at a lake in their neighborhood. Jack had cooked dinner after a long work day, and the two of them headed out for a walk as the light started to drop. Teresa stepped onto the dock and turned around to find Jack already down on one knee, holding a ring, with the sunset handling the lighting for him.
Bride's Morning & Fashion
Teresa got married in the Danielle, the gown Jenny Yoo designed with bridal stylist Hope LaVine. It is cut in lightweight Italian taffeta with a fully corseted bodice, a high peaked neckline, and a big gathered ball skirt sitting on a Basque waist. The gown ships with a bow sash, and Teresa skipped the belt entirely.
On her feet she wore Dior J’adior slingbacks in the burgundy Toile de Jouy tiger print, which quietly rhymes with the deep reds running through the flowers. For the reception she switched into a second version of the same dress, bustled at the front to let some leg through and pinned up with fabric roses cut from her mom and grandma’s wedding dresses.
Her veil was a mantilla her mom made from a fabric Teresa fell for, built to flow and sit like part of her hair rather than a stiff tulle structure clipped on top. Tatsiana Baum of Made Beauty handled hair and makeup, and the brief was specific. Teresa works on her skin and stays away from heavy foundation, so the look ran bright and lifted with the skin reading as skin.
The jewelry carried the most story. Her engagement ring and wedding band were custom made by a local jeweler and metalworker who is a friend of Jack’s, and the rest of what she wore belonged to her Grandma Kay, including a necklace that was the last gift her papa gave her grandma before he passed.
Teresa is a silver person down to the rings stacked on her hands every day, so she carried a handmade silver bag from India, then loaded on all of her bangles and the full stack for her second look. The paper had a personal hand too, since Teresa oil painted both the estate and St. Agnes herself, and those paintings became the save the dates, the menus, and the invitations that landed in guests’ mailboxes.
Groom’s Fashion
Jack kept it simple and committed. He could not picture getting married in anything other than a classic pointed black tuxedo, so that is what he wore, finished with a black silk bow tie and velvet slippers in place of standard formal shoes.
Photographed with his groomsmen on a navy velvet sofa in the estate’s green library, the group lands somewhere between a members club portrait and a tailoring campaign.
First Look
Before the church, Teresa and Jack did their first look inside the estate, and the staging is half of why it works. Teresa came down the main staircase under the chandelier while Jack waited in the green paneled library, the same room where his groomsmen had just been photographed on the navy velvet sofa.
Ceremony
The ceremony was at St. Agnes in West Chester, which is a real piece of Brandywine Valley history rather than a generic pretty church. The parish dates back to 1793 and was founded by Stephen Moylan, a figure from the American Revolutionary War, and it still stands as the oldest Catholic church in the borough.
Inside, the thing everyone clocks is the timber. Massive wood beams run the length of the nave, the kind of structural drama that pushed Teresa to compare the space to a great hall out of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. The stained glass holds up its end too, since the windows came from Paula Himmelsbach Balano, a designer known in her field as the first lady of stained glass, and the late afternoon light coming through that glass is doing a lot of the work in Daria’s frames.
The stone, the oak, and the colored light all slot straight into the curated vintage direction the couple ran everywhere else, because a church with more than two centuries of history behind it is the ultimate version of a place that looks like it has always been there. The mass itself stayed formal and traditional with no shortcuts, which suited a room this serious and matched the way the couple treated every other part of the day with intent.
Moments Together
Once the formal parts wrapped, the day loosened up fast. Cocktail hour ran at golden hour, scored by classical Spanish guitar from a player named Victor, which kept the volume low and warm before the night picked up. Teresa and Jack hosted their own cocktail hour, which is the tell that they wanted to be in the room with their people rather than off somewhere ticking through a shot list.
The first dance happened on a wood floor laid out on the lawn, with guests packed into a ring around them and string lights strung through the trees overhead. From there the night turned into the loud, happy version of itself, and the frames are full of big laughs, champagne in hand, and people doubled over at the toasts.
The speeches delivered the moment Teresa keeps coming back to. During the toasts she stopped to thank her mom and dedicate her bouquet to her, the last of six kids to get married and a mom who, in Teresa’s telling, had earned every second of that attention. The favors leaned personal in the same way the rest of the day did, with guests heading home holding silver trinkets and custom designed matchbooks, the kind of small thing that makes a night feel built rather than booked.
Reception
Dinner happened at Brantwyn, the old du Pont estate in the Brandywine Valley, and Teresa planned it the way she plans her landscape projects. She walked the grounds a full year out, in the same September week as the wedding, and clocked which plants were doing something. The oak leaf hydrangea won, since its leaves turn a rustic burgundy in fall and its plumes shift through shades of red, and that single plant set the entire color story.
Working with Kelly Piccioni of Events by Kelly’s Florist, she built arrangements that read antiqued, minimal, and monochromatic, using locally grown and native species in large vessels on every dining table, plus waterfall arrangements anchoring the grazing table and the gift table in the conservatory. Kelly works strictly with locally grown stems and low to no waste methods, which fit the brief of decor that looks like it had always lived in the house. The bouquet followed the same logic, a minimal linear piece built around hellebore, Teresa’s favorite flower.
The structure of the night came from a Wes Anderson kind of logic, eclectic but controlled, which is where the stripes turned up on the napkins, the signage, and the tablecloths. The layout they landed on was one the venue had never run before, mapped across color coded floor plans that the Champagne Magnolias team used to run the day.
Brantwyn has several separate dining rooms, and that is exactly why Teresa picked it over a single tent, since splitting guests across rooms made dinner feel like a run of intimate parties instead of one big hall. She and Jack sat at the center of a long family table rather than a sweetheart table, because they eat dinner together every night and wanted to actually be in the conversation.
The bar was built to hotel lobby scale under custom signage reading Bar Berlin, with soft lighting on the two signature pours, a French 75 and a Negroni. There were three cakes, two of them classic vintage piped cream in the heavy Lambeth scrollwork that is everywhere right now, and one modern single layer topped with figs and berries glazed in place.
The dance hour ran on a playlist Teresa and Jack built themselves, a stack of nineties and early 2000s house and dance records that kept the floor full, with Silver Sound DJs keeping it moving. The moment Teresa names as the one that stuck came during speeches, when she thanked her mom and dedicated her bouquet to her, the last of six kids to get married and a mother who, in Teresa’s words, earned every bit of that spotlight.
Advice from the couple:
• Try not to sweat the little stuff because the majority of your guests won’t even notice!
• Be selective with your photographer, it’s the photos and videos that last forever! I couldn’t have selected a better team!
• Take a moment alone away from the party to be with your person. It goes by so fast.
PHOTOGRAPHY & VIDEO Daria Mustiatsa | ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHY Daria M Photography | PLANNING & COORDINATION Champagne Magnolias Events, Meg | VENUE DuPont Country Club & Brantwyn Estate | FLORALS Events by Kelly’s Florist | HAIR & MAKEUP Made Beauty | CONTENT The Bride Feed | DJ Silver Sound DJs
