BALTIMORE | 96 | WEDDINGS
OCTOBER 7, 2017 | PHOTOGRAPHS BY AMELIA JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHYLOCAL LOVEANTONELLA & MATTHEW
W
hen Antonella Petrilli’s mom remarried
and moved from Ecuador to Baltimore,
Antonella followed. She was 23 and doing her best
to love her new country but finding it hard. Still,
she had made some friends, and when she went
out with them, her path would often cross with
Matthew Beitman. “He would always flirt with me,”
says Antonella, but she was either dating someone
else or plotting her move back to Ecuador. One day,
Matthew told her, “You’ve been single long enough.
I want to take you on a date.” But Antonella had
already bought a one-way ticket back to Ecuador.
“I was packed and ready to leave.” Nonetheless,
she agreed. They went out to dinner in Fells Point.
“We danced, we laughed, we talked so much... he
took my hand to cross the cobblestone,” remembers
Antonella. “When he held my hand, it felt like we
had been together hundreds of years.” She came
home and told her mom, “I can’t leave.”
Matthew made it his goal to teach Antonella
about all the traditions he grew up with in Balti-
more. “He wanted me to feel at home as much as
possible,” she says. They carved pumpkins, and he
introduced her to advent calendars by making her a
giant handmade one for their first Christmas togeth-
er. Every year, he filled it with different sweets and
small gifts, and then one year, it revealed a surprise
trip to New York City, where he proposed on the ice
at Rockefeller Center.
Whenever she had thought of a wedding, she felt
sad that her dad wasn’t there to walk her down the
aisle. She thought a courthouse ceremony was the
answer. But as soon as she got engaged, she real-
ized she wanted a wedding she could share with
family and friends. So, the planning began. They
wanted to combine traditions from both their fami-
lies and also showcase who they were as a couple.
The result was a stunning ceremony at Cathedral
of Mary Our Queen, followed by a tented, black-tie
dance party at the Elkridge Club.
Antonella had asked her mom to walk her down
the aisle. Halfway down, she could finally see Mat-
thew clearly. (It’s a long aisle.) “He was crying like a
baby. I let go of my mom and just ran to him.”
Then it was time to party. Antonella didn’t toss a
bouquet. There was no cake-cutting—it’s bad luck in
Ecuador. Instead, there was five hours of non-stop
dancing. (They did let their guests eat dinner.) “I had
one margarita the whole night,” laughs Antonella. “I
never left the dance floor.”