Photograph by Middleburg Photo
Wendi Wilson and Nelson Gunnell were married at Banbury Cross Farm, the Gunnell family farm in Middleburg, Virginia, on Saturday evening, May 28. The ceremony took place in the garden—a fairy tale setting midst blooming spring flowers under a perfect blue sky with a pond sparkling in the distance. The bride arrived in an antique white horse drawn carriage driven by her hometown friend, Tommy Lee, who later whisked the couple away after the vows were completed.
Why May 28? It was one of the few dates available for the twelve-piece band imported from Myrtle Beach for the occasion. The party rocked under an enormous tent set with dinner tables and a dance floor!
This is a union rooted in a love of hunting and foxhounds. Wendi and Nelson met around the middle of the last decade when Epp Wilson, MFH of the Belle Meade Hunt in Thomson, Georgia was developing the scoring system and protocols for MFHA-sanctioned Foxhound Performance Trials, leading up to the Centennial Year tour of trials across North America. Nelson Gunnell was one of those lucky foxhunters recruited to judge first the practice trials, then the Centennial tour. Wendi Wilson is Epp’s daughter, a fearless horsewoman, a Belle Meade whipper-in, who served as a judge’s guide across the country when the trials were held at Belle Meade. I wasn’t keeping track at the time, but I suspect that Wendi was Nelson’s guide more than once!
The wedding date happened to coincide with the weekend of the Virginia Foxhound Show, so many of their hunting friends from around the country were in town. There were strong contingents of guests from Thomson, Georgia, Wendi’s home town; Aiken, South Carolina, where Nelson’s sister and mother now reside; and, of course, Middleburg and environs, where Nelson has hunted and played polo all his life.
I think most would agree that a wedding involving more than three hundred guests ought to be enough to keep one couple occupied for the day. Not this couple. Banbury Cross Farm was on the annual Middleburg/Upperville Stable Tour that weekend, and it seems that Nelson wanted to give the stable tour customers their money’s worth, so he put on a hunter pace in the morning and polo matches in the afternoon. Wendi and Nelson competed in the fast time division of the hunter pace, and won. Nelson played a polo match in the afternoon, and after the wedding nuptials were over, Wendi and Nelson were still on their feet to start the dancing!
Posted June 4, 2011