About



The Brand


Launched in December 2013, Tidewater and Tulle is the leading Virginia wedding blog publication for couples looking for attainable and curated wedding ideas and great DIY wedding projects. Whether it is in the sands of Virginia Beach, on the cobblestone streets of historic Williamsburg, or in a rustic barn outside of Richmond, Tidewater and Tulle is an online resource that celebrates diversity in weddings, love, travel, and life with Coastal Virginia as its original inspiration.

The blog's signature colors of Pantone's Grayed Jade and Dusty Blue and its logo represent the land ("Tidewater") and the water ("Hampton Roads") that make up our beautiful region.

Using a 2 hours driving hours radius from the City of Hampton as a guideline, Tidewater and Tulle publishes real weddings, sessions, and wedding-related inspiration in Hampton Roads (Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, Suffolk, Yorktown, Poquoson, and Williamsburg), Richmond, Emporia and surrounding areas, and the Eastern Shore in the beautiful coastal region of Virginia as well as the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

New to Tidewater and Tulle? Start Here!


Beach wedding? LGBTQ wedding? No matter your celebration, we love them all and have real weddings and inspiration categorized on our main page under the Weddings menu to help you get started.
• Read our Statement of Love, Action, and Solidarity and why we have been celebrating diversity in love since day one.
• Our DIY projects are our most popular features. Get ready to get crafty!

Want to support Tidewater and Tulle at no cost to you? Shop our Etsy favorites for gifts and wedding details. We earn a small commission for any sale we bring over to the marketplace! This helps keep our content free and available to all. Wedding blogs and websites are constantly closing down due to the ever-changing industry, so we are very grateful that our audience supports us in this tiny, but impactful way!


The Owner and Editor-in-Chief

Tidewater and Tulle was founded by Virginia Beach native and former Williamsburg resident, Chelsea LaVere Barton. She grew up surrounded by the region's beaches, forests, and fields and fell in love with the natural diversity that only Hampton Roads has. (But let's not chat about the bridge-tunnels—we all know how we feel about those!)

As a retired local wedding photographer completely obsessed with the wedding industry and wielding a little ole bachelor's degree in English, Chelsea has always had a passion in helping brides and grooms find their perfect wedding teams and highlighting incredible local resources through the written word and social media for over 13 years.

When Chelsea isn't writing or scheduling content, she's either being a cat mom to Pickles Barrington and Juniper McIntyre, sharing her American tales about becoming British on It's a Hard Biscuit Life, traveling, or looking for the best gluten-free food. In true Hollywood rom-com style, Chelsea met her soulmate in the form of an Englishman when on sabbatical in the UK, and now she's living out her Jane Austen life across the pond. When she comes back to the area to visit loved ones, her local eatery favorites are still Bangkok Garden in Williamsburg and high school staple Reginella's in Virginia Beach. You can get to know Chelsea more on www.chelsealavere.com.