Chris and Lindsey Cedotal’s wedding reception was the culmination of years of work transforming a pair of homes in West Feliciana
Once upon a time in the hilly landscape of Louisiana’s Felicianas, a groom-to-be built a Victorian-style cottage for the woman he was planning to marry. The house, located in the historic district of the town of Jackson, was thereafter known as the “Bride’s House.”
Once upon a time—more than a century later—in the hilly landscape of the Felicianas, a groom-to-be rescued that old home and reconfigured it into a residence for himself and the woman he would soon marry. The house, which he carefully moved to the northern outskirts of St. Francisville and combined with elements of an even older home from another nearby town, got a new name to go along with its new life: “Oak Hill.”
“When I was a kid, my parents would always say I was going to become an architect,” explains the home’s owner and visionary Chris Cedotal of his lifelong passion for historic structures. “I wound up working in health care, but this is something that I’ve always found fascinating. It was always a dream to do a project like this, and I was lucky enough to be able to do it.”
Chris purchased his first piece of land north of St. Francisville about five years ago. His immediate plans were to use it as a hunting camp, but he also had bigger, long-term dreams of building a new house in a historic style on the site. “I kept buying more and more land around it,” he says. “Then I realized that if I wanted the look to be historic, there had to be a way to figure it out.”
That meant looking for an authentic old home instead of constructing a new one from scratch. In early 2022, Chris found exactly what he was looking for in the Bride’s House, a 1890-built raised cottage with a big front porch. Its location in Jackson, some five miles from his property, was no deterrent. An experienced house mover simply split the house in two, removed the roof, and transported it to its new location, where it was put back together again with modifications to fit its new environment.
“I didn’t want the Victorian style in the middle of the country—that isn’t particularly fitting—but I knew the bones were right,” Chris says. “So really all I had to do was very light cosmetic renovations on the front to completely transform the style of the house and bring it back to the style of cottage that would be found in a country setting.”
Those modifications include swapping out skinny porch columns topped by decorative brackets for more robust square columns and dentil molding. “I just replaced the lacy trim with Greek Revival accents,” Chris explains.
But that wasn’t the end of the new owner’s ideas for the home. He wanted to add a large primary suite as well as a dedicated area of the house for hunting gear and for modern must-haves like a laundry room. Instead of using new materials to build these new spaces, Chris was able to secure and salvage elements from a home that was a century older than the Bride’s House. Built in 1790 through a Spanish land grant, the “President’s House” had been the home of the president of the Silliman Female College in Clinton in the 1800s but had fallen into disrepair and was headed for demolition.
“I knew all that beautiful wood shouldn’t go to waste,” Chris says. “So we took it down piece by piece, loaded up the boards on trailers, and used it for basically all of the additions. At the end of the day, we really never went to Home Depot for a piece of wood. Every single thing that was used for the house is historic.”
Architectural designer Stephanie Potter and project manager Danton Glascock helped bring Chris’s ambitious vision to life. Using the materials from the President’s House, they added new wings near the back of both sides of the house, one for the primary suite and the other to incorporate a new laundry room, hunting locker room and guest bathroom. Above the carport, they also created a lounge space for playing pool and hanging out with friends.
“The President’s House had been added onto in the early 1800s and then again around 1840, and it was really cool to see by looking at the materials when each part was built and how much sophistication they had at the time,” Chris says. “The original beams that created the base of the house were essentially just tree trunks cut in half; they weren’t even milled and they still had bark on them. It was crazy.”
While all of this was happening, Chris was also building something else: a new relationship with Lindsey Walker, who he met in early 2023. The two got engaged in April 2024 and began planning their wedding at the same time that construction on the house was taking place. Suddenly, the name “Bride’s House” took on a whole new meaning.
“We went back and forth about whether we wanted to live out here, but ultimately we couldn’t leave Baton Rouge,” Chris says. “So we decided to make this a weekend house, and that gave us the opportunity to plan the interiors of the rooms differently, since everything didn’t have to be as functional as a full-time home would be. We looked for antiques in New Orleans, Natchez and here in St. Francisville, and we really were able to do some cool stuff with the house that if you were living here all the time you wouldn’t necessarily be able to do. That was kind of liberating.”
In keeping with the home’s historic background, Chris purchased a large collection of antique furniture that had originally been used at Roseneath, a 1832-built home in Jackson. “That helped us to come up with a lot of the stylistic ideas for the rest of the house,” Lindsey says. “It doesn’t look 100% like it would have if we had been completely true to the time period, but we paid homage to the history and to the area.”
It’s easy to see those odes to Feliciana history throughout the completed house, which was decorated with help from Jana Mistric of Sojourn Home Interiors and Window Treatments. The original ladies’ parlor is home to a portrait of Fulwar Skipwith, who served as governor of the West Florida Republic in the early 1800s when its capital was St. Francisville, and a flag of that short-lived nation hangs in a corner of the same room. Across the main hall in the original gentlemen’s parlor, a John James Audubon wild turkey print hangs above the fireplace. Artworks featuring West Feliciana plantations fill the walls of the primary suite, and a portrait of Philemon Thomas, who served as a military leader of the West Florida Republic, is on display in a hallway.
“We tried to make sure that every piece had some sort of story, some sort of meaning,” Chris says. “If you’re already that far down the road, you can’t do it halfway—you have to go all in and just make everything unique.”
Construction and all the finishing touches were completed just in time for the couple’s wedding weekend on March 14 and 15 of this year, ideal because they knew they wanted to host a large reception here. But the big weekend started in a more intimate way, with a ceremony for a small number of family and friends at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, a deconsecrated structure that was built in 1857. Chris has been a longtime supporter of an initiative aimed at preserving and restoring the church building, so he and Lindsey knew it would be the perfect place to say “I do.”
Wedding planner Angela DiVincenti Babin of Angela Marie Events set a sparkling scene amidst the rustic exposed brick and plaster of the old church. Babin placed rows of floating candles in varying sizes atop the bare concrete altar and filled the space with clear acrylic chairs for the 75 guests. The aisle was lined with low arrangements of white roses and delphiniums. A string quartet played as Lindsey entered the church wearing a gown from I Do Bridal Couture.
After the ceremony, the group moved to the St. Francisville Inn—itself a historic building constructed in 1880—for a seated wedding dinner. Here, Babin dressed long tables with tablecloths in varied blue and white patterns and created loosely mounded centerpieces of white roses and hydrangeas. In lieu of a place card, a blue ribbon with each guest’s name was tied in a big bow around the water goblet at their place. Tall pillar candles and low crystal votives, blue and white porcelain salt and pepper shakers, and whitewashed rattan chargers completed the look.
The following day, the newlyweds rallied for the big reception at their new home, which welcomed some 250 guests to share in the celebration. “I think it was a no-brainer,” says Lindsey of the decision to hold the reception at home. “We wanted part of our story to be having the reception here, since the house had already been such a big part of our relationship.”
The party kicked off with a set by one of Chris’s favorite bands, Better than Ezra, and the music kept going with Atlanta-based Az-IzZ Band. The reception was catered by Gilded Artichoke Catering Co., and Sweet Stirrings made both the six-tier monogrammed wedding cake and Chris’s golf-themed groom’s cake.
The couple shared their first dance as husband and wife to Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love.” And after all of the excitement of the weekend was done, they headed to the Caribbean for an 11-day honeymoon in Anguilla, St. Bart’s and St. Martin.
“I’m so glad we did the wedding over two days, because I feel like we got moments that other people don’t get to have on their wedding days, because they’re so overwhelmed with things to do,” Lindsey says. “Spreading it out gave us the opportunity to really enjoy everything.”
Now that they’ve shifted from wedding planning to married life, the couple is looking forward to spending time in the house over long weekends and hosting family members for holidays. Chris has his sights set on spending the full month of April each year—aka turkey hunting season—on this property, and both are eager to be here during local festivals and “whenever we want to decompress,” he says.
“We’re ready to start building a home, more so than just a house,” Chris says. “I didn’t really believe people when they said it would be different the day after the wedding, but it is. There’s a different feeling to it, and we’re just embracing that.”
Even as they move forward, Chris and Lindsey say they’re holding onto the feeling of their wedding weekend. All they have to do is look up at the architectural drawings of the church that now hang in their bedroom, or look out on the patio and remember being out there with their loved ones on the biggest day of their lives.
“Especially with the main house being named the Bride’s House, being able to have our reception there and then planning to use this house as a family retreat for the rest of our lives is really special to us,” Chris says. “It’s a meaningful part of our story.”
