Weddingbee bios

I first met Jon when I was a sophmore in high school. I went to an all girls high school in NYC, and he went to an all boys high school a few blocks away. I went to a dance his high school hosted on March 31, 1999. I still have the invitation saved!

Apparently he was entranced by my glittery green eyeshadow and long red hair. He approached me and asked me to dance. After a few dances, we went off to a corner to talk, and we ended up spending the whole night chatting away! We exchanged numbers, and ended up going on our first date that weekend. Many more fabulous dates followed, and he would pick me up from school everyday and we'd stroll through Central Park on our way home.

We dated all throughout the rest of high school, until my sophomore year of college, when I decided it might be best for us to date other people. Well, after a few years of dating other people, we both realized how much we missed each other. In May of 2007, we started talking and hanging out again, and our relationship reignited! I am so thrilled and lucky to have Jonathan back in my life and I'm so excited to spend the rest of my life with him!

We took our engagement pictures on an unseasonably warm day in October in Central Park.  Our photographer is the amazing Ryan Brenizer.

 

I've lived in NYC my whole life, so my whole life I've been hearing about how amazing Kleinfeld's is, and how I had to buy my dress from there when I got engaged.  I also watch way too much Say Yes to the Dress though, so I assumed their dresses would be out of my budget.  So when I got engaged, my I took my mom and my bridesmaids to many other local bridal shops.  I quickly learned that I had expensive tastes, falling in love with designers like Amsale, Jim Hjelm, and Lazaro.  Luckily, my mom is amazingly generous, and she offered to gift me with $3000 towards a dress.  Now that my budget was much higer than I had originally expected, I decided to cave and make an appointment at Kleinfeld's.

And I'm so glad I did!  My consultant, Diane was so sweet and amazing.  And Kleinfeld's actually had samples that fit me! Diane totally understood my style and what I wanted, and she's the one who brought out the Lazaro I ultimately fell in love with!

View of the front. I bought that veil too!  It has embroirdery that matches the dress!

 

 

 

Closeup of the detailing on the bust

For the ceremony, I'm going to wear my hair down and curly:

 

 

For the reception, I'm going to pull it back like this:

 

The ribbon headband will be neater and more to the side of my head the day of. :)

 

My wedding band arrived yesterday from Brilliant Earth!  I absolutely love it!  It looks fabulous with my e-ring, and still looks amazing by itself.  I can't wait until I get to marry my love and wear it everyday!

I love the Brilliant Earth ring boxes!

 

By itself:

 

With my e-ring:

My grandmother is an artist, and drew a sketch of the Williamsburg Bridge for us.  She actually went down to our reception venue to sketch from there!  This bridge has actually been a big part of our relationship, since I grew up in Manhattan, and FI grew up in Brooklyn.  We traveled across it all the time to see each other, and now that we live together in Brooklyn, we travel across it together!  

I added the wording to the sketch and printed it out on thin white cardstock.  I then mounted it on brown cardstock to give it more weight.

Behind that, I mounted our magnets on another piece of brown cardstock.  Our magnets feature one of our pictures from our engagement session in Central Park. I've blurred out our wedding website on the bottom of the magnet.  I designed the magnets myself, and then ordered them through Magnet Street Weddings.  To the left of the magnet, I wrote personalized messages to each guest in gold ink.

When I got to the post office yesterday to buy stamps, I realized that my save the dates were heavy enough to need 61 cent stamps. Whoops!  At least I was able to get cute wedding cake stamps!  Overall, I'm really happy with how they turned out! 

I am so happy that I splurged on a hotel suite and invited my mom and bridesmaids to get ready with me.  We had such a great time together!  It was really nice to relax and have fun with them the morning of the wedding, while getting pampered by our fabulous hair and makeup team.

I sat in curls for most of the morning, since we really wanted to make sure the curls held up all night. :)  While my curls set, I was able to eat breakfast and chat with my girls while they got their hair and makeup done.

Finally, the rollers came out, and the finishing touches were done on my hair and makeup:

 

And my beautiful bridesmaids posed in their dresses:(photo by my mom)

Once hair and makeup was done and the girls were in their dresses, it was time for me to get in mine:

 

I took a minute to stand out on the balcony to get some air and enjoy the moment:

While I had a moment to myself on the balcony, my photographer got great pictures of my train:

Then it was time to grab the rings and head out to brooklyn to meet the guys!

 

 

Our reception was at Giando's on the Water, and was absolutely amazing!

(All photos in this post by Ryan Brenizer Photography.)

Detail shots of our escort cookies: (by Penny of Sugar Couture)

 

Jon and I arrived at Giando's during cocktail hour, and we quickly gathered our family for pictures on the patio.  We had the amazing Williamsburg Bridge and Manhattan skyline as our backdrop.

 

 

I'll spare you from all our family portraits, but they all came out amazing! 

After portraits, Jon and I got to get a sneak peek of our reception room:

 

Loved it!  Then we hid out up in the penthouse bridal suite and had some alone time.  Giando's made sure we had a big platter of appetizers up there with us too. :)

Then, our fabulous DOC (Hollie, of Exquisite Affairs Productions) told us it was time for our introduction. 

We walked right in and began our first dance as husband and wife, to "Thank You" by Led Zeppelin.

 

 

I love this picture of Jon's parents watching us:

 

Then we sat down to eat!  I heard tons of stories of brides not eating, so I'm really glad we got to eat!  I have no pics of the food, but we had ceasar salad, choice of steak, chicken francese, or salmon (and a silent veggie option). 

In between courses, the dance floor was busy!  Our families have the world's cutest kids and they kept Jon and I on the dance floor pretty much the whole night.  So glad we had them all there!

 

 

Our Best Man, Jon's brother, gave a fabulous speech:

 

 

As did my sister, my MOH:

 

Her speech totally cracked me up:

 

 

Then it was time for more dancing!

 

 

 

And then it was time for the  Cake Cutting: (Cake by Penny of Sugar Couture)

I love the sugar calla lillies that topped our cake!

And the details that mimiced the embroidery on my dress:

 

 

I warned Jon that he better not mess up my make-up.  I love my expression in this shot!

 

Our cake got sooooooo many compliments.  We had two different flavors, red velvet with white chocolate buttercream, and lemon ginger with passionfruit filling.  I wish I could have more!

Giando's also provided a fabulous Viennese dessert tray for each table.  I have a huge sweet tooth so I wanted to go all out with dessert. :)

Then there was lots more dancing, and our guests really enjoyed our "same day slideshow" put out by our photographer:

And our "faux"tobooth was a big hit too!

Me & my college best friends:

The girl in the purple traveled from Alaska, and the girl in the blue traveled from California!  Love them!

And Jon and I and our besties from high school:

Whyyyyy am I the only one making a face??? Of course the bride has to go ruin a nice pic. :p

While our guests were busy dancing and posing for the photobooth, our photographer snuck us back outside for some more portraits.

These are some of my most favorite shots from the night!

 

 

Then it was back upstairs to the party!

All too quickly, the night had to come to an end.

We rocked out to "Don't stop believing" as our last song. :)

 

 

 

 

I forget what the Best Man said to me here, but I love this pic!

 

Then we were off to the hotel for a more private celebration! ;)

 

It was an amazing, amazing night, and I highly reccomend Giando's!

Oh how I love how our cake turned out!  

Our cake was two flavors: red velvet with white chocolate buttercream, and lemon ginger with passionfruit buttercream.  It was so delicious that we had almost no leftovers!  I purposely ordered some extra cake so we could have some after the wedding, but people liked it so much that they had seconds!

The detailing on the cake matched the detailing on my dress, and the calla lillies on top coordinated with our bouquets and centerpieces.

We got so many compliments on it!