Wedding Redux – The Bride and Her Girls

So, here we are on the last day of wedding week.  I hope you’ve had as wonderful of a time as I have revisiting our nuptials.  Today we dive into the wedding day attire, hair and makeup.

The Hair and Makeup

I’m willing to bet that the vendors I chose for makeup and hair are the best makeup artist and hair stylist in the state of New Jersey.  Hands down.  Mandy from La Sorella Bridal and Jillyan from Skin Bar and Paint did an OUTSTANDING job on me, my girls and our moms.  From a makeup perspective it was really important for me to have the perfect balance of subtlety and radiance and Jillyan and her assistant totally delivered, both for me and everyone else.  They were sweet and engaging and the experience was super pleasant.  As far as hair is concerned, mine is boring and doesn’t generally behave the way I want it to.  Mandy, with her massive amount of expertise, did not only give my hair texture and structure, it also kept for the entire night.  Actually, I’m not going to lie — when I woke up the next morning it was still pretty much intact.  My sister even said that it was the first time she’s ever liked a professional hairstyle that she’s gotten done.  Here are a few shots:

The Bridesmaids Dresses

I love my bridesmaids and I wanted them to look gorgeous on my wedding day.  I envisioned a strapless dress with a sweetheart neckline in purple chiffon so when I saw the Bari Jay 103 dress, I knew it was the one.  The girls chose their own jewelry and shoes and the dress was flattering on all of them so everyone looked spectacular and unique.

The Jewelry

I definitely wanted to look as traditional as possible during the wedding ceremony but I also wanted to look a little more glamorous during the reception.  Since I didn’t have the budget for more than one dress, I chose to achieve this by using jewelry.  For the ceremony I wore a string of pearls and pearl earrings given to me by my godmother.

Then for the ceremony, I ditched a necklace altogether and swapped out the pearl studs for crystal chandelier earrings.

The Shoes

I knew I wanted to go with a non-traditional purple shoe for the wedding.  I didn’t expect that I would buy two pairs, however – but I did.  I bought both the Badgley Mischka Randall and Randee shoes and the final choice was a last minute decision:

I chose the Randalls:

The Bouquet:

I loved the idea of the contrast of a purple bouquet against my white dress, and white bouquets against the girls purple dresses.  Doreen from Amazonas made some beautiful bouquets for me and the girls.  (My bouquet is actually pretty popular on pinterest!)  I loved all the bouquets — the only thing I wished I’d done slightly different is make the bridesmaids bouquets smaller.

The Veil

When I saw Bride Wars for the first time, I wasn’t even engaged — and honestly, I’ve never been one to daydream about my wedding day.  So, I was surprised what an impression it made on me when I saw Anne Hathaway’s veil.    I just loved they way it looked like she had just one giant piece of tulle draped over her, it was magnificent.  Well, the internet failed me on this one because this was the only image I could find of it:

After hours upon hours of research I was finally able to deduce the type of veil that it was — a cathedral length drop veil.  I found a lovely veil shop in Pompton Plains – headpiece.com.  The owner and designer Marie Hunt makes gorgeous veils and on my first visit to her shop, I found exactly what I wanted.  Here’s the veil hanging from my ex-dining room ceiling fan.  Here it is in all it’s glory from the front,

from the back,

and from the side.

The Dress

Being that Kleinfeld is right in New York City, I think it’s sort of a tradition for NY metro area brides to at least try on dresses there.  It was the first dress store I went to so I had no intention of buying a dress.  This Monique Lhuillier from the Bliss Collection was the first dress that my stylist, Diane, picked out  and I loved it the moment I tried it on. The delicate lace bodice was a perfect complement to the tufted silk organza modified A-line skirt.  The dress had no train initially and I was uneasy about it at first but Diane was quick to suggest that we request to add one and they did.  Problem solved.  Finally one of my favorite aspects of the dress was the belt.  I loved the wow factor that it added to an otherwise simple dress.  Again, it was the perfect embodiment of simplicity and elegance (at least in my opinion :).)

So there you have it! Thanks for letting me indulge myself a little on my first anniversary — although I hope it was helpful to you if you’re looking to plan a wedding.

Stay tuned next week for non-wedding posts including my attendance at the IFB Inside Generation Style runway show.

Have a great weekend!

Wedding Redux – Decorations and DIYs

I’m convinced that even if I’d had no decorations, both the church and the venue would have still been beautiful.  But since I really wanted to make our wedding memorable, I made sure to add carefully placed details throughout the day.

The Centerpieces

When I first started planning the wedding I thought deciding on and finding invitations was going to be the most difficult task – until it came time to plan the centerpieces.  I literally did not know the first thing about flowers. Actually, I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that I have somewhat of a black thumb.  And once again, I had the same problem as the invitations — while I know what I like, simplicity and elegance, I didn’t have the slightest idea how to translate that into flowers.  Thankfully, Doreen of Amazonas Exotic Floral Designs, helped me turn that into a reality.  Before I could really articulate what I wanted, I had stumbled across and decided on the “submerged orchid” idea which while perfectly nice, didn’t really capture the look we were going for – and Doreen definitely picked up on my reluctance.  At her insistence, we ditched the idea and she helped me to come up with something a bit more neutral and symmetrical.  We simply did groups of 3 4×4 square vases at each table with 9 white roses each, flanked by 2×2 square votives.  It was absolutely perfect and since the centerpieces were short, our guests were able to talk across the table to each other without something in the way.  I could have gone with something more grand but I loved that they were just simple and unassuming.

The Table Numbers

I loved the idea of personalizing the table numbers.  I know couples who have named their tables after places they’ve visited together, their favorite sports teams, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything cutesy like that to use as a table number theme.  I briefly entertained the idea of doing TV shows, but since I have about 13 favorite TV shows and Mike has 2,  I thought that would have been terribly one sided.  So instead I went the self-indulgent route and used the photos from our engagement shoot as table numbers.  I used Photoshop to do it but actually, Picasa has a nifty, easy to use function that does the same thing.  I then had two of each photo printed on glossy paper and mounted them on either side of some thick poster board.  Our guests loved them and I was glad we got to use our engagement photos!

The Luminaries

Originally I had considered doing luminaries as the table numbers but since there was an outside area I wanted to decorate that as well and the luminaries were perfect.  I was originally going to order them from etsy but making them turned out to be SUPER simple and inexpensive.  In fact, this DIY wins the award for least stressful wedding project. I simply printed our logo and wedding date on vellum paper (right from my inkjet), and taped them around some dollar store cylinder vases.  I put a votive in the vase and voila! It actually cost me around $1.50 per luminary!

The Gobo

You’re probably asking — what is a gobo?  Well, I didn’t know what one was either, until I saw one, and then I had to have one.  Basically is a light projected through a filter onto a surface.  Thankfully this was part of Ambient DJs services so we were able to use it — they even let me design my own! So this,

became this.

The Ribbon Wands

Our church has a strict ‘no throwing anything’ policy for weddings — no rice, no flower petals, no bird seed – nothing.  So I was stumped as to what the send off would be.  Thankfully, I stumbled on this blog post over at Ruffled Blog which not only had the wonderful idea of making ribbon wands but also had a tutorial on how to make them.  With my mom and dad’s help, I made approximately 100 ribbon wands and though it was painstaking and I hot glued my fingers to each other quite a few times, it was worth it.

If only for this one photo.

I had so much fun doing these projects and because I spent so much time on them, they’ll always be a part of the memory of our wedding.  So my advice to brides-to-be out there is, make at least one detail of your wedding.  Don’t overwhelm yourself with a dozen DIY projects but definitely get hands on.  It’s fulfilling.

Tomorrow (the last day of wedding week, sad face) I’ll finally tell you all about the attire – my dress, shoes, jewelry, bouquets and the bridesmaids dresses as well.  I’ll also chat about our hair and makeup crew, who were out of this world incredible.

Til then.

Wedding Redux – Ambiance, Memories and Gratitude

Today during wedding week, I’m going to share with you some of the details around how I made venue and vendor decisions, and how I thanked my guests for their presence and their generous gifts.

The Church

We were lucky in this aspect as our local Roman Catholic church is just spectacular. Its beauty makes it highly coveted though, so we had to book pretty early and a lot of the dates were unavailable. I’d originally wanted to have the wedding in late April or early May but May was completely booked and since Easter was late last year, late April was out for us too. So, we picked April 9th and thankfully the day of turned out to be unseasonably beautiful!

The Venue

The day I walked into the Lake Valhalla Club in Montvale, NJ, I heard angels sing. Seriously, it was like a RomCom movie moment – I just knew. I’d been visiting traditional wedding venues for weeks, and was always a little disappointed that they didn’t capture the essence of our slightly rough edges. The other places were grand, magnificent and refined but those who know us, know that doesn’t fit the bill. The LVC ballroom is rustic, with high ceilings and a breath taking view of Lake Valhalla. So, while I actually saw this when I walked in:

my mind saw this:

They could have served rocks for dinner and I wouldn’t have cared. Thankfully though, it wasn’t only a gorgeous venue, they ended up having wonderful food and impeccable service too. The maitre’d, Perry, was outstanding and SUPER flexible, which if you’re an indecisive, frazzled bride, is a lifesaver. For me, choosing this venue was a no-brainer, so if you’re a bride-to-be looking for a venue, I urge you to wait until you find ‘the one.’

The Vendors

The next thing on the list was the vendors – most importantly the photographer and the DJ. (There are many more — transportation, hotel, videographer — but I’ll focus on those two for the sake of brevity. If you’d like more info on any other vendors, just ask in the comments below.)

The Photographer

I don’t think she knows this but when we met with our photographer for the first time, we had already chosen another one. We only met with her because we had already set up the appointment and felt badly canceling. Well, it ended up being the best move we made because Tatiana Breslow blew us away. Technically she had everything we were looking for — she had a lot of experience under her belt, an amazing portfolio, reasonable prices and she gave us the rights to our photos. Beyond that it was very clear she was passionate about photography and was very skilled at her craft. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, I place high value on expertise and Tatiana has it in spades. Finally though, it was her personality that clinched it – the three of us just really hit it off. And I knew that on the day of the wedding, that would be important. I got a little bridezilla-y during the portraits and she had the patience of a saint. I’ll never forget that. Overall I couldn’t have been happier with the experience and the final product. (Note: most of the photos in this week’s blog posts were taken by Tatiana.)

The DJ

During our DJ search there were several things we were looking for. We wanted someone who was passionate about music, had music tastes beyond traditional wedding songs, was able to infuse Latin music into the repertoire, and could think on his feet and be able to direct the flow of the party seamlessly. When we met with Gregg and Greg of Ambient DJ, that’s exactly what they projected. Throughout the process they were great as well — regularly sending emails about songs they thought we would like. Also, their planning tools were GREAT — with access to a MASSIVE database of music to help us pick some must have songs. Finally, and most importantly, they both had great attitudes and on the day of the wedding that was very evident. Our guests loved the music and danced all night long — they even let me play DJ for a bit which was pretty awesome!

The Thank You Cards

While I was stalking researching photographers and the venue, I came across this blog post by another local photographer of a couple who had also had their wedding at LVC. I made a habit of routinely googling “Lake Valhalla Club blog” to see what other couples had done at LVC to get some inspiration. I loved Erica and Dave’s wedding but the thing that really grabbed my attention were those thank you cards towards the end of the post. I had to have them but I couldn’t find any info on them and didn’t even have a clue what they were called. After many many google searches I finally deduced that they are called multi-fold accordion cards and that these particular ones were made over at Kodak Gallery. So, I replicated it with some of our favorite shots of the wedding.

So that does it for today’s wedding post. I hope you enjoyed it and if you’re a bride-to-be I hope this gives you some insight into planning.

Tomorrow, we’ll go over decorations — the centerpieces, table numbers, and some other DIY projects. Finally on Friday, we’ll conclude with everyone’s favorite — the ATTIRE.

Til then, happy reading.

Wedding Redux – The Paper

Welcome to Wedding Week on City and Burbs! I hope you enjoy the journey through my wedding planning process 🙂

Planning our wedding last year was single-handedly the most incredible, overwhelming, fulfilling, nerve-wracking, and rewarding project I’ve ever taken on. There were so many conflicting emotions on the journey that when it all came together, it was absolutely exhilarating. I only wish I could marry my husband over and over again so that I’d have an opportunity to plan more weddings!

The most important thing to me while planning the wedding was to make sure that there was a common thread throughout all the details of the wedding. I’m a big fan of continuity but I’d hate to call it a theme because in this particular case, it was simply color (purple), a motif (a vine flourish), and the fonts (Garamond and Zapfino.) From the invitations to the photo share cards, every thing that had writing on it had these three things in common. Now, to be honest, I don’t even know if anyone noticed (probably not), but *I* noticed and it made me super happy to know what I had achieved. So, let’s begin the paper journey:

The Invitations

I have a tendency to be paralyzed by lack of information. I can’t move forward with something without investigating all the possible choices. So, navigating the unknown world of invitations was definitely a stumbling block for me right at the beginning of my wedding planning. I know what I like — simple and elegant — but I didn’t know how to translate that into invitations. I pored over page after page of invitations on sites like Wedding Paper Divas and found things that were okay, but didn’t quite click. Then finally, after a trip to a local invitation store in my town I finally realized why. For me, it wasn’t really about the illustrations on the invitation, it was all about the paper and the printing style. As soon as I saw a letterpress invitation printed on thick, cotton Crane card stock, I was in love. Unfortunately though, I wasn’t in love with the price of letterpress. For 125 simple, single-color invitations, reception cards and RSVP cards, I was looking at over $2000 and I just couldn’t justify it. I briefly entertained buying my own letterpress machine, but thankfully, I came across Invitations by Ajalon instead. They hit it out of the ballpark with the invitations and I couldn’t have been happier with the outcome:

Here’s a better one of the texture with our rings:

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of the RSVP cards and the reception cards because the leftovers were victims of Hurricane Irene, but you get the picture. The only thing I would have done differently if I could do it again is to put the invitations into some kind of folder, or put a belly band around all the cards (like this gorgeous set) because all I did was stuff them in the envelopes.

The Rest of the Paper

Once I settled on the invitations all other paper goods just sort of made themselves. I DIYed the ceremony programs, the menu cards and the escort cards and used the exact same fonts, colors and flourishes on all of them. You’ll also notice that I added a logo — I could have hired a graphic designer to do it but I just used Photoshop and made one on my own:

The Ceremony Programs:

The Menu Cards:

The Escort Cards:

I used thick linen paper for these projects that I purchased from a paper heaven I discovered (with the help of the ladies over on The Knot posting boards) called Xpedx. That linen stock and my paper cutter were my best friends throughout this process!

Photo Share Cards

These turned out so much better in my mind than in real life. The idea was that I’d make cards with the website of our photo share site, they’d be strewn across tables, people would take them home and then share their own pictures on our site. In theory, it worked. But the truth was that the photo share site I picked was not very user friendly. So while the photo share cards themselves were spectacular, the actual process was not. If I was to do it over again, I’d find another photo share site to use.

I used moo.com to print the mini-sized business cards:

The Favors

To offset the disappointment of the photo share, I’ll tell you the best thing that we spent money on — the photo booth. It turned out to be one of the most fun activities for our guests and the photo booth attendant handed us an instant photo album with all the photo booth shots at the end of the wedding. It was wonderful and our guests got to take home some awesome memories. We used Partybooths and they were both cost effective and delivered an excellent product. We even got to put our logo at the bottom of the photos.

The photos were 4×6 so as a favor I gave my guests a 4×6 frame. I put a thank you message in the frame, wrapped them in white organza mesh gift bags and hung them off the back of each of the Chiavari chairs.

And that pretty much covers most of the paper products that we used for our wedding day. Honestly, since most of this stuff was DIY, it really was my favorite aspect and an experience I won’t soon forget.

I still absolutely love looking at peoples’ wedding projects so if you’ve written about it on your own blog, be sure to share the link in the comments and I’ll check it out.

Tomorrow, look forward to the details on the venue, the vendors and the thank you cards. Thanks for reading!

Year 1

My dear husband and I are celebrating our 1st anniversary today. I can’t believe it’s been an entire year already! In my mind, we were married just yesterday! This definitely calls for a celebration. So this week on the blog, I’ll be revisiting April 9, 2011 and giving you all the details of our wedding. As every bride does, I put a ton of work and effort into our wedding and if any of my work can help a bride-to-be, I’d be honored. So stay tuned for that this week!

Also, in an effort to document our growth as a couple, I decided we should take an anniversary picture together every year (inspired by this pinterest post and that pinterest post.) In 10 or 20 years, I’d love to create a collage of all the anniversary shots and hang it in our bedroom. So here is the first one:

Do you have any anniversary photo traditions? I’d love to see what people have done who have already been married many years!

Also, in case you’re curious, here are the details of what I wore (notice my cousin photobombing the picture – i love it!):

navy eyelet dress : laundry by shelli segal @ annie sez (no longer available but similar here and here) | brown sandals : evelyn by hive and honey (sold out but similar here and these aren’t quite similar but i love them anyway) | necklace : stephan & co @ nordstrom (mine is coral but in bright fuschia here).

Wear to the office – Lace

Keeping lace professional sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, however wearing lace to the office can be done.  Just make sure you keep a few things in mind.  I would stay away from tops (although I did it once…and got a few weird looks).  Bottoms in neutral colors would work best, black, blue or even cream lace on a casual Friday.  Make sure it’s a “thick/crochet” lace.  Anything thinner than that would probably not work.  Add some simple details like a button down with a lady-like necklace, simple pumps, and maybe a belt (for contrast) and you’re ready to tackle the work day .

Here’s how I do it.  Do you wear lace to the office? 

xoxo,

Di

Top and necklace: JCrew Factory Store;  Skirt: The Limited; Shoes: Nine West

 

 

The Anatomy of a Party – Mom’s 60th

Note: We are a featured blog on Coming Unstitched today!  Be sure to check out the site!  Sarah Stright is a girl after my own heart – a fashionista, DIYer and Bride-to-Be planning her dream wedding. We’re honored to be featured!

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Planning events is a passion I discovered only after I planned my own wedding last year. Since then, I’ve been itching to plan another event and so when my sister and I decided to have a surprise 60th birthday party for our mom, I was thrilled at the opportunity. I love scouring pinterest for ideas, putting the ideas together and developing a theme, getting my hands dirty with DIY projects and then finally seeing everything come together in one fantastic night. Well, our mom’s 60th birthday celebration was no disappointment. Let me break it down for you.

The Venue

Finding the venue for an event is the most important part to me. The venue and the decorations set the mood of the event and put the guests in the frame of mind that you want them to be in. I tend to gravitate towards places that have a rustic vibe so I was thrilled to find The Solar Manor in Roselle Park, NJ. The outside of this place is completely charming and while there are some traditional banquet rooms, there are also a few non-traditional spaces one of which we used for the party. The food (mostly Portugese) was delicious and there were many different packages (in many different price ranges) to choose from. The coordinator, wait staff and maitre’d were attentive and were a huge reason the party was such a success.

The Details

It’s always great to have a theme for a party but when you can’t think of one, use color. We stuck to the burgundy/champagne color scheme for our theme and even though it was subtle it tied the room together.

Centerpieces/Table Numbers

Our inspiration came from this pin. The IKEA lanterns and candles were a perfect complement to the rustic feel of the room and the tulips gave the table an elegant touch. For the table numbers, we used old photos of mom and superimposed the number corresponding to the table in one of the corners (in Picasa).

The Cake

The fabulous Mia from MakeMiaCake captured the theme of the party WONDERFULLY in the dulce de leche cake that she made. We sent her a proof of the invitations and she took it from there. We couldn’t have been more pleased with how the cake looked and how it tasted – it was beautiful and delicious!

The Favors

No party is complete without a memento for the guests to take home and figuring out what to give our guests at this party was easier than I thought. Our mom is a very good cook and loves to entertain and feed everyone. Her recipes are beloved by all our family and friends and on several occasions she’s tried to teach others how to make them so I thought it would be a great idea to create a little recipe book with some of her best ones. I made the book on Blurb and using a coupon was able to get each book for a little under $5 a piece!

The Cover

The Collage

While looking for photos to use for the table numbers, we found a ton more photos of our mom that we wanted to display. We thought the best way to do this was to create a collage of the photos — that way, guests could see the photos and our mom could frame it after the party as a keepsake. I created the collage in 15 minutes using TurboCollage on my mac (after trying 3 other collage making programs and failing miserably) and then sent it over to Fedex/Kinko for printing.

The Ruse

This was probably the toughest thing to figure out. After tossing around fake engagement parties, and a fancy anniversary dinner, we finally came up with an idea that would force our mom to dress up and get her hair done. We told her we were getting professional family pictures taken! And she bought it hook, line and sinker! I mean, you can’t fake this kind of reaction:

And it was the truth, after all, we did get a lovely family photo:

The Music

No party is successful without great music and for this occasion we wanted to make sure that our mom got to dance to some of her favorites which were mostly exclusively Latin American songs – salsa, merengue, and Peruvian selections. Luckily, our DJ, Robert, of SG Productions, who is also Peruvian, played a great mix of our mom’s favorites and kept mom dancing all night!

The Photos

Finally, I wanted to make sure the evening was captured on film so that our mom would never forget it. Alberto of Flowing Color Photography did an AMAZING job of taking pictures throughout the evening (as evidenced by all the photos above). You can see some more of the pictures from the night on his facebook page.

All in all the evening went off without a hitch and our mom said she’ll never forget it — mission accomplished. I hope I have another opportunity to plan a large event soon!

Anthropologie Fashion Show

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Anthropologie Fashion show in the Soho store.  The show was focused around the Leifnotes collection, which was full of color and fun patterns.  What a great collection.  Here are some of my favorite looks.  

I need this top.

This dress has “beach vacation” written all ove it.

Brunch with the girls

Casual Sunday afternoon

This skirt is just amazing.  I love the colors!

Lovely dress

Top: Zara; Jeans: Asos; Shoes: Calvin Klein; Clutch: Rachel Rachel Roy

Liz ( Liz Avenue) and Jackie ( The Fashion Ladder )

Candace  (The Style Climber)

 Ely ( Ripped Nylon)

Mom’s 60th Surprise Party – Part 1 – Stationery

Big fat sigh! After months and months of planning, Diana and I were able to pull off a fabulous surprise 60th birthday for our mother this past weekend. This party has been 10 years in the making so we wanted to make sure everything was perfect — the invitations, the venue, the favors, the music, the decorations, the ruse, and the attire. The invitations were the first communication our guests would have so we wanted to ensure that they set the tone of the party. I started with burgundy, mom’s favorite color, and paired it with champagne to add a festive touch. Keeping with the champagne theme, I thought champagne bubbles would make the perfect backdrop for the invitation. Using layers in Pixlr (as an alternative to the uberexpensive Photoshop), I was able to create this:

Then I used the Porcelain and Helvetica Neue UltraLight fonts to write the invitation and printed it on some heavyweight linen cardstock:

I popped them into a burgundy envelope and then created some envelope wrappers (inspired by this post over at 33 Shades of Green). By the way, envelope wrappers are my new favorite thing and I will be using them with every piece of correspondence from now on.

It was really quite simple. I used Avery Full Sheet Shipping Labels and created 4 labels per sheet in Word. The 8 1/2” wide labels turned out to be perfect for the 5×7 envelope.

What do you think? Are you as in love with envelope wrappers as I am?

Finally, to tie everything together at the party, I used the same background (and paper) to create the escort cards.

So that does it for the paper portion of the party. Stay tuned for posts on decorations and attire.