HERE GOES THE PLANNING...

 Our Ceremony 

St John the Evangelist Church, Rochester NY

This is awful that the only picture I was able to pull up of my church was one that was taken in 1960 from a postcard on Ebay, when we no longer have 10 inches of snow on the ground I will take a new picture.  The great thing about our church is our music director, he is giving Mike and I complete freedom with our music choices. 

 

Songs for Ceremony:

Mothers Entrance: undecided

BM Entrance: Forrest Gump Suite

Bride Entrance: Canon in D

Offertory: undecided

Sign of Peace: Come away with me, Norah Jones

Communion Songs: The Luckiest, Ben Folds

 

As you can tell,  we still have a few undecided, but I recently ordered the music sheets for our organist to learn the music, and he is very excited to be playing more modern type songs.  We really wanted him to play songs during our ceremony that have meaning to us to create a personal touch.  He is also going to play the whole ceremony on the baby grand piano instead of the organ which I think helps it stay modern.  Hearing ben folds on the  organ might not have the same effect :)

 

Transportation

Diamonds Limo

 

Another awful picture.  Again, from the website.  When the decision came to a limo bus or a trolley, Mike made the decision he really wanted to go with the trolley, plus it was cheaper than the bus!  The nice part about our trolley is that it was gutted to look like a limo bus inside so we can all sit down together instead of sitting all face forward, the only negative along with it is that due to the renovations it does not look like a true trolley.

 

 

Photography

Images Unveiled

 

 

 

Mandy and Greg Dinino are our wedding photographers, they have been so great to work with.  An engagement session came with the "package."   So we thought it'd be nice to go for a bit of practice.  Both Mike and I are not big fans of being in front of the camera, we both enjoy taking pictures, so this gave us a chance to warm up to the camera, plus we were able to get family pictures with our dog, forrest!

 

 Reception 

Eagle Vale Golf Club, Fairport NY

 

 WOW, considering I just mentioned Mike and I love taking pictures, you would think I have ACTUAL pictures of our reception hall too...anyway, this is again, from their website.  I love how the ceiling comes to a point, to the left of this picture is where the bar sits and where the dance floor lies,  they also have icicle lights that stay up year round at the top of the "triangle roof" and they have added curtians that are green and yellow- yesterday we went to our tasting (yum!) and we took some additional pictures, I will add them shortly,

 

 

Details...

 

Invitations

Wedding Invitations - Paper Bride Invitations, Avon NY
After much deliberation, Mike and I decided to spend the money and have our invitiations made.  We are really happy with our decision, everyone that sees our proof is amazed at how beautiful they really are.  And when I priced them out it was only going to cost 1.00 less to have them made.  So it just made sense for us.  These pictures came out of photobucket and came out really blurry, but you can still get an idea.  The ink is printed in brown and pink on metallic ivory paper with a tan backing and chocolate brown pocketfolds.

 

 

 

 

 Bridal Shower Invitations - Amanda Herzog

My cousin hand-makes invitations for any occasions, so I figured now would be a great time to use her talents!

If anyone is interested in any type of invites, she does weddings, showers, or any party and she also does personalized cards too.  If you are interested in her info, page me on the upstate NY board.

 

 

Invitation - Rehearsal  - Amanda Herzog

 

 

Favors

 

for our favors, I wanted to play off of our last name, each bag contains a packet to make one pot of coffee, the bags are made of burlap and the green ribbons are decaf and there will be pink which are regular coffee, (the tag has a little description on the back) idea from knottie scnewman and nikinikinine...

can you guess what my last name will be???

we've finished 70 so far, don't worry the coffee is vaccum sealed and good until 01/09 :)

 

Chair Covers

Champagne and Roses, Rochester NY

 

 

picture from website, this looks like casa larga vineyards.

 

Champagne and Roses has been really great to work with, they had many different options for us the choose from, they set up and take down all the covers for no additional charge and they have custom colored bows for all their covers.  Our colors are chocolate brown and pink, we want to do mainly chocolate brown with pink & sage accents, so, the ties on the chairs will be brown organza and we also (not from the same company) rented brown organza table runners for under 2.00 a piece, thats cheaper than making them!

 

The Ever Popular

Candy Buffet

Photos courtesy of knottie DietCokeAddict and Monkey Tree Photography

 We think our family would love a candy buffet and can't wait to see their reaction.  We plan on having all different types of candy, not just our wedding colors because we have some children in our family with food allergies and are gluten free, so this way they will be able to enjoy the candy too. 

 I love the topiaries that they made out of gum drops, our florist is providing us with REAL topiaries for our ceremony/reception arrangements (see below) so it all just fits so nicely.

 

Planning to purchase 1/2 lb candy pp (approx. 130lbs of candy- woah thats a lot of candy!)

 

Save the Dates

This is just a picture of the save the dates that we ordered from vista print, I didn't want to pay for the pdf print so I just took a picture of it, they came out great - only problem that I had was something I did, I typed my website wrong on the save the dates! other than that they came quick and we were really happy with them.

Florist

The Topiary, Pittsford NY

 

 

 

Our florist specializes in topiaries she has sets of topiaries that she'll arrange flowers in for the ceremony and reception, and I love the look of "garden" type flowers where it is a more loose bouquet, so the topiaries and the loose bouquets will be gorgeous.  Our flowers we will be using will include pink and white peonies, peppermint roses, hydrangeas and green orchids.  The men will wear peppermint roses with monkey tail, it looks similar to a pipe cleaner that is curled up.   I can't wait - I love flowers and this is my FAVORITE part!

 DIY Flower Girl Basket

 

Our flower girl is three years old so we wanted to do something simple and in silk,

it came out fine I think.  The picture washed out the flowers pretty bad,

but hopefully it will look fine at the ceremony.

Bakery 

Grand Finales, Fairport NY

I borrowed this image from another knottie, I unfortunatly cannot remember who!  But, if its you please let me know!  I'm having this cake made for the rehearsal dinner, he's gonna flip, as children of the 80's we grew up with Mario Bros. so all our friends are going to love it too.  I purchased the figurines on ebay.

My wedding cake bakery is making this cake as well.

 

Wedding DIY Cake Topper

 

Wedding Wear

mother of the bride dress

The dress is a Montage Mon Cheri dress, to the left is with the jacket and to the right without.  It has a cute little "train" on it in the same pattern as the front of the dress, my mother ordered it in cafe color so the beading is actually in silver, its a gorgeous dress. 

We ordered from Peggy's Bridal they have been so great with our one million questions (exaggeration of course...) we have had about both mine and my mom's dresses.  

 

Bridesmaids Dresses

LOVE this dress, and obviously the girls do too.  My maid of honor helped in picking the dress, the material is taffeta so its nice and light.  The color of the dress is sable which is a chocolate brown color and the ribbon will be pink for the bridesmaids and i'm going to make a sage colored sash for my maid of honor.

 

My Dress!!

Random girl wearing the same dress as myself, everytime I pull up the Maggie Sottero Brittanya on a website it comes up in bright pink.  But this is the actual dress that I will be wearing in diamond white from the "maggie brides" portion of www.maggiesottero.com I love this dress, I start my fittings in February, I changed up a few things on the dress, but its going to look SO nice I can't wait!!

 

Necklace 

 

GORGEOUS necklace that I bought from a little boutique here in Rochester.  (joette's) I got it 40% off during a "customer appreciate" sale, it has white pearls and the brooch on the side has stones in it, 

it looks SO nice on, I just love it :)   Update on the necklace, it does not go with my dress - AT ALL.  so, i'm back to square one for jewelry.  I'm thinking no necklace would be best.

 

 Veil that I LOVE

Photo courtesy of knottie annemak

 

I love how her veil is longer, but does not touch the ground, that way you can wear it all night.

Update on veil - I went with a full three tier fingertip veil, I really wanted either the catherdreal length veil but I was talked out of it, 1. price, and 2. I wanted to keep it on all night, and my aunt reminded me it will fall out all night....SO, I was going to go with a birdcage, but it just did not look right on me, so...fingertip it is, it really does look nice too.  But I still LOVE annemak's veil :)

 

 Shoes

These are my after the ceremony shoes, I love birkenstocks and they look wedding-ish.  Another knottie, purchased these for her wedding, and it took me a couple bids, but I finally won them.  Aren't they cute?!  

Honeymoon - Aruba

We finally decided where we want to go!  We're headed to Aruba for 8 days of well deserved relaxation!  We fly out on the Monday after our wedding and we'll be home on the following Tuesday.  We have some excursions planned, we plan on trying scuba for the first time, and we want to go on an evening catamaran tour, we're thinking of renting a jeep for a day and seeing the sites as well.  We are just so excited to spend some quiet alone time together!

 

  

sorry I could not resist,  I love my doggie, Forrest!

 

 Vendor Reviews

 

Officiant - St John the Evangelist-

So far, so good.  We will be married by the Deacon, he has been great to work with so far.  He even went as far as to reschedule his hip surgery so he would be able to walk for our wedding! His homilies during mass are so personal and I love that. We are putting a lot of work into our ceremony to be more personal, so I really wanted that.  He even wants to have dinner with us a few times to get to know us better!! I love that about him.

 

Photographer - Images Unveiled -

so far she has been great to work with, she got out our epics in under two weeks on CD with rights, and was even easy for me the computer moron to figure out how to upload and order prints.  The prints were ordered from Kodak Gallery and they came out very crisp, I was very happy with them.

 

Bakery- Grand Finales

Reception - Eagle Vale Golf Club-

We are working with Fausto and Denise at Eagle Vale, he has been fantastic, he is very knowledgable and VERY quick to return emails, we met with him in January to go over our tasting.  Everything tasted great, and we can't wait to have our guests enjoy the food.  They have been so professional during this entire process, I highly reccommend them.

 

Musician - Reporter-

after much debate we hired a band for our reception, we are super excited.  We both love live music and this will hopefully be something our guests will not forget.  We have not picked our music out yet, I need to set up an appointment to go over music choices.

 

Videographer - Shinyhead Productions-

so, we bit the bullet and hired a videographer, Dave is hilarous, he's so much fun and he fits our personalities to a "T" we can't wait to work with him, his prices are great, and his quality fantastic, he just does it on the side from his normal work (filming a tv show) so, he doesn't advertise, but if you want his info, I can provide you with it.

 

Transportation - Diamonds Limo

Well, we knew we wanted a trolley after we saw it.  The guy we are working with is a different kind of guy, but we have not picked our driver yet, so we'll see who we end up with.  Other than that, the process has been fine.  We booked this LAST winter, feels like forever ago.

 

Stationary -  Paper Bride

Her website can be found at www.paperbrideinvitations.com .  She has been great to work with so far, she has been so patient with Mike and I, we've changed our minds (surprise, surprise) SO many times because we didn't know if we wanted to DIY these, but our work would not come out half as good as what she can create, the price would have been too close to what we would pay to DIY anyway, and this way our invites will match our place cards will match our menu cards.

 

 

THANKS FOR VISITING!