I have been sleeping on photos of Rachel and Noah’s wedding because for the last few months we’ve known that they were going to make their debut on the Bride’s Guide by Darcy Miller over at the Martha Stewart Website.  Anyway, now that they’ve officially been posted, I can share with you what was one of my FAVORITE weddings last year!  What did they do right?  Well, I think establish a really clear vision, find a venue that went with that vision and ROLL with it..  I should say that Rae and Noah (who recently opened Mile End in Brooklyn) both have very clear sense of style in their day to day life, which made translating that into wedding all the more simple.  Here are a couple of pics that weren’t included in the Martha Stewart piece, please visit their site for more.Thanks to Dave Robbins for these amazing photos.  The floral was done by Saipua, Rossi of The Raging Skillet handled the catering and the venue was the 2nd floor of the Metropolitan Building.

We are so excited to have one of our former brides gracing the pages of The Knot Magazine!! Serah was selected to be featured in the Style Stalker section. The honor was well deserved. As gorgeous as she looks in this photo, she looked even more beautiful in person on her wedding day!

See photos of Serah and Min on their wedding day!

As always, Robert Wagner Photography did a wonderful job capturing the day!

As I mentioned, we are always looking for great submissions for our What They Did Right feature, and I was thrilled when Debbie sent me pictures (and the story behind the pictures) of her gorgeous New York City Wedding.  Debbie didn’t work with a planner, but the first step that she did right was hire an amazing team of vendors to work on her wedding.  Assembling this team would pay off for Debbie later when she encountered a situation that would probably keep most brides up at night:  a last minute need to change her venue!!!!!   I’m going to let Debbie tell you the story in her own words… along with a spattering of some of my favorite photos from their Spring Wedding at Angel Orensanz.  Thanks to Shawn Connell at Christian Oth for these great pictures!

First of all, I should tell you that I love your blog!  I do wish I had found you before I planned my wedding!  (What I didn’t do right – not hiring someone to help coordinate my wedding!)Second, I have to share that I really, really loved planning my wedding.  I just threw my whole self into it, and tried to make it as personal and unique to me and Brian as possible.  And my wedding was wonderful – I think about it happily every single day since, and keep lots of keepsakes and photos around, both at the office and at home, which make me smile whenever I see them.  It was a day so filled with love and family and friends, and I was overwhelmed both at how much love I felt for my husband, and at how happy everyone was for us that we were making that special commitment to each other.

So what did we do right?  Besides choosing to marry each other… one of our best decisions was hiring the most talented design-oriented vendors we could find to help create the vision we had for the event.  That meant hiring Matthew Robbins (formerly Artfool) for the floral design (but really so much more than just flowers) and  Lisa Hoffman of Ceci New York for not only invitations and save the dates, but also programs, menus, table cards and escort cards/favors.  However, I didn’t have the endless budget that I think a lot of their clients do, which meant working very closely with each of them to come up with some creative ways to achieve the look and feel we wanted and still stay within our budget.

One of our other best decisions was moving the wedding venue four and a half months before the wedding.  Yes, you read that correctly.  We had booked the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens a year and a half in advance, with assurances that the annual cherry blossem festival would not fall on our weekend… and then just less than five months away, were informed that the Gardens (which are run separately from the Palm House) had indeed moved the festival to our wedding day.  After speaking with our vendors and the coordinator at the Palm House, we decided we didn’t want to put our guests through the chaos of arriving, parking and entering the Gardens during the festival.  Once we realized we couldn’t go forward with the Palm House, we only looked at one venue – Angel Orensanz – and had it booked for our date within 72 hours of getting the news about the festival.    A lot of people thought the two venues were incredibly different and couldn’t understand how we would be able to switch, but Matthew was a real rock, and assured me that both spaces were atmospheric, romantic, and would work perfectly for our cherry blossem garden theme – Angel would just give it a little more of an edge.  In the end, we can’t imagine having gotten married anywhere else and think it was a real blessing.

A few of my favorite details:  Matthew decorated the iron chandeliers at Angel Orensanz with cherry blossem boughs, which added a fantastical touch to the space.  The favors were custom designed bridge-sized playing cards, with our initials in the middle and the artwork from our save the dates (butterflies, grasshoppers, ladybugs and dragonflies amid tall grass and flowers), because Brian’s family and close friends are all bridge fanatics (of course, I’ve had to learn to play as well!).  The decks of playing cards were wrapped in one of three shades of blue “belly-bands” and hand-calligraphed to function as escort cards.

We were thrilled with the job that Shawn Connell of Christian Oth Studios did of capturing the details and the feeling of the day.  We also hired the wonderful April Reed to make our cake, and working with her was such fun!  She made an eyelet cake, with green fondant peeking out from underneath white fondant eyelet cutouts, a design that mirrored my Carolina Herrera eyelet dress with green grosgrain ribbon.  (One friend remarked “wow, your dress matches the cake!”  Um, actually….)

I love that Debbie got a shot with her and Brian and all of their guests! So awesome!! Remember, if you think you did a lot of stuff right with your wedding, please send us your pics to blogqs@alwaysabridesmaid.us

About 6 months ago now we got an email from a prospective client saying that she was looking to get married in December and needed help pulling together her vision for an intimate, yet glamorous New York City wedding.  We were intrigued both by her vision and by her short engagement!  When Nina came in for her meeting, her excitement over marrying her teenage sweetheart was clearly contagious (for more pics and their story, see their gallery on our site).

As a TV producer and a native New Yorker, Nina had a pretty clear vision of what she and Jon wanted for their day- she wanted it to be modern, but warm, festive, glamorous, fun and, above all…. New York!  She also wanted to be sure it reflected their Puerto Rican heritage with food, drink and music playing a huge part.

So, what did they do right?  Well, first we selected a dynamite venue that overlooks the water AND had some great NY elements- views, water towers and a loft like setting.  Secondly, we decided to stick with an all white color pallette… little did we know that this was going to be reflected in the weather- there was a blizzard on their wedding day.  Actually, at the last minute they changed the bridal party entrance song to White Wedding by Billy Idol!  But we did this because white was a great way to utilize lighting in the space- it would reflect and array of colors, and was at once glamorous and tailored looking.  We worked with her to create an all white, modern look for her ceremony and reception, softened by amazing lighting, glamorous crystals and tons of draping and flowers.  Our team for the night included Verde Flowers, and Luminous Lighting.

Finally, we chose to seat guests at one long table, and dine family style…. This enabled us to maximize on that feeling of intimacy by creating points for interaction between guests.   Thanks so much to Perceptions Photography for sending over these photos!

I was so excited to get an email from Ben, a soon to be groom in Florida, saying that he’d been inspired by our blog post of Parris Whittingham’s shots of a groom popping the question and decided to have someone document him proposing to his fiance Hannah!  Here are some of the lovely pictures.

You can see Ben document his way down the aisle on his blog Ben the Groom.