Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

I will start off by saying that my wedding day was AMAZING!!!! We had so much fun and I wouldn’t have changed a thing! I tried to take care of as many details before the day and I found that my day went very smoothly…..the most stress I felt was when we were doing all the family pics and I was anxious to get them done so we could party (and that wasn’t that much stress). I am a “worrier”, but once the day got started, I was fine, everyone takes care of everything for you! It was definitely the best day of my life so far!

First and foremost….
LIW
I have said it before, and I will say it again---I’m not from long island, so I was more than a little nervous about planning a wedding here….thanks to Ron & Liz and all the ladies on the site I was able to plan the wedding of my dreams!!! I got so many great ideas and was able to research and contact vendors….my wedding wouldn’t have been the same without LIW!!

Rehearsal Dinner Tin Alley Grill
We wanted something really laid back pub feel for our rehearsal dinner…..we had a lot of people coming in from out of town and we wanted them to be able to mingle around to talk to everyone. We ended up in the bar area at Tin Alley which was perfect. The food was EXCELLENT and everyone enjoyed themselves!

Hair/Nails -Salon Blue
I love this place, so it was a no brainer to use them for my hair and nails. My bridesmaids, mother & stepmom went the day before for our nails and it was great…..we were able to all sit together and they brought us chocolate covered strawberries & pretzels and we were able to order lunch. The day of, all of my bridesmaids, myself and my mom had updos done. We had bagels/juice and coffee delivered when we got there and we had 3 stylists….everyone was happy with their hair and we got done ahead of schedule.

Makeup -Marie Katz
I was very nervous about my wedding day make-up. I wear minimal makeup on a daily basis (mostly just eyeliner & mascara), so I was worried that I would look totally overdone and not myself.
Marie is such a nice person and she makes you feel comfortable. She used airbrush makeup, which I loved!!! It really gave a flawless look but I didn’t feel like I had makeup on. It also lasted very well---even with all the hugging/kisses and tears! The day of, she showed up on time and I was so happy with my makeup….I looked like a more polished version of my normal self, which is just what I wanted! I would highly recommend Marie for makeup!!

My Jewelry -Thomas Knoell
I first saw his work at the LIW event last year and found what I had been searching for high and low. I am not a tiara girl (no offense), so I had been searching for an elegant hair pin allllll over. I ended up making an appt and got 2 hair pins and my earrings….I absolutely love them and they are something I can pass down in our family.

Wedding Party Jewelry -CJB Designs
This is another vendor I found thru LIW. Cortney is great—so creative and she does beautiful work! I first ordered 2 bracelets from her—one for my FG and the other for my JrBM. I was so happy with them that I decided to order earrings for my BMs….they matched perfectly and looked great! I would highly recommend Cortney and she was so helpful in deciding what would look good!

Bridesmaid Dresses -JCrew
So, bridesmaid dresses was one of the harder decisions for me! I knew that I wanted tea length dresses and something classically elegant. My MOH and I looked all over, we were constantly emailing each other ideas. So, the weekend before Christmas last year she called me to tell me she found “the dress”—a chocolate brown velvet tea length dress from JCrew, part of their “holiday” collection. I went over to my JCrew, tried it on and totally agreed….it was perfect! Luckily I had wonderful bridesmaids who all went to their JCrews, tried it on and I worked on getting all the sizes.
Bridesmaid Gifts –I got each girl a simple wrap from H&M, their earrings (see above), flip flops from Old Navy (their shoes were very high heeled and they also came in handy when we got our pedicures), they each got one of the bottles of philosophy body wash from the ‘wedding’ scents, monogrammed note pads from barnes&noble and then I got them each something small individual to them.

Flower Girl Dress –Century21
I found an US Angels dress for my FG during the Easter season for much less then I had seen in the bridal stores. I bought fabric and made a velvet brown sash to match the bridesmaids dresses.

Alterations – Phyllis from Bridal Elegance
I got my dress through someone I know, but it wasn’t feasible for me to do my alterations with them due to the distance, so I decided to go to Phyllis after reading multiple good reviews of her on LIW. She was great and I was really happy with how the dress fit! I did end up switching to flipflops at the reception, so my dress dragged a bit when it was bustled, so in hindsight I probably should have brought the flipflops when I was getting alterations, but that was my fault. Overall, I was very satisfied, and the price was right!

Slip – Ebay
I don’t remember the vendors name, but I found the exact slip I had tried on with my dress for a bunch less!

Garter- Garters by Gingersnap
This website is great for customized garters—they do sports, heritage, etc…..I chose a Native American design as my mom is Iroquois—it came out great!

Veil—Barrons at TriCounty
I wanted a simple, plain edge 2 layer fingertip veil. They matched it perfect to my dress and even measured for the length (I am pretty tall, so a ‘fingertip’ on someone else would probably be a bit short on me!) It took about 2 weeks to get my veil, they told me how to store it and they were very reasonable.

Day of Undies—CustomGlamgirl.com
I married a full blooded Irishman, so I got white boy shorts with my new last name printed in green with shamrocks—so cute that I ended up buying a matching tank!


Invitations -Notfromabox.com
I knew what I wanted for invitations—when we first started looking I kept saying it would be easier to just have them printed custom because I knew what I wanted but couldn’t find it. We did find some that came close but were waaaayyyyy out of our budget. I was very impressed with notfromabox, my invites were exactly as I wanted and they were always quick to respond to my questions/emails.

Save the dates –DIY
I can’t really rate myself and DH, but we did get the paper/envelopes from paper-source.com and I was very satisfied.

Flowers – Flower Michele
I had a pretty good idea what I wanted for flowers before we met with any florists. I even had found a pic of exactly the bok I wanted on LIW. We met with a few florists, but neither of us were totally satisfied—for us customer service and the overall feeling you get from the person is just as important as their work. When we met with John from Flower Michele, we both knew we would book him for flowers. It didn’t hurt that he was actually the one who had made that bok I had found the picture of on LIW! The day of we were both very happy with the flowers, my bok and the girls were beautiful and the centerpieces looked great! I will admit, I never saw the flowers at the church (not because they weren’t there, DH says they were gorgeous---I was just too focused on DH!!!!) My overall “theme” for the flowers was sage green colored hydrangeas with ivory/pinkish roses. Overall, I loved my flowers and he was able to work within our budget—highly recommend!

Tuxedos—Tuxedo Park
These guys were easy to work with, the tuxes great and we were happy. The tuxes ended up being a bit more then we wanted the guys to have to spend, but they really did look great! I was impressed by their overall customer service.

DJ- Music by Michael
I can not recommend him highly enough!!!!!! I am a big believer that the music can make or break a wedding…so it was very important to me that we have good music!! I found Music by Michael on this website and I knew before I met him just by reading the reviews that he was going to be a perfect fit for us! He is very organized with attention to detail and also has a ton of experience. I was also impressed by his use of the computer for DJing and his website to help make music selections. We were able to have as much or as little control of our music as we wanted. He helped with all my special requests and we had no issues the day of---he had the dance floor packed and really read the crowd well. Another highly recommend!!!!

Limo -Alexis Limo
Limos weren’t a huge deal for me, we just wanted something big to get us where we needed to be! Alexis had what we wanted at the right price. The day of they were on time, clean and our driver was sooo nice and we had no issues!!!

Photo/Video -Proline Studios
Review to follow---we have our proofs, and I am very happy, but I just haven’t finished going thru all of them yet. Overall, very pleased so far, everyone was very professional and I will write a more detailed review when I’m done looking at allllll the proofs!!!

Hotels for OOT guests –Executive Inn & Inn at Fox Hollow
No problems with either….wish we would have blocked more rooms with Executive Inn, but it was so hard to estimate how many we would need.
I stayed at the Inn at FH the night before and DH and I stayed there the night of our wedding….the room was great—I heard the breakfast was nice too!

Other DIYs
-OOT boxes—I bought leftover gable boxes from another LIW bride and put in 2 waters, mints, chips, cookies, directions/local restaurants/shopping and a NYC Guide (we had a ton of OOT guests and a lot of them were also going into NYC at some point during their visit)
-table numbers –we took pics of our dog on CW Post campus posed with a piece of white foam core and then DH used photoshop to put a number on the foam core—they turned out great!!
-photo cube card box—DH and my step dad helped with the actual construction. We got SOOOO many compliments on this!
-Family wedding pics/memory candle—we had a table with pics of our parents and grandparents wedding pics and in the middle we had our memory candle (thanks Gina for the template!)
-Kids coloring books –huge hit with all our nieces and nephews
-Unity candle—another very easy DIY!
-Programs—my mom found the program paper, made by garnier studios and they were also easy!
-Donation favor cards—DH is more creative than me, so he helped design them
-Placecards—I bought them at Target and printed them myself, very easy!
-Bubble basket—I bought the bubbles at Michaels and tied brown and sage green ribbon on them and put them in a little tin basket


Fox Hollow
We had our reception in the Garden Terrace room with cocktail hour in the Briar Fox.
I think the Fox Hollow was one of the first reception halls we looked at and we both loved it!! I left there the first time pretty much knowing that this was the place, but DH and I agreed to look at a few more halls since I had really no experience with LI reception halls. Overall we were very happy with their service, they know how to do a wedding. Our MD was Sam and our bridal attendant was Christina—both were extremely helpful and things ran smooth all day. For our anniversary dance Sam went and got flowers and champagne for the ‘winner’—it was a very nice touch! Christina was always checking on me, getting us drinks, mints, whatever we needed…when it was time to go, everything was packed up and she walked us over with our stuff to the hotel. I could go on for days, but overall, the food was great, our guests were raving about the cocktail hour, the drinks were good and I couldn’t be happier!!!

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

Congrats!!! Sounds like your day was amazing!!
Cannot wait to see pics!

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

Congrats on having a wonderful wedding day! Can't wait to see photos!

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

Congrats!!!
Can't wait to see pics!!

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

CONGRATS!!

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

Congrats to you! I feel the same way about Music by Michael, he was AWESOME!!!!

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

congrats, can't wait to see pics

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

Congratulations! I am so happy you had a wonderful day at Fox Hollow. I can't wait to see your pictures!

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

great review! Can't wait to see pics!!!

Re: Our 11/06 wedding....Fox Hollow, Music by Michael, Flower Michele, Marie Katz, Proline and more!!!!

congrats!!!