NYIT De Seversky Center = AWESOME

First off let me say that I'm the Groom so this is a Groom's Review, not a Bride's Review. Now that that's out of the way, let's get on with said review:

NYIT De Serversky Center is AWESOME.

The fact that the groom, not the bride, is writing this review should tell you that this place is THAT good. If that isn't enough justification for you, let me provide some specifics (ranked from Most Important to Least).

SERVICE

From top to bottom, the service they provided from Day 1 when we met with Anthony (Gen. Manager), all the way to our wedding day, was above and beyond amazing. But my wife and I were a little skeptical when we first visited De Seversky. From what we heard, it was way out of our price range. Price is, after all, a very huge factor when planning a wedding. And then we got there and we fell in love with the place. If you've seen pictures, it's a beautiful venue with gorgeous landscaping, and has that Great Gatsby type of mansion charm that permeates every inch of the mansion and its grounds. Once we sat down with Anthony, we were brought back to reality as we started to talk pricing. But like I said, Anthony was perfect. He asked us what we wanted and he did his very best to work with us. A couple emails and phone calls later, we booked it. I can't stress how great Anthony was. He was very responsive to emails, always willing to give us a call when we had questions, and even stayed late to meet us on weeknights. The entire process was very personal and we never felt like we were one of a million bride and grooms vying for some attention from a wedding factory sales rep. And then there's the wedding day...Saturday August 2, 2008. That Saturday was probably the rainiest day of the year. Checking weather reports the entire week prior, we knew that there was a good chance of rain on our special day. Speaking with Anthony, we were told that we had to make a decision to have the wedding either indoors or outdoors by Friday 5pm (logistical reasons). To be safe, we chose indoors. Sure enough, at 10am the next morning, the sky was dark and the rain came down from what seemed like every direction. Not good. When we arrived at De Seversky at 3pm for pictures, the rain had suddenly stopped. Although it stopped, we were still bummed because we had already told them to setup indoors, which they did. As time went on it got sunnier and sunnier. Then at around 4pm (ceremony started at 430), Terrance aka 'T-Bone', our maitre'd, gave us great news - that he was going to try to have our wedding OUTdoors as originally planned! So in about 20 minutes time, everything that was setup inside was moved and setup outside! The fact that T-bone and his staff were willing to flip the wedding on such short notice goes to show the level of service and dedication they had to our wedding. This level of service lasted throughout the evening. T-Bone was always there whenever we needed him, and he did a great job of working with us and the vendors to make sure everything was in order. Just to reiterate the point - the service that we received at the De Seversky Center was excellent. My wife and I could not have asked for more attention and care.

VENUE

As I mentioned previously, the mansion and the grounds surrounding it are immaculate. Probably the greatest but under appreciated characteristics of this venue is the drive INTO it. As you enter the campus, you can tell that you've entered a college campus with building signs at each corner. Then as you clear the trees, you can see the mansion in the distance. As you drive closer, you approach the stone gate and it's as if you've been transported out of Long Island entirely. The tree-lined driveway is also an excellent touch, making your guests' entrance to your wedding that much more memorable. And believe me, we've gotten plenty of comments from our guests about the drive up to De Seversky alone. As for the rest of the grounds, our photographers had a field day with it. Every inch of the venue is picturesque. Needless to say, my wife and I received countless comments and praises about De Seversky and how beautiful it was. The inside of the mansion is equally awesome. It's hard to describe how great it looks inside. If you take a look at their website, you'll get the gist of it (but it looks even better in real life). The bridal suite is huge and my wife loved it. It's not just a make shift room in the corner somewhere, but an actual bedroom upstairs with its own full bathroom. The Garden Room where we had the Party portion of the reception (we had the European Style Wedding) created the perfect atmosphere for a dance party. It's pretty much a large solarium. With the drapes drawn, you can see out into the sky. Very nice touch. Overall the venue was simply perfect.

FOOD

My wife and I didn't get to eat much of the food but from what we heard from our guests, it was very good. The Duck entree in particular received rave reviews. Not only is it delicious, but they actually give you HALF of a duck. Not just a wing, or a breast, or a thigh...half a duck. My wife and I thought we received generous portions since we were the guests of honor, but we found out later that everybody got half a duck. I wish I could elaborate on the food but we were having so much fun that we didn't eat that much :)

CONCLUSION

As a venue, De Seversky far exceeded our expectations. It's been 3 months and we STILL talk about how perfect everything was for our wedding. From the service, to the grounds, to the food, along with 172 of our closest friends and family, my wife and I can honestly say that it was the greatest night of our lives.

If any of you have any questions regarding De Seversky, please send me a PM and we'll be glad to help.

Thanks for reading!

We were initially quoted a price between $120 and $150 pp depending on the package. And like I mentioned in the review, they did a great job of working with us on the package, tailoring it to meet our needs and our price point as well. I don't want to give out the exact price per head, but it was below the initial quoted price. It also helped that we only had a 6 month engagement so it was fairly short notice. We were very happy with our price :)

And worry not, the pictures are on the way!

Thanks to everybody for reading the review!

Originally I was going to keep this review to just De Seversky but the heck....here goes my short take on the requested items:

FLORIST - Uncle Sam

My uncle is a florist so he took care of the flowers us. His name is Sam and is a pretty well known Orchid distributor in the area. With that said, our wedding was mostly orchids which gave it a kind of tropical feel. We gave him basic information on the flowers and we let him run with it. Sounds like blasplhemy but we didn't know what our flowers would look like until we arrived at De Seversky as bride and groom :) Needless to say we loved our flowers and my uncle did a fantastic job. It also helps that De Seversky is so elegant and beautiful already that you don't need a lot of flowers to make it look nice.

DJ/Band - DJ's at Work

DJ's at Work were referred to us by my wife's coworkers and came with rave reviews. As someone who used to dance hip hop, and knowing all my dancing friends were going to be at the wedding, music was a very important to me personally. The Tubridy's and their team did a great job with our wedding. I initially wanted to give them an exact play list but I wasn't able to due to time constraints. I was only able to give me ideas and genres of music for each part of our wedding. And like the florist, I put faith in the DJ to run with it. I still get requests for copies of our wedding playlist :) Also another huge thing for us was that we didn't want a DJ that acted as an Emcee and take over the entire wedding. The wedding is about us, not the Emcee that wants to put on a show. We mentioned this to our DJ and they were totally fine with it. He only made a few necessary announcements upon our request and let his music do the talking for him so to speak. And finally, when it came to flipping the wedding from indoor to ourdoors, they were very cooperative and switched the sound systems without a hitch.

Officiant - Marie April Gismondi

Oh the power of Google! My wife is Christian and I am Buddhist, so we needed an officiant that was willing to perform Interfaith marriages. We found April through Google and she happened to be one of the recommended vendors from De Seversky as well. What luck! We had a short meeting session at her house where she got to know us and our story. From that meeting, April wrote a beautiful ceremony script that was very personalized. With our story weaved into the ceremony, it made it that much more special for our guests as well. And since she worked at De Seversky before, she was comfortable with the staff and the venue. She also provides her own PA system that plugged right into our DJ's setup. Great job all around!

Photographer, Videographer, Hair, Makeup, Tuxes, Bridesmaids dresses, Limo - True Love Flushing

We went with an all-inclusive wedding company called True Love, located in Flushing Queens. They handled photography (wedding day + engagement), hair, makeup, bridesmaid dresses, tuxedos, videography, and limo service. True Love offered all these services for a very affordable price. They were great to work with overall. We hired 2 photographers but on our wedding day, but he showed up with 2 more photographers, giving us 4 photographers and 2 videographers total. We had our own mob of paparazzi! With the benefits of having one place handling all these things, it also has some drawbacks. The main drawback is that you'll be limited to what True Love offers (ie dresses, tuxes, etc). But if you go in knowing this and are OK with it (which we were), they did just fine for us.

OK - I think that's it. Hope this helps! If you need any contact information, please send me a PM and I'll gladly forward it to you.

I used Pastor April and True Love as well. Isn't Pastor April great? She received more compliments than I did on my wedding day.
You had 4 photographers??? with True Love?
I only had ONE! I wonder if my photographer was able to catch all the little details. I'm still waiting for my proofs but I I would love to see some of your pictures if you're willing to share.

Yeah Pastor April is great. We read a draft of the ceremony script to Amy's sister and she almost cried! And for those of you who aren't married yet, try to work it out in the ceremony where you can turn around and LOOK at your guests while the officiant speaks. As they say, it's all about the people, not the wedding details. By seeing your guests smile and mouth 'hi' to you, that point really hits home.

And yes, I'll be posting up pics soon. There's too many of them!