Wow, where do I begin? I had such a wonderful
wedding planning experience. I owe a big thanks to LIWeddings because I found some fantastic vendors and got some great ideas and advice through this site. So now it is my turn to give back and share my experience and review with all of you. Please forgive me for taking so long to do this. After the wedding I just totally needed to decompress and I didn’t want to deal with anything wedding related for a while.
Our wedding plans hit a big obstacle, but survived… I got engaged in November of 2002, we set our date quickly thereafter for September 5th, 2004 and booked everything within the month or two that followed, EVERYTHING was done by early 2003. Then two and a half months before our wedding was to take place, my fiancé got a new job and would have to be away training in Albany for six months. He would only be able to come home on weekends. Since our wedding was planned for a Sunday evening and he had to be back up in Albany by Sunday evening, we had to change everything. I was devastated about the wedding, but thrilled for my fiancé at the same time. The wedding I planned for the past year and a half was gone, POOF, just like that! Don’t even get me started on the honeymoon (Tahiti was already booked and let’s not talk about the hours and hours of research that went into it). We decided the only thing to do was UPGRADE! (Okay, maybe I decided!)
We didn’t want to put the wedding off until 2005, I mean, we had already been engaged sine 11/02. We had to find a place that had a Saturday night available (daytime was not an option for me, this I was not willing to compromise on). I called the Carltun immediately, it had been my first choice all along, but I thought it would be out of our budget and so I didn’t even allow myself to look at it originally because I knew once I went there I wouldn’t be happy anywhere else. WELL!!! I think it was divine intervention! It was a miracle, they had one Saturday evening available in 2004: November 27th. We ran there, negotiated a contract and BAM!! Just like that my lovely wedding became my DREAM wedding. And I was thrilled with my new date. It was fate; Ed and I met Thanksgiving Eve 1993, got engaged the weekend before Thanksgiving in 2002 and now would be getting married the weekend after Thanksgiving in 2004. It did take some time to adjust to the idea of getting married in the fall though. I made all my decisions with a summer wedding in mind. But I wasn’t willing to change any of my ideas. My girls were wearing amethyst bridesmaids dresses and I was intent on doing pink flowers. I did darken the shades of pink, but I kept everything else the same. In the end it all came together beautifully and I wouldn’t change a thing if I had to do it all over again. Well, I would change one thing, you’ll find out about her later on in my review.
Please don’t do what I did…The Week Before the Wedding otherwise known as 'HELL WEEK.' Please learn from my experience: Pretend your wedding is a week before it actually is and get everything done accordingly. The amount of stress I put on myself the week before my wedding was just plain STUPID. I had the entire week off from work and I had visions of it being relaxing, a chance for me to slow down and pamper myself; perhaps I’d spend a day at the spa, catch up on some movies I’ve been wanting to see, take long walks, reflect on the fact that I am about to marry my soulmate, meet a few friends for drinks, etc. Well, Ha! HA! HA! HA! The joke was on me. I don’t know what the heck happened, but I had so much to do the week before the wedding that I really thought I might lose it. At one point, I was in my car driving to pick up my track suit that was being embroidered (cause god forbid I didn’t wear an embroidered track suit for my getting ready pics!) and as I was heading there, I was talking to a vendor on the phone and next to me in the passenger seat was my cousin, dialing another vendor on her cell phone. I ended my conversation only to be handed my cousin’s phone with the next vendor on the line. As I wrapped that conversation up, my cousin was dialing up the next vendor, I remember thinking: ‘this is what it feels like to be J.Lo.’ By the way, my cousin was like my angel on earth that week. She also took off the week before the wedding and helped me with so much. I wouldn’t have survived without her! Special shout-out to Susie!!!! Woooo hooo!
I had 100 favors that needed to be wrapped and brought to the Carltun, programs that needed to be picked up and brought to the church, 300 pillar candles that needed to be unwrapped and brought to the Carltun, place cards that needed to be picked up, a music list that needed to be worked on, my dress needed to be picked up... This list goes on and on. I can’t even think about it without getting that pit in my stomach. And of course my fiancé was up in Albany the whole week so I couldn’t even take my frustrations out on him
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. I actually ended up in the Doctor’s office because I was convinced I was getting sick and insisted that I be put on antibiotics, in retrospect, I think it was just stress. Bottom line is many of these things could have been handled in advance, why did I wait until the week of my wedding to start wrapping favors, get my track suit embroidered, meet with my DJ etc….? Learn from my near breakdown, do as much as you can, as early as you can.
LET THE REVIEW BEGIN!!!!Rehearsal Dinner: The Davenport Press, Main Street, Mineola- —9Most of our family and wedding party have been so wonderful and supportive that we really wanted to throw a fantastic rehearsal dinner as a way to say thank you. We had the private room upstairs at Davenport with an open bar and our own bartender. We tried to have more of a party atmosphere than a sit-down dinner. It worked because we had a huge wedding party. The service and the food at Davenport were great. My only slight complaint was that sometimes the bartender would be helping out the waiters and therefore he wasn’t behind the bar, so we had to wait a while, and would finally have to yell or whistle and then he’d appear (annoying when you are paying for open bar). But otherwise, the place was superb. I’ll definitely throw parties there in the future.
Our Rehearsal Menu (these menus have the distinct honor of being the only wedding-related thing I made myself, I’m so not crafty.)
Invitations and menus: Gaddis Design- —7Let me start by saying, I absolutely LOVE my invitations. Then let me add that they are totally not worth the money I spent on them. I am a believer in the 'you get what you pay for' mentality and I am willing to spend money to get what I want, but I don’t think my invitations are worth the money I spent on them. I spent about 1800 dollars on 125 invitations and direction cards. The design of them is beautiful; they are very unique and eye catching. I got soooo many compliments on them, even from men who would typically never notice stuff like invitations, but you couldn’t help but notice these invitations. My priest even called and left me a message telling me it was the nicest invite he has ever seen! My only problem with them is that the actual paper they are printed on is not overly impressive. The reason that they cost so much is that everything I wanted cost extra. I wanted black thermography instead of lithography: EXTRA! I wanted the floral pattern on the invite printed on both sides: EXTRA! I wanted black linen pouchettes instead of ivory: EXTRA! I was later told by two different invitation specialists that black pouchettes cost no more to order than ivory. This enraged me. I felt like I was nickeled and dimed. Melissa at Gaddis was generally great to work with, but I did feel like she was short on patience at times. Also, I didn’t feel like my options were explained to me very well. Like she’d mail me a bunch of samples with different patterns, different colors and different papers and I’d like a certain pattern or color shading and I’d tell her so, and then she’d automatically assume that I wanted the type of paper that that particular color sample was printed on. Things got very confusing. Later on when I was like, why do you have me down for textured paper when I said all along I wanted smooth, she replied because that is what you picked when I sent you the samples. I was like huh? Little things like that could have totally been avoided with better communication. All in all, she was nice to work with but I’m not sure I’d go the same route if I had to do it again.
Menus:
Programs: Laurie from LA Productions- —10Laurie is fabulous! I had a vision of what I wanted my programs to look like and she made it happen AT A VERY REASONABLE PRICE. They were so beautiful and well made, I was overwhelmed when I saw them. I definitely recommend her. There was a slight mix-up in the placement of a quote, but that would have been avoided if I actually looked at the proof she sent me. So I can’t blame anyone but me!
Parent thank-you page:
