Anniversary Dance and Bridal Hair Clip Giveaway!

One element that didn't go as planned for me was our Anniversary Dance. I decided pretty early on in the planning process to do an Anniversary Dance at the wedding. However, I don't think many people really understood what was happening and just kept dancing. The "Winners" of our dance - for being married 50 years - actually weren't married at all! They just kept dancing and weren't listening to the instructions from the band! They were family friends from Chris' side so I didn't know who they were, so I ran over to them to give them a bridesmaid bouquet thinking " They look so young to be married 50 years!"

Until I was informed that they actually weren't even married...At first, I was pissed, but what could I do about it? Then I started to laugh, cause it actually was kind of funny. Oh well...sorry to whoever SHOULD have won!

Speaking of winning things you shouldn't have won in the first place, I won this gorgeous hair clip from the blog A Reccessionist Ties the Knot last December.

I was so excited to wear it in my hair on my wedding day. However, once I picked out my hairstyle and elements for the day, like Mrs. Recessionista, it didn't really work with my hairstyle or overall look. And so, once again, it went completely un-used.

Recessionista described this by saying the following:
"The hair pin is an ivory (with tulle accents) silk rose hair pin (see similar style here), made of gorgeous dupioni silk."
 
This has NEVER BEEN WORN. It is in brand new condition and just waiting to be used for your gorgeous wedding! I really hope the next person that has this can get some use out of it!

To Enter:

1. Leave me a comment below of why you think this will be the perfect addition to your wedding day look.

Extra Entries if you:

1. Tweet the following: "I just entered @lwoodsny bridal hair clip giveaway!
Check it out here!" And leave me a comment saying you tweeted.
2. Blog about this entry and leave me a comment with the link
3. Follow this blog, and leave me a comment saying you do.

Giveaway ends next Wednesday December 7, 2011 at 11:59pm EST.

Wedding Recap: Brides are in High Demand

One of the perks of being a bride is you may be in high demand out on the dance floor! Everyone wants a chance to dance with the bride, and I tried my hardest to dance with as many people as possible.

I LOVED dancing with Adrian, my friend Christina's NAVY husband. He is by far, the best dancer I've ever danced with (sorry Chris). He dipped, twirled, and spun me around to Brown Eyed Girl!

Then I danced with my Father-in-Law

My friend, Dave, from High School made it out for the party (and had an early rehearsal in Manhattan the next morning!)

I danced with my dad, of course:

But I of course had to also dance with my Mother:

Chris's parent's friend, Kevin was also a fabulous dancer! He spun me around to Frank Sinatra and made me feel like a dancer!

ElizabethP.

My Brother in Law, Michael:

My friend Benjamin!! FYI: ever since Mandy and Billy's wedding, I always dance with ties, as seen below:

Even Kerry couldn't resist stealing me away for a little air guitar dancing

But naturally, my favorite dance partner of the night was this fellow:

Yep...being a bride is fun, live it up if you can!! :)

Wedding Recap: Dancing the Night Away

I have hundreds and hundreds of fantastic pictures of our guests dancing at our reception. I wish I could share them all with you...but I know that's just silly. Just know that from the looks of things, we all had a fabulous time dancing the night away.

There was lots of air guitar:

And air guitar with Kerry:

I have hundreds of photos from our reception, and I want to share them ALL..but I realize that's ridiculous. So I think we can all agree the obvious solution was a slideshow!

Enjoy!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Wishing you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving today. I am so thankful for My Hubby:

 My little Zoey:

and my Family:

Including my 16 year old "puppy" Shadow!

I hope you have as much to be thankful for this year as I do! Let the Holiday season begin!

Wedding Recap: Our Wagner Family

Chris and I are very lucky that we have an amazing group of friends from Wagner College, where we met.  We had 31 friends from our days at Wagner attend our wedding, and each and every person has been so special to us in the 7 years we've been dating! So far we've celebrated birthdays, weddings, and babies with this crew and I can only expect tons more celebrations in the future!

We are very lucky and very grateful to have our Wagner Family :)

Wedding Recap: At Last

Firstly: Happy 6 month anniversary to my Hubby! I can't believe it's been 6 months already!!

When Chris and I first saw our band, Arcadia, perform their showcase back in 2010 they performed an amazing version of At Last by Etta James. I just about lost it when the saxophone came in for the solo, and their singer did the song unbelievably well. It was one of the songs that totally sold me on going with them in the end. Though we had chosen a Dave Matthews Band song for our first dance, I really wanted to make sure that Chris and I also got to dance to At Last at some point in the night.

I asked the band to play it near the end of the night and to make sure that Chris and I were up close to them when they did it. When the time came and they called us up to the dance floor, Chris was nowhere to be found!! While people ran off to look for him, I waited and....danced with myself.

Finally, the Groom comes running out to the dance floor!

I hadn't intended this dance to be just us, but for the first half that's kind of what it was...luckily people slowly started to trickle onto the dance floor and join us.

 

Though it's hard to tell what this picture is, it's actually taken in the mirror above the dance floor, so it's kind of an aerial shot of us dancing!

 Just listen to how amazing the singer is! Also note how I pretty much sing along for most of the song:

I was glad that I requested this, because though we were together a lot that night, it was easy to get pulled in 20 different directions and not be "in the moment". This forced us to calm down for a bit, and just be together for few minutes before we were pulled in different directions again. I highly recommend talking to your DJ or band about doing something like this for your reception.

Did/Will you have a "second" first dance near the end of your reception?

Friday Find: Photographer Promo Video

Friday Find: Every day on blogs we see weddings typically from the bride and groom's perspective. We read about what they felt that day, what they experienced, what they took away from it all. Very rarely do we hear from the photographer's perspective themselves, other than to say "I shot this amazing wedding today, check it out!"

This photographer made a promotional video for himself, but I think he does it in such a classy, emotional, and non self-serving way. I envy his love and passion for his job. If this doesn't make you want to go out and hire Kirk Mastin for your wedding, I don't know what will!

Mastin Studio Photography from Shep Films on Vimeo.

My sister and her boyfriend are visiting us this weekend to meet their niece, Zoey!! Have a great weekend!

Wedding Recap: Viennese Hour

Ask anyone: I am a sweets person. I would rather forgo any appetizer so I can have dessert. I LOVE dessert. So Viennese Hour was something I was extremely excited about. With one hour left to go of our reception, carts filled with a variety of desserts were rolled out onto the dance floor.

When all the different dessert stations were lined up on the dance floor, this is how it looked!

Chris and I walked around the selection taking it all in.

 

Chris went crazy for the baklava they provided. I even found out what bakery they got it from and ordered some for Chris' birthday as a surprise back in August!

But my favorite by far, was the chocolate fountain - where we could dip a variety of things such as strawberries, marshmallows, pineapple, banana, and rice crispy treats into the chocolate!

 

Here are our friends enjoying their selections!

This was my friend Kate's dessert plate that she posted to facebook:

KateV

Are you as obsessed with dessert as I am?

Wedding Recap: Cutting the Cake

Near the end of the night it was time for us to cut the cake! Remember I said that there was one other thing I was upset about with our florist? When I first met with our florist, I mentioned that we would like flowers for our cake. However, meeting with him again two days before the wedding it somehow got overlooked to reconfirm those details. Before cocktail hour our banquet Manager, Mohamed, came up to me:

Mohamed: "Was the florist supposed to drop off flowers to decorate your cake?"
Me: "Yes! Did they not leave any?"
Mohamed: Looking down at my bouquet..."Nope, everything's fine, don't worry about it." 

I can't be certain, but if you ask me: I think Mohamed sent one of his staff members to the florist down the street to buy matching purple roses to decorate our cake. When Chris and I walked into the reception hall an hour later, this is what we saw:

Like my bouquet...this wasn't exactly how I envisioned it with green cascading flowers, but it was still pretty and I was fine with it.

I don't think many people really watched us cut the cake, or even knew it was going on. It wasn't all "everyone stop what they're doing and watch" which took a bit of the pressure off of us, and became more of a photo shoot than anything else.

It was a close call on my Wednesday Wedding Poll as to which flavor we should pick, but french cream won 51% to cannoli cream filling at 44%.  In the end, we also decided on vanilla cake with french cream filling because we knew that cannolis would also be served at dessert.

The "Mr. and Mrs." Banner I made the exact same way I made my "Thank You" Banner for the card box table. I actually made this for our sweetheart table, but it ended up fitting much better on our cake table. 

And that was our cake!