"I'm ready for my close-up Mr. Demille"

I'm still waiting to hear back from Allen at Déjà Vu Studios about our engagement shoot. I'm going to call him tonight to demand ask that we set up a date because I need to make sure I can get off work for it since it will need to be during the week. Chris and I will be getting our pictures done at Wagner College and I'm soooo excited.

I think Wagner's Campus is truly beautiful and will be the perfect backdrop for our pictures for scenery and very appropriate since it is, after all, where we met!
Many a day and night were spent hanging out on the oval in front of Main Hall:

 This is the view from Wagner's parking lot!

I've also researched some places to go get our pictures taken in-between the ceremony and reception on our wedding day. The church we are getting married at isn't the most scenic of places and while Sandcastle has a nice garden in the back, I would like to have some more options as far as pictures go. There is the Garden City Gazebo, but it's sort of just a gazebo, and if another bride gets there first....she wins.

Many of the photographers we visited suggested Old Westbury Gardens. This place is really beautiful and they have a ton of different locations to get pictures taken, including inside and outside an old mansion that is on the premises!!

You have to book the specific locations you want to take pictures in advance and there are all sorts of restrictions, paperwork and even a small fee involved, but I do think it will be worth it. I'm hoping to go check this place out soon with Chris, because this would be somewhere I'd want to go spend a sunny Spring afternoon anyway!

Anyway, I will be kind of neglecting this blog for the next week and a half as I gear up for the More Half Marathon on April 25th. I'm getting real close to race day and my entries on my running blog, Running to Nowhere have kind of taken precedence for the time being. I'm so excited and ready for race day!!!

Meet My Bridal party!!

Now that the venue, wedding dress, band, photographer and bridesmaid dresses are picked, and we're almost at the year mark for our wedding, I think it's time to officially introduce my bridal party to the world in a special feature called:

"Meet My Bridal Party!!"

MELISSA- Maid of Honor:

Melissa is my dear 21 year old sister, who lives IN HER OWN HOUSE in Pennsylvania with her 2 rescued cats, Penguin (see left) and Puma, 2 guinea pigs, Jane and Kora, a silky terrier named Geno, oh, and she has a horse, too! She is a Physical Therapist Assistant at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital. Though I don't get to see sister, (as I call her) as often as I'd like, we are very close and I feel very lucky to have her in my life. With our countless "ur mom" and "that's what she said" jokes, I can pretty much guarantee that I'll be in hysterics when hanging out with her. I am so excited that she is my maid of honor, and can share this exciting time in my life with her!


CASSIE:

Cassie and I met through doing our Junior High School plays, and ultimately our friendship grew while we were at our summer theater camp, Stage Door Workshop. Even though Cassie was a year older than me in school, we remained in touch all through college and still today. I don't get to see Cassie nearly as much as I'd like. Of all my bridesmaids she is physically the farthest away from me. But I always enjoy catching up with Cassie and I know that even though we don't get to see each other as much, no matter what, we will always be there for each other, and that's something that is very important to me. Cassie lives with her husband in Silver Spring, Maryland and is a teacher at Excel Academy Public Charter School in South East DC.


MALLORY:
Mallory has the distinct honor of knowing me longer than any other member of my bridal party...including my own sister! As a fellow Schnecksvillian, Mal and I have known each other since we were about 2 years old and have attended pre-school, elementary school, Jr. high, and high school together! Like most of my bridesmaids, our friendship grew stronger through doing the school plays together in High School. She's stolen lovers from me (A Midsummer Night's Dream), been a fellow Pink Lady (Grease), set me up with a husband (Fiddler on the Roof), put a spell on my husband so I'd never have children (Into the Woods), as well as countless other equally ridiculous scenarios. Mal and I also lived together for a summer in Little Italy and needless to say..we've been through a lot together! Mal is currently living in Hoboken, and plans to start Law school in Fall 2010. I'm very blessed to have had Mal as a friend for as many years as I've had, and am so happy to have her as one of my bridesmaids.


MANDY:

Like Cassie, Mandy and I became friends in Junior High through doing the school plays together. We further became closer through Stage Door Workshop, our summer theater camp and have been very close friends ever since! Mandy works in Affiliate Relations at ABC where her VERY soon to be husband also works in Rights and Clearances! Our friendship has grown even stronger through the past two years since we work across the street from each other in Manhattan, take lunch together almost every day, see each other often on weekends and have been able to share wedding planning highs and lows with each other! Mandy is a reliable, dedicated friend who is always willing to listen when I need to vent and I am so blessed to have her in my life.


MOLLY:

Molly was assigned to me as my Freshman Link student my sophomore year of college. I was there to answer any questions she may have about Wagner and help her feel welcome to the college. As it turns out...we lived about 20 minutes away from each other in Pennsylvania, went to neighboring High Schools and knew a lot of the same people! Through that a great friendship was born. Even though I was the one initially assigned to her to be the "older, wiser one", Molly has given me incredible words of wisdom and advice through the years that has helped me tremendously. We lived together for  8 months in Astoria last year where we watched lots of bad reality TV (Housewives of New Jersey), ate entirely too much home-baked goodies (well..I did anyway) and spent countless nights leafing through dozens of wedding magazines. Now, Molly is back in PA earning her Masters in Library Science at Kutztown University. Molly is a warm, kind person and has always been a constant source of support, love and guidance for me.

So there are my 5 beautiful and wonderful Bridesmaids!! I love each and every one of them and can't wait till the festivities begin and we are all in one place at one time.

However, I have one more person to add and would be remiss to leave out an important member of our wedding day:

BEN:

Though Ben is not a "Bridesmaid" for obvious reasons, we still consider him an esteemed member of our Bridal Party. Chris and I haven't figured out the logistics of our ceremony yet, but we are going to make sure that there is a reading or two that Ben will deliver during our wedding. He currently works at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital and lives in Manhattan. Ben is truly one of my closest friends and I can't imagine him not being a part of my big day. I first met Ben during Choir Camp my freshman year of college, and we have been friends ever since. We Spring Break'd together every single year of college, first with various Choir Tours, and then the Senior Cruise our last year. Senior year, we were the President and Vice President of Choir. After college we shared our very first "big kid" apartment together in Astoria from August '07 to May '09. The long and short of it: We've had some damn good times. We've been there for each other through it all and I cannot imagine the last 7 years of my life, or my wedding, without him.

Maybe I can get Chris to write something about his handsome groomsmen...though, I'm not holding my breath. However, they are: 

Michael, Mike, James, Chris, and Matt. Lots of M names!!

If I had to put our bridal party into a mathematical equation it would be:
Mx7+C2+J+B=(L+C)4Ever! 

 I just love a good math joke!

Bridesmaid Dresses!

I can't believe it, but I found my bridesmaid dresses! They are Bill Levkoff, strapless (though anyone can add straps or a halter if they prefer) and are clover with a black band under the bust:

I think these with some cream flower bouquets, (or maybe some white calla lilies?) will really look pretty and I'm sooooo excited about them! I was completely amazed at how easy this whole process was. Molly came over to my house around 1:30 on Saturday and we had some good, quality Laura & Molly catching up time. Melissa came over around 2:00, grabbed some food and then we hit the road with my mom and headed to Bridals by Sandra, where I am getting my wedding dress.

When we got there, we looked through their selection and pulled a ton of dresses that we were interested in. The woman that helped us, Jackie, was extremely helpful and attentive. She put all our dress selections in a dressing room as we pulled them. Once we had a ton of dresses set aside, we went back to the dressing room where Molly and Melissa tried on one dress after another. We narrowed it down to three dresses we liked: a grecian style dress with really neat knotted straps and knotted band under the bust, and a plain V-neck dress with straps that came down and knotted under the bust. All three of us kept coming back to this Bill Levkoff dress. It fit them the best, it looked great on, and to top it all off when Jackie brought us the color swatches for each of the three dresses...the green options in the other two dresses just weren't exactly what I was looking for.

I cannot believe how easy that was and also how confident I am in these dresses for my bridesmaids. Somehow this turned into the easiest part of the process so far! I expected to go out at least 2 more times after this. (Dare I say I'm bummed I won't have more research or entries on the great bridesmaid dress shopping hunt?!) As we left, Molly mentioned that she had hoped she could get to see my wedding gown while she was there. My mom went back to the dressing room to find Jackie and asked her to bring out my dress so I could show Molly. She brought it out and then she said "do you want to put it on?" OF COURSE!! So we shuffled back into the dressing room where I got to model my gown for Molly. It was so exciting putting the dress back on again, I'm just eager to see how it will fit me when I actually have it fitted correctly to me.

To round our out day, we went back home, picked up my dad and headed out to dinner at Bellissimos Italian Restaurant in Allentown. It was an exciting day full of family bonding, Molly/Melissa/Laura bonding, great food, pretty dresses and another check mark added to my checklist!

Reception Hall: Check

Church for ceremony: Check

Wedding Dress: Check

Photographer: Check

Wedding Band: Check
Bridesmaid Dresses: Check

What do I do now?!?!

Wedding Pic of the day...so cute!!:

Bridesmaid Dresses

Happy Easter and Happy Spring! It's warm, sunny and I couldn't feel better! (I'd say my SADD has finally lifted!) Tomorrow I start my first day of bridesmaid dress shopping!! I will be accompanied by my mom, Sister Melissa, Molly and possibly Mal.

(Stay tuned next week for a special "Meet My Bridal Party" Feature!)

I want to bring some pictures of dresses I like to the appointment and I'm really hoping they have a good selection. My wedding colors are cream, black and green. But, I just don't know what color green to go with...there are so many different hues and colors of green, it's amazing!!


I looked a while ago on Dessy.com, and found some nice colors and color combinations that I really liked. The greens that I liked were Shamrock, Clover and Evergreen, though I think I like shamrock the best. I like the idea of having a two color dress, either green with a hint of black or a hint of white, and I found a lot of options with colors in the After Six collection I found online, though I'm not sure how common these dresses are, or how expensive.
I sent a few pictures to my sister. This one was her favorite:

Here are some others I like:

this is the Clover color:

This is Evergreen color:

What do you think? Do you think the green and black combo is nice? Which dress is your favorite?
I'll let you know how tomorrow goes.

Happy EASTER!

May I have the envelope please....

I had an ENTIRELY different blog post written last week in which I told you all what band and photographer we went with. However, there was a week long bit of drama, back and forth emails, broken promises, etc. that went on with one particular band and in the matter of a few days, we switched gears and decided to go with an entirely different band. However, I have to say I am soooo excited by our choice and I know they are going to be perfect for our wedding!!!
It's a looooong, convoluted, complicated, boring story that I don't really need to get into, (if you're really curious about it, you can ask me) but that's why it took me so long to write regarding our decisions.

However, as of today we have a contract in hand, a deposit in the mail, and I can happily report this search is done and I'm moving forward. The winners are........drum roll please............:

Band: Arcadia

Photographer: Déjà Vu Studios

To be fair, I do feel I need to give my reviews on the last two band showcases we saw, which will include Arcadia, who we ultimately decided to go with.

Monday, March 15th- East Coast
East Coast was soooo good!! they are def. in the top 4 of the bands we had seen. One of their former lead singers, Michael Lynche, is actually on American Idol right now. He's obviously really good and talented, so it's a shame they don't have him with them anymore. Their new male singer was good, but he doesn't stick out in my mind. However, they DID have Keith Hill perform with them, who was the replacement singer on Broadway's Movin' Out a few years ago, and an amaaazing Billy Joel performer. They were a large band with a great sound and many really great singers. I had to drag Chris there (we were starting to get a little exhausted with all this band searching) but in the end I'm really glad we went. Unfortunately, while they were a 10 piece band that night, Keith Hill and his female singer are an "extra add-on" from their usual 8 pieces. Adding the two of them significantly increases the price. After seeing the 10 people perform, it was a little difficult for me to envision the band with 8. However, I would definitely recommend this band to anyone looking for a wedding band.

On Wednesday 3/17 we saw Arcadia. Arcadia was AMAZING. They have some really great strengths that set them apart from the other bands. 1) their saxophone player/band manager, Gus, was all around awesome at playing sax, singing, and business professionalism when dealing with the bookings. He and one of the singers performed an amazing version of Etta James' "At Last." I think every single band we saw performed this song, but I have to say, they did it best. 2) They had a drummer and a percussionist who was on bongos/cowbell/every percussion instrument you can think of. 3) They had a male singer who sounded perfect in the Frank Sinatra type songs. He didn't sing anything until quite a few songs in, and when he started singing "Fly me to the Moon" Chris and I looked at each other like "Where has this man been hiding??!" Arcadia appealed to me because they can cover a wide array of song styles and genres. They had the old classics down, the rock down, as well the contemporary. You can hear some of their sound clips here. I hope you like them. Meet our band!:

Chris and I were kind of at a standstill for a while between Heart and Soul and Arcadia. We loved Genessa, the female singer from Heart and Soul, but felt that Arcadia had an all around better sound from the supporting instruments, as well as a wide array of music genres that it could offer. I'm thrilled that Arcadia is our band and even more thrilled that the great L.I. band hunt of 2010 is OVER. 3 long weeks, 9 live showcases, lots of emails, phone calls, driving all over Long Island, and shifting around of my piano teaching schedule. It was a wild ride....but in the end, it was all worth it (and quite educational I might add).

As far as our photographer, we booked Déjà Vu last Saturday, March 20th and I am so excited about them, too. I have nothing but glowing comments for the owner, Allen, who made us feel extremely at home and comfortable. Allen is very accommodating and I know he will work with us as far as picking pictures, creating albums, etc. once our wedding is over. We are currently working on scheduling our engagement photo shoot at Wagner College for sometime in June. I am sooo happy we are going to get professional pictures done at Wagner. I think it will be the perfect setting for us, as well as a good practice for what it's like to pose for pictures, we've never really done that before!

Moving right along, this Saturday I am starting my bridesmaid dress shopping! I have a 3:00 appointment at Bridals by Sandra, where I got my wedding dress! My mother, sister and bridesmaid Molly will be accompanying me!! I'll bring the camera! I actually had a nightmare last night that I had booked two dress appointments and forgot and was rushing around to get my bridesmaids and drive to the store to try on dresses. Oy..I haven't even started the dress hunt and I'm stressing!

So that's that...

Reception Hall: Check

Church for ceremony: Check

Wedding Dress: Check

Photographer: Check

Wedding Band: Check
Bridesmaid Dresses:______

Mandy's Bridal Shower!

Last Sunday began the wedding festivities of my dear friend Mandy!! (only 2 months to go!!) It was at an Asian Fushion restaurant in PA and was hosted by 3 of her mother's friends.

The Bridesmaids:

There were lots of fun games and good food! We played a "Price is Right" game, a "How well do you know Mandy" game (Mal and I tied for first!) and a "what's in your purse game." This was followed by a fun time of putting Mandy on the spot with questions about her and Billy.  Then she opened her presents..Elizabeth made her an amazing Bride hat out of the gift ribbons, good work Elizabeth!:

I'd have to say Sam topped the gift giving portion with an amazing haiku poem that went in conjunction with her and her mom's gift. Then we rounded out the afternoon with desserts and a really creepy chinese ice sculpture ghost??  This was brought out special for Mandy..annnnd we just accepted it and didn't ask questions. Kinda creepy huh?

May the Mandy and Billy wedding festivities continue!!

BB&B Registering

On Sunday we finally set up our Bed, Bath and Beyond registry. This started out as extremely overwhelming.  (As in: legit wanted to throw down the scanner and run out of the store crying. Not to be dramatic or anything.) But luckily it eventually ended up being so much fun!!

The woman who set us up was really nice, it's just that she was a little too eager and overbearing. I really just wanted to run in, set up the registry, put a few fun things on our account, and be done with it so I could work on it online at home. Bada Bing...Bada Boom. But the BB&B lady started walking through everything with us step by step. She started by talking us through all their different China sets. Bone China, Fine China, Porcelain, Stoneware, Earthenware...ahhhhh!!! When that proved too overwhelming, she thought maybe I could handle vases and asked me to pick out a vase that I liked. Well they had about 50 on display! I just need it hold flowers!! They're all pretty!!!

"What about silverware?"
"Do you like any of these picture frames??"
"How many place settings will you need for you and you family???"
"What style do you want to go with????"

STOP!!!!!

I just wanted to know where I could find the crock pots, cookie cutters, and most importantly, the pizza trays! I just want to register for the fun stuff!! Chris' mom had been doing some shopping in the store and when she came by to check on us...I think sensed our panic. Thankfully, she politely steered the saleswoman in the direction of what we were looking for to add to the registry for right now. So the woman followed us to kitchen electronics. Good, this was more like it. But she still wouldn't leave us alone, because she wanted to show us how to use the scanner. I decided to pick out one thing...anything at all...so that she could show us how to use it and leave, she was just too much up in my space! Once she left...it finally became fun.We added a bunch of things...and I can wholeheartedly and unabashedly state that we are most excited for our ice cream maker! Our friends Mandy and Billy have one and make the most unbelievable ice cream with it. I'm not sure how long we were there, but it was getting late and we were all very hungry for dinner...so we called it quits around 6:00. I still have to do some organizing/adding/deleting to the list online, but at least it's started.

When I went to the website, I saw there were 2 other couples registered with the same exact first and last name as me Laura "W".

Laura W.  and Nick                    Wedding           TX           

Laura W.  and Laura W.             Other                CT           

Laura W.  and Christopher           Wedding          NY           

First one...a wedding of Laura and Nick in Texas. Fine, normal. But that second one: Laura W. and Laura W. in CT last August listed under the category of "other". At first, I thought this was a lesbian couple who both happened to have the same exact first and last name (I mean..how funny and ironic would that be?!?!) But, upon checking out the registry (Sweater bag, alarm clock, table fan and surge protector) I see that this is a girl who registered for college gifts. Is it just me or have you never heard of registering for college gifts? I can't remember if I knew anyone who ever did this, but this is certainly news to me! Well, she didn't get any of gifts because none of them are listed as "purchased" so sucks to be you Laura W. from CT!

There is LOTS HAPPENING in the way of booking our band. Lots of News! Lots of Drama! It's a regular soap opera over here! Not really, but aren't you so intrigued now??

I can't fully update until tonight or tomorrow because there are still some things up in the air. However, I do think that my next entry will be entitled something along the lines of "Band and Photographer= Booked!"

Until then...