Update: 8 Months & 6 Days (249 Days!)

We sent out our save the dates! Neal brought them to the post office yesterday.

What we've done in the last few months:

• Catering Hall = Booked (Leonard's of Great Neck)
  
• Florist = Booked (Flowers by Brian)
• Photography and Videography = Booked (Lawrence Photography)
• Rabbi (Clergy) = Booked (Rabbi Stephen Karol)
• Dress (Bridal) = Purchased (Bridal World)
• Engagement Photography = Done (Hayley Rothman)
  
• Save the Dates = Sent!
  

The only things that we still need are a DJ, rings, honeymoon, and some small details like invitations and ordering bridesmaid dresses (which have already been picked out).

Keep checking back for more info!

Update: 296 Days!

Colors
We've decided on a purple, orange, and white scheme. I've been playing around with the idea of adding some bold pink and greens, but we'll see. Here are some samples:



Bridal Party
All of the girls are set for the bridal party: Amanda (my sister), Danielle (childhood best friend), Jillian (best friend from NFTY), Jackie (college roommate), and Angela (college roommate). Neal pretty much knows who he is going to ask but has not asked anyone yet. The boys are lucky, they have way less to do so they can be asked later on.

Bridesmaid Dresses
All my bridesmaids are meeting up this weekend to look at dresses! Some of them have already tried on at David's Bridal, but we didn't find anything we really loved. The girls are all such different shapes that it might be hard to pick something everyone loves. I'm playing around with the idea of different dresses that are the same designer, material, and color.

Wedding Gown
My dress... well there are two dresses that I really like right now. I still haven't fell madly in love with a dress but I do feel somewhat pressured to pick one. We are only about ten months from the wedding, and I need to have one picked about 8 or 9 months out. I really love the trumpet and mermaid style dresses but I can't find any that have the perfect amount of sparkle to them. When I ask people their opinions I get very mixed reactions - mostly because the dress style is so unique. I'm just not sure that I want a typical a-line dress.

Photography and Videography
Booked! We are having Lawrence Photography. We've seen wedding photography done by our photographer at our venue and loved it. So happy to have both of these set.

Flowers
Booked! Flowers by Brian is a company who also has a lot of experience with our venue. They are going to bring and decorate a huppah because I hated the one at Leonard's (our venue).

DJ
Neal is working on finding us a DJ. The biggest problem is that there are too many! It's so much to go through each of the popular DJs. We are starting with the list that our venue gave us.

Save the Dates
Almost done! They'll be going out this week, as soon as we get some more stamps. Last week Neal and I put the magnets into the envelopes. Yesterday I printed all of the address labels. Today I put all of the address labels on them and return address labels, and all of the stamps we had. We have about 40 more to stamp and then we'll send them all out!

Rabbi
We met with Rabbi Karol towards the end of June. It was a great first meeting, and we have our next one in October. He'll be doing our ceremony. Check out the ceremony section of our website for more information about our wedding ceremony.

Summer 2010
This summer was pretty crazy with wedding planning and work. I was so busy with camp and classes, and Neal with his job, baseball, and softball. One major highlight of the summer was our trip out to Illinois where I was able to meet most of Neal's family. It was great to put faces to names and I can't wait to see everyone again at our wedding in July. Now the academic year has begun and Neal is back to class at Queens College for his teaching certificate, and I'm taking a grad course through NYIT towards my Masters. And we're super busy with planning our wedding!

Colors!

I'm pretty sure we've picked colors! We really like the purple with orange and white. I made this first inspiration board, and found the ones below:

Any opinions?

In other wedding news, we are meeting with the photographer and florist next weekend.

We're also going to figure out "Save the Date" notices sometime soon. Maybe magnets with our pictures so you can have our pretty faces on your fridge :-).

Top Wedding Ideas

Wedding Progress Post... The post includes:

• Colors
• Bridesmaid Dresses
• Flowers
• Favors
• Hair Styles
• Cake
• Songs
• Venue

Colors

There are a few ideas in the mix. The base color will definitely be purple.

1. Dark purple and bright/burnt orange

2. Dark purple, orange, and yellow

3. Dark purple, orange, and red

4. Purples (light and dark)

Dresses

I’ve tried on a bunch of dresses and have two top favorites right now, but I obviously can't show them here since Neal has access :-).

Bridesmaid Dresses

We haven’t solidified a color scheme yet but I definitely want the BM dresses to be dark purple.

Flowers

We want to have low centerpieces, on the table. They will definitely be flowers, and the florist we will most likely work with calls it a “flush” piece. When I googled it, I could hardly find anything about flush centerpieces, so maybe I understood it incorrectly. We have a few ideas but this one below that I photoshopped is a drastic mix of dark purple with bright tiger lilies:

For the bridesmaids, I want them to carry stemmed flowers. I’m thinking either these Gerber daises (I love this inspiration pic I found on theknot) or tiger lilies.

Or this but with purple dresses (also from theknot):

For my bouquet, my (probable) florist said he would include the most beautiful bouquet I could find. I want something like this picture (I think I found on the livejournal wedding plans community):

Favors

Not sure about these yet. We were thinking of truffle boxes tied with a pretty orange bow, something like this:

Hair Styles

My main concern about hair styles is that I’ve seen a lot of brides who do something different than their usual look. It bothers me when I can’t recognize the bride or get over the fact that it’s her, because it looks nothing like her normal, everyday self. /rant. Anyway, I have curly hair but wear it straight a lot of the time, so most hair styles would be good for me. I never have side bangs or anything, so although I love the style, I don’t want to have anything like that for my wedding day. At this point, I’m thinking up-do, mostly because it’s summer so humidity may not be my friend. I also like half-up but can’t find too many of those. Here are some ideas:

(This picture is many there because of the tiger lily)

Cake

The cake is not all that important to us. We are having a Viennese Hour, so people probably will not even eat the cake with all of the other amazing desserts available. The catering hall provides one, and our florist includes flowers for the cake decoration, so we’ll probably have something basic like this:

Songs

We’re making a list of songs we like for our first dance and for the reception. The first dance songs in the running are:

Crush – Dave Matthews Band

1,2,3,4 – Plain White Ts

Music, Videography, and Photography

We’re planning on having a DJ, videographer, and photographer but have not booked one yet. I'm considering getting someone to do the base work but actually compiling the albums and video on my own. I love doing that stuff, and it's a huge savings, but it is also a ton of work so we'll see.

Venue

We’re booked! July 3^rd, 2011

This is a beautiful hall, and they gave us an amazing deal. My fiancé loved the place when we first drove up. They are so accommodating that we were actually able to pick the timing of our event. Our ceremony will be at the same location, at 5PM, and our cocktail hour will start at 5:30PM. The cocktail hour and reception will be in the same room, and the party will run until 10:30.

First Dance Song

We may have found a song for our first dance!




What do you think?

We set the date!

Leonard's of Great Neck, July 3rd, 2011!


We're so excited!

Crunch Time

It's not that we are approaching any significant date, but it seems like every time I log onto my Facebook newsfeed, I see that another couple has become engaged. While I'm very happy for them, I am getting really stressed out about booking a venue! We have a date we love. And a few catering halls that we really like. And our goal is to pick one this week.

Chateau Briand: It seems that the staff here does not know how to return a phone call, and the food entrees did not have much flavor when we last attended an event here. The place is gorgeous, and I love the outdoor facilities for the ceremony. But, regardless of how much I love it, it makes me nervous that they don't return my calls!

Swan Club: This place is BEAUTIFUL! It's right off the Long Island Sound, on the water, and the back of the catering hall has gorgeous gardens. There are paths that wind all around. The ceremony would be inside but in a room with windows as walls. The cocktail hour would be in a room with vines hanging from the ceiling, and the reception would be the one big party at the Swan Club that evening, and we'd have a huge room that overlooks the water. Downsides are that it's really difficult to get to and very low key.

Leonard's of Great Neck: This place is huge and ritzy! There are tons of rooms, which means there will probably be multiple parties that day, but the place is just humongous and beautiful. There are chandeliers all over the place, tons of photo ops on their winding staircase, and an option of an outdoor ceremony (or an indoor chapel). The reviews rave about the amazing food (BOTH the cocktail hour and entree are supposed to be amazing, where most places show their best work on just the cocktail hour foods).

Basically, we're leaning towards Leonard's of Great Neck. It looks so extravagant, and the bridal reviews are just amazing. And they wrote down our date without a deposit, so they'll call us if anyone else is interested in that time. They gave us the exactly ceremony and party time that we want, which is a 5:00 ceremony and 5:30-10:30 party. I really want an elegant evening party, so that really works for us. I know Neal wants the big catering hall feel-like-a-King thing, which he should have on our wedding day.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays, I'll keep you posted in 2010, Happy New Year!