A Wedding Story: Alicia!

This week's Wedding Story comes from Alicia Dagesse, of Rhode Island. She's a sassy and classy bride who had a fabulous peacock themed wedding last summer. Take it away, Alicia...


When did you get married?
August 1, 2009

Alicia and her girls had their make-up done by Krystal Treanor and hair done by Salon Sante
Where was your ceremony? Reception?
First Baptist Church of Wickford (Wickford Rhode Island); The Towers in Narragansett, RI

What made you choose that reception location?
The view of the ocean is STUNNING! While in the Towers you feel as if you are walking on water.

Alicia's peacock-themed invitations and placecards. Her paper products were courtesy of Every Little Detail.
What was your favorite aspect of your wedding?
Its so hard to choose a favorite but I would say dancing with all of guests! The band [GQ and the Lady] was unbelievable and got everyone up and dancing!

All of Alicia's flowers were done by Jeff and Co.
What was the best resource you used during the planning process?
I thought the knot was a valuable resource. Hearing from other Rhode Island brides and reading their reviews gave me confidence in my choices for vendors.

Alicia had a popcorn buffet at her reception; a new twist on the candy buffet!

What's the one thing you would have done differently?
There's not very much I would change. Maybe change into a fun & sassy second dress!

Alicia & her bridesmaids with parasols to block the sun; helps with squinting during photos too!
Any advice for future brides?
I would give two pieces of advice: 1.) Go to your cocktail hour if you can. It gives you an extra hour to be with your guests! We loved it! 2.) Take some time with your "new" husband to take a step back and look around. You've been planning forever now take a look and enjoy your "view". We did this and the time didn't go by half as fast as people told us it would & we will always have those mental pictures in our heads!

The cocktail hour napkins. "Birds of a Feather stick together!"
Alicia, what valuable advice. The day FLIES by; so take a few minutes and enjoy it with your husband. Take in all the details that you worked so hard on. Look around at all of your lovely guests who are there to celebrate your wedding day with you.


Videography for Alicia's beautiful wedding was provided by Mike Picard Videography

All photos courtesy of Kristin Spencer Photography



If you'd like to be a Featured Wife or Bride, please email me at legallybride@hotmail.com

Jyllian and Jayson

The Venue: The Biltmore
The Photog: Melissa Robotti

"I Do" Ideas: Favors!

This week we're talking about wedding favors; you know, those gifts you give to your guests to thank them for coming to your wedding and sharing in your special day! The options are endless and I'd encourage you to get creative with your favors; there are no rules!

Here are a couple of ideas

Candy apples! Guaranteed to satisfy your guest's appetites after a night of dancing!
CD's! A fun way to bring in your personality to your favors. Put your favorite songs on there, romantic songs or special songs played at the wedding.
Candy Buffet! You can have so much fun with a candy buffet, and it can also serve as decor! Choosing candy in your wedding's colors is a fun way to add some color to the your reception room. Popcorn and cookie buffets are other options for this fun trend.Cookie Cutters! Such a "sweet" idea; I'm sure your guests will use these in the future!
Monogrammed Glasses! Your guests can get practical use out of these and think of you every time they quench their thirst!
Bottled Jam! Here they gave out peach-rum jam; something I'm sure their guests appreciated!
Plants! Plant small pots of herbs for your guests to bring home and plant in their gardens!
Photobooth! Have you ever been to a wedding with a photobooth? I guarantee you your guests will have an absolute blast playing in it! The way it usually works is they get a copy of their silly photos and you get a copy too; you'll love having the memories of the booth captured!
Donations! Making a donation to a charitable cause that is special to you and your fiance is another option for a favor. This bride & groom made a donation to an animal shelter. For this card that they gave to each guest, they dressed up their two Westie's in bride and groom costumes...
Matches! Who doesn't need matches at some point? Your guests will definitely find this favor useful.
Personalized Journals/Day Planners! I, personally, would love to get this at a January/February wedding when I'm looking to buy a new day planner anyway!
Christmas Ornaments! I love this idea for a December wedding! Your guests will enjoy featuring this special ornament on their trees year after year.
Personalized Soda! This is such a neat and unique idea. Love it.
T-shirts! Guests will never forget your big day with this hanging in their closet!



What did YOU do for favors? Or what do you plan to do? Please share; I'd love to hear, especially if it's something not listed here!


What we did for Our wedding...

We had a few "favors" for our guests. We had a very PINK candy buffet.
It was filled with pink candy canes, M&M's, candy corns, rock candy, wafers, Lindt chocolates, conversation hearts and much more!
We also did a photobooth! We brought props for our guests to "play" with in the booth including a tiara, large sunglasses, a clown nose, and a red feather boa!
Finally, we sent our guests home with CD's. My hubby is a DJ so music is very important to him and the CD's were his idea. We featured songs from the wedding (first dance, entrance songs, cake cutting song, etc.)

All inspiration pictures courtesy of The Knot. All my pictures courtesy of Zenobia Photography Studios.

Holli and Dave

Venue: The Red Lion Inn

Photog: Ali Rosa (She has such great energy--it is a joy to work with Ali)

Band: Legit (one word-WOW!)

Flowers: The Tangled Web
Event Coordinator: Trends and Traditions (Great to work with and great communication)

The Couple: Holli and Dave --the perfect match!

A Wedding Story: Carrie!

For this week's Wedding Story, we have our very first Blogger all the way from Washington state! Today's Featured Wife is Carrie from Laugh, Love, Eat Ice Cream; be sure to check out her blog for more wedding stories and pictures. With that, here's Carrie...


When did you get married?
October 10, 2009

Where was your ceremony? Reception?
Both our ceremony and reception were held at the Space Needle in Seattle.

What made you choose that reception location?
My mom was the one who suggested the Space Needle as a venue. Before Nick and I even were engaged I talked to my mom about how an engagement would be coming soon and she started asking me about what I wanted to do for a wedding. I told her I wanted to have it in Seattle (I’m from Boise and my entire family lives there) because Nick and I live in the area and most of our friends do as well. My mom asked if I had thought of any venues for the wedding. I told her I hadn’t really thought of that part yet. She wondered, “Does the Space Needle have weddings?” I told her I wasn’t sure, but that idea excited me and I looked into it. Sure enough, the Space Needle hosted wedding ceremonies and receptions! Neither Nick nor I are religious, so we didn’t want to get married at a church. We wanted to choose a place that offered both ceremonies and receptions to make it easier on our guests and ourselves. Once Nick proposed, we set a date that week and scheduled a time to view the Space Needle Skyline banquet level. We liked what we saw so we didn’t even check out any other venues.
We liked that by having our wedding at the Space Needle “Seattle” sort of became a wedding theme. We gave Seattle Chocolate truffles as wedding favors to bring in the theme that way. We wanted a classic and elegant wedding and we thought the Space Needle was a perfect venue for the type of wedding we wanted.

What was your favorite aspect of your wedding?
Celebrating Nick and my love for each other with each other and our families and friends was incredible. Just being surrounded by people who love you and have supported you and are there for you on “your day” makes you feel amazing. I was overwhelmed with love and emotion and it felt wonderful.

What was the best resource you used during the planning process?
I loved The Knot for the checklist, budget calculator, and guest list, as well as all their database of pictures. Junebug Weddings was a great local resource for me to find outstanding vendors.

What's the one thing you would have done differently?
I probably would have listened to my mom and cut back our guest list. It’s so hard to narrow it down, you want to invite everybody! The people who we invited were all important people in our lives, but I have to admit some people I felt pressure to invite like, “Well they’re inviting me/invited me to their wedding.” Or “If I invite this person I can’t not invite this person.” In the end we had 148 guests, which I don’t think was a huge amount, but it might have been nicer if it were more intimate.

Any advice for future brides?
Enjoy your time being engaged! It’s such a fun period in your life and you never get to relive it!
Also, getting stuff done early is a huge relief. We booked a lot of our vendors 9 months before our wedding so no vendor we really wanted had to turn us away saying they were booked for our date.
Lastly, relax. You don’t want your bridesmaids or family members talking about you behind your back telling everyone you’re a crazy woman. I’ve heard it many times where the bride had ridiculous demands and high expectations for their wedding and everyone’s rolling their eyes at her. You need to remember that the wedding is about celebrating the love you and your fiancé have for one another. The wedding isn’t about gifts, or people, or food, or flowers. It is about love. All the flowers and gowns and sparkles in the world can’t fake true love. If things go wrong at the wedding whether it be something someone does or says or doesn’t do take comfort in the fact that imperfection and chaos is part of life. You cannot control outside sources no matter how hard you try. Stay calm and feel the love!

Excellent words of bridal wisdom, Carrie. I think it's very easy to forget that the marriage is the most important part of the day; not the bridesmaid's shoes, cake topper or candy buffet labels.

Photo courtesy of JKoe Photography.

If you'd like to be a Featured Wife or Bride, please email me at legallybride@hotmail.com

Brides # 1 regret is not hiring a professional Videographer

That is according to a survey conducted by the WEVA group. This video has been posted on a few sites and I can't attest to the validity of the couple--perhaps they are actors or maybe even wedding videographers! I do know this, everytime we hear a bride and groom say they aren't having a professional video done for their wedding, it makes us cringe. I decided to post the video because the couple--real or not-- actually speak right to the heart of the matter. I do get a kick out of the background music but the point is still well made. There is nothing like a professional video produced for your wedding day.

"I Do" Ideas: Bridesmaid's Bouquets!

For "I Do" Ideas, I thought we could look at Bridesmaid's Bouquets this week!

Bridesmaid bouquets can add color to your wedding palette as well as set a tone (classic/serious vs. modern/fun!). They can match the color of your bridesmaid dresses or even YOUR dress or they can be a completely different color. You really have LOTS of options. My only piece of advice would be to try to stick with flowers that are in season for the time of your wedding!

Here are a few samples for each season:

Spring
Daffodils, Lilacs, Tulips

Summer
Gerbera Daisies, Freesia, Hydrangeas

Fall
Dahlias, Marigold, Chrysanthemums

Winter
Star Gazer Lilies, Holly, Poinsettia

Flowers available year-round:
Carnations, Roses, Orchids

Now, onto some inspiration photos!

Here we have the bride carrying white, with her maids (in green) carrying green bouquets. This is a pretty common choice, but you do have to be careful that their flowers stand out enough/don't blend into the dresses.
These next two have chosen to create the bridesmaids bouquets in the same color scheme as the brides bouquet. Like the next two photos, a way to have the bride's bouquet stand out is to make it slightly lighter by adding a few white flowers.

Next, while the bride is still carrying white, the maids are carrying an array of fall colors. This is a great way to bring in your accent colors when your maids are in a neutral, like brown here.
Maids wearing a BRIGHT color? Having trouble picking flowers that will match (and not clash!)? An option is to have them carry white (or ivory, depending on your dress color of course)
Now, a few examples of the extreme contrast...i.e. introducing a new color into the your theme.
Here, the bridesmaids wore a beautifully vivid aqua and carried bright yellow flowers. (I love this by the way!)
In this wedding, with the maids in dark gray their orange flowers really popped!
Another option is to have the bridesmaids carry bouquets identical to the brides. Here, with the bridesmaids decked in different shades of pink, they, along with the bride, carried peonies in shades of pink and white.
A final option, keeping the same color scheme for all of the bouquets, but choosing different flowers. While the flowers in this next wedding were all orange, the bride carried roses while the maids carried daisies.


What season were you/are you getting married in? What did you do for bouquets?
Do you like when the bridesmaid bouquets match the bridal bouquet?

What we did for our late Summer/early Fall wedding...

I never saw a picture of exactly what I envisioned my bridesmaid's would carry, so it was more a process of me trying to describe what I wanted to my florist. What we wanted (and got!) was a mixture of hot pink, light pink, white and lime green flowers.
Here's a good closeup. There were roses, callas, dahlias and much more!
This picture shows the flowers "in action". I love how they didn't look identical to each other.
Another (subtle) way to have the bouquets stick out is to have the florist attach a silver letter charm to the base of each bouquet with the first letter of the bridesmaid's first name. I chose to do this and it certainly helped when the girls were trying to distinguish their bouquets!


All inspiration pictures courtesy of The Knot. My pictures courtesy of Zenobia Photography Studios and my maid of honor. The bouquets for my wedding were created by Flowerthyme.

Angela and Kevin

Venue: Oceancliff
Photog: The FANTABULOUS Faith Dugan
DJ: Larry from Engagements

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Kimberly and Bobby

Venue: Indian Pond Country Club
Photog: Jenni V
DJ: Nu Image