LRE Weddings - Linda and Brian - Boscobel House and Gardens

How about some flowers and absolutely stunning wedding photos on this snowy, rainy day?

Linda and Brian's wedding took place this past October at Boscobel House and Gardens about an hour and a half north of NYC.  If you haven't been to Boscobel, I highly recommend checking it out!  Beautiful grounds and lots of fun summertime events.

Linda and Brian decided to pull their wedding together in a few short months, four months to be exact!  After selecting Boscobel and choosing a date, they decided to hire me as their wedding planner to help pull everything together.

Linda and Brian wanted the wedding to have a feeling of "relaxed yet refined elegance".  To create the perfect atmosphere, we combined together fun down-to-earth elements such as lawn games (corn hole), a locally grown seasonal menu and apple cider and donut hole favors with elegant decor featuring seasonal flowers such as cafe au lait dahlias, roses and hydrangea in a variety of gold and glass vases accented by gold and etched glass votives.  Their wedding featured a lot of great details provided by the Bride and Groom such as a vintage globe guest book, family photos and framed love letters from Linda's Grandfather to her Grandmother written in the early 40's.

The Bride's maritime family background was incorporated with a surprise visit up the Hudson River from the family's tugboat, the Maria J, names after her Grandmother - also the same vessel the couple was engaged on months earlier.  Immediately following the "I Do's", the boat sounded one long blast of the horn followed by two short toots to signify the ship is safe and the tug can "bring its life in" connecting the two - a symbol of the Bride's father giving away her hand in marriage.  Linda's father had a second surprise later in the evening as he invited everyone to the lawn as a firework show lit up the sky!

Check out the absolutely stunning photos below from Michelle Jonne, don't they look like they belong in a wedding magazine's editorial section?!?!

Slightly obsessed with Linda's yellow gold setting!

How amazing is this spot for their First Look???

Welcome station with hot apple cider, coffee and vintage globe guest book.

Each table was named after an herb from the herb garden where Linda and Brian had their "First Look"

Dancing the night away to music by Vali Entertainment!

Local apple cider and donut hole favors for guests to enjoy back at their hotel on our their way home.

 From the bride -

We definitely planned quickly, as it seemed most decisions were so easy to make.  We called Boscobel the weekend we got engaged and chose one of the only 2 dates left for the fall.  We met with one Photographer, Michelle Jonne, and fell in love with both her aesthetic and how hands-on she was with every step of the process.  After that day, we cancelled all the other photographer visits we had and pretty much followed that same pattern for other vendors.  The band company, Vali, was owned by a close family friend.  About two months in though, the overwhelming task of transforming a raw outdoor space into a beautiful cocktail lounge and tented dining area was a little too much and we hired our planner, Laura Remmert, to help carry us the last two months of the way.

It was important to us to have some traditional aspects of a formal wedding (walking down the aisle, traditional vows, toasts, dances with parents).  But we really wanted the day to feel like a great dinner party hosted on the grounds of a beautiful home, and we wanted to venture away from anything too stuffy or overly formal.  The cocktail hour was hosted in a circular rose garden with live music playing.  We did a full one hour sit down dinner before dancing to avoid the "up and down" of traditional weddings.  We did not cut a cake, and instead served dessert at stations so guests could get up and mingle.  We had a side tent for beverages and lawn games (cornhole) for people to relax and wander closer to the amazing view.

Vendors:
Planning - Laura Remmert Events
Floral and Event Design - Laura Remmert Events
Photography - Michelle Jonne
Catering - Main Course Catering
Entertainment - Vali Entertainment

LRE Weddings - Cameron and Rob at Harold Pratt House

Finally getting around to blogging some Fall 2013 weddings!  This time of year, I love to take a little time while there's space between events to look back on the events from the previous year (also I finally have time to collect all of the photos from the professional photographers).

Cameron and Rob chose the Harold Pratt House for their wedding.  Most weddings you see at the Pratt House have around 100 guests and use the Ballroom for dinner.  Because Cameron and Rob's wedding was a little bit bigger, we used Peterson Hall instead.  The great thing about Peterson Hall is that it's a blank slate.  Add some white ethereal draping and you can do just about anything you want in the room!  We had touches of "East meets West" as Cameron spent part of her childhood in Southeast Asia.  Keep in mind, while you want your wedding decor to be cohesive, you can play around with different themes for cocktails and dinner, you flowers for cocktails and dancing can be a different style and/or different colors for dinner.  For Cameron and Rob's wedding we went a little more modern for cocktails and dancing and then more traditional for dinner.

Take a look at the photos from Spencer Lum of 5 West Studios and then see below for a write up from Cameron (love the story about her dress!).

From the Bride -

I had always wanted a September wedding – I love the early fall when it’s no longer insanely hot and the really cold air has not yet set in.  My parents and grandparents had all also been married in September, my parents and paternal grandparents on the same day, September 14^th.  We toyed with a few dates around that time of year, but then I realized that September 14^th fell on a Saturday this year.  I tried not to get my heart set on the date, but as we learned the church and our top vendors were free on the 14^th, I knew it was fate!  We would be the third generation to share the same anniversary!

Tradition comes with the territory for weddings: I inherited a family wedding gown that was first worn by my great-grandmother in 1906.  She sold her horse and sent the money with her two maiden aunts to Belgium to buy the lace for her wedding gown.  It started out in high Victorian fashion, with a high neckline and big, puffed sleeves…it’s changed a bit over the generations!  I was the sixth bride and fourth generation to wear the dress, which had to be completely restored – cleaned, stabilized and relined – but the lace is original and the silhouette is as my mother had worn it.

In keeping with our many traditions, Rob and I wanted a classic, New York City wedding.  The church is my family’s home church, and we felt very blessed to have such a beautiful, familiar venue for the ceremony.  We looked at several venues for the reception before settling on The Harold Pratt House.  It was certainly the most convenient (just three blocks from the church), but it also had an old world charm that immediately appealed to us.  We loved that different elements of the reception could take place in different rooms, giving a great flow to the party throughout the evening.  It also had the warm and intimate feeling of a home, allowing the reception to be formal, yet comfortable.

For the design, we kept the color palate classic and simple, using just greens and whites in the flowers, and playing with texture rather than a multitude of colors.  We highlighted orchids and hydrangea, my favorite flowers, filling in the rest with a beautiful mix of seasonal flowers and greenery.  The lotus pods in the groomsmen’s boutonnieres and cocktail pieces were a nod to my childhood in Southeast Asia.  We used the linens to set the tone in each room, choosing a light, cheerful, celadon green in the cocktail rooms and moving to a dark, romantic, sage green upstairs for dessert and dancing later in the evening.  In the dining room, we chose to play up texture again with a mix of rectangle and square tables, with three long rectangular tables down the middle of the room for our wedding party and immediate families.  We kept the place settings in the dining room very simple to highlight our (delicious!) food, and used neutral flax Irish linen table linens with crisp white linen runners on the side tables and a hydrangea “runner” on the center tables.  I loved the way the hydrangea runner turned out, acting as a subtle but memorable focal point in the room.

It was a wonderful evening with great food, great music and great company – we were overjoyed at how many of our friends and family made it to New York City to celebrate.  Rob and I were thrilled with the way everything came together, and could not have asked for a more memorable start to our family!

 

Credits:

Photography - Spencer Lum of 5 West Studios

Floral - Laura Remmert Events

Catering - Feast and Fetes

Event Coordination - Valerie Post Events