It’s been a year

It’s been almost a year since our wedding, and we’re still talking about and looking through pictures. What a great day we had. I’m looking forward to a special First Anniversary, though I have no idea what we’re going to do yet. Anyway, it’s probably time to officially put some closure on this blog. I enjoyed sharing my ideas with whoever needed them, and it makes me happy to know there are still people hitting the blog and looking for ideas on how to make their own day special without breaking the bank. Good luck to all you savvy brides! The season for weddings is in high gear and I am sure you are in high gear too with excitement! May your weddings be beautiful, but may it pale in comparison to every day of your beautiful marriage!

Create a map of suggested places to visit for your guests

giftbaginsert.pdf

Using GoogleMaps custom maps and simple word processing tools, we created this document for our guests to give them a timeline of the weekend and suggestions on places to check out.

Our reception music

Our playlists from the reception:

Reception Special Playlist

1 Bridal Party Entrance
Austin’s Theme – The James Taylor Quartet

2 Couple Entrance
Theme from “Mission:Impossible” – Against the Beat

3 1st Dance
It’s not for me to say – Johnny Mathis

4 2nd Dance (for Bridal Party and Couple)
At Last – E. James

5 Cutting the Cake
That’s Amore – Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jr.

6 Father / Daughter Dance
She (Tous Les Visages de l’Amour) – Charles Aznavour

7 Mother / Son Dance
Have I Told You Lately – Rod Stewart

Reception Dinner Playlist

1 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes – Nat King Cole

2 Witchcraft (feat. Anita Baker) – Frank Sinatra

3 Saturday In the Park (Remastered Version) – Chicago

4 I Get a Kick Out of You – Frank Sinatra

5 I’m So Proud – Curtis Mayfield

6 Happy Together – The Turtles

7 Young at Heart – Frank Sinatra

8 Son of a Preacher Man – Aretha Franklin

9 Straighten Up and Fly Right – The Andrews Sisters

10 Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Louis Armstrong

11 My Baby Just Cares for Me – Nina Simone

12 What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong

13 All I Need to Get By – Aretha Franklin

14 I Only Have Eyes for You – The Flamingos

15 I’m Beginning to See the Light – Ella Fitzgerald

16 Comes Love – Billie Holiday

17  Walking on The Moon – The Police

18 So Nice (Summer Samba) – Bebel Gilberto

19 Meu Destino (My Destiny) – Thievery Corporation
20  Sex On Fire – Kings of Leon

Reception Dance Playlist

1 My Girl – The Temptations
2 Beyond the Sea – Bobby Darin
3  Barbara Ann – The Beach Boys
4  Fun, Fun, Fun – The Beach Boys
5  Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Babe – Barry White
6 Into the Groove – Madonna
7  Brown Eyed Girl (Single Version) – Van Morrison
8  Woo Hoo – The 5.6.7.8’s
9 You’re the One That I Want – John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John
10 Canned Heat – Jamiroquai
11 Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough – Michael Jackson
12 Kiss – Prince & The Revolution
13 Push It – Salt-N-Pepa
14  Bust a Move – Young MC
15 Hip Hop Hooray – Naughty By Nature
16 Holiday – Madonna
17 American Girl – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
18 Groove Is in the Heart – Deee-Lite
19 Boomshackalak – Apache Indian
20  Vogue – Madonna
21 Thriller – Michael Jackson
22 The Rockafeller Skank (Short Edit) – Fatboy Slim
23 1999 – Prince
24  Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ – Michael Jackson
25 Disturbia – Rihanna
26 Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas
27  Circus – Britney Spears
28 The Way You Make Me Feel – Michael Jackson
29  Just Dance – Lady GaGa & Colby O’Donis
30 My Love Is Your Love – Whitney Houston
31 Fire Burning – Sean Kingston
32 Open Your Heart – Madonna
33 Beautiful (Valentin club mix) – Christina Aguilera
34 Rock With You – Michael Jackson
35 Right Round – Flo Rida
36 Burning Down the House – Talking Heads
37 We Like to Party! – Vengaboys
38 Use Somebody – Kings of Leon
39 Float On – Modest Mouse
40 I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

Reception Backup List

1 Raspberry Beret – Prince
2 All or Nothing – Cher
3 Dream Lover- Bobby Darin
4 You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You – Dean Martin
5 Almost Like Being In Love – Gene Kelly
6 They Can’t Take That Away From – Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
7 Angel – Jimi Hendrix
8 Don’t be Cruel – Elvis Presley
9 I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing – Aerosmith
10 Samba Tranquille – Thievery Corporation
11 Les Nuits – Nightmares on Wax
12 Someone to Watch over Me – Etta James
13 Missy/Fatman Scoop/Pharrell – The Break
14 Mercy – Duffy



Our wedding venue – the Lenox Hotel

The Lenox Hotel is simply elegant. We fell in love with their ballroom the first time we entered it, and we never forgot it.

From what we could tell, neither will our guests. On top of the gorgeous dome room setting, which is perfect for wedding sizes around 100 guests, the food is terrific and the staff goes out of their way to please.  They made it easy to have a wedding there, including EVERYTHING you can think of in their rate (including the pianist at cocktail hour, menu cards, gold chivari chairs!) so I had no work to do.  They gave us a fabulous suite that night and our guests had reasonable room rates even though it was a busy holiday weekend.  I would recommend this hotel to anyone who is looking for a city venue that is gorgeous, friendly, tasty and flexible.

Ok, but you are here because you are a budget Boston bride, and you can’t imagine this being a budget friendly place. Well, it’s not, but it is not as much as other hotels in its class.  As a point of comparsion, since the wedding was on a holiday, having a caterer & service staff for the same number of people would have been 50% more expensive, not including venue (and I would still need to do all the work of figuring out how many champagne glasses, spoons, etc – yech).  Hubs and I decided that this was the one area we would not compromise, and thus, we stretched quite a bit for this venue, but it was truly memorable for everyone.  My family still calls to tell me about how wonderfully they were treated there.

Our cake – Icing on the Cake in Newton MA

Our cake tasted amazing. I wish I had more than the bite we fed each other. The ladies at the Icing on the Cake in Newton were fabulous to work with. Hubs and I went for our tasting and had so much fun designing and testing out our future cake. Here’s what we came up with, and they did a fantastic job making it! We chose TIOTC because they were included in our reception package at the Lenox Hotel, and wow, they were great!

Sienna Skin Studio #1 for Makeup and a great Craigslist find for hair

Sienna Iannelli is the best makeup artist ever, and I am not just saying that because she is my best friend and maid of honor.  She was ranked the best makeup artist on the international Wall of Styles site.  Click popular in the upper right and you’ll see she is not only #1, but also #2, #3, and #4.

How lucky of me to have a fabulous artist not only do my makeup, but everyone in my wedding party? Very lucky. But lucky for you, if you are in the RI / CT / MA area, she travels. And she is worth it!

You can book appointments in her Rhode Island based salon by calling or conveniently book online off her website. You can also contact her on Twitter as well! Make sure you tell her A Boston Bride sent you!

In addition to makeup, I also needed hair. Hair on a holiday can mean HUGE bucks at the Newbury Street salons. I wanted a simple French twist, so I was not willing to pay the quotes I was getting from nearby salons & stylists. That’s where Craigslist came into play again! I found several reasonably prices stylists, but unfortunately many of them were busy with 4th of July plans. I was referred to Nikki Hou from one of them, and she was available!

Nikki did a trial with me a few weeks before and she was prompt and good. I wanted to test the endurance of my hair after the trial, so I marched my French twist around the city all day and even slept in it to see how it would hold up. It was amazing – that ‘doo did not move at all!

I booked her and had her also help with a few girls in my wedding party. She was fast as well on the day of and did a great job.  Here’s a photo of my twist, and another of Nikki doing her thing! If you would like her contact information, please submit a comment with your email (the email will be for me to see only) and I will send it to you personally.

And in the end, how did we all look? See for yourself!

Our Lady of Victories Church & Our Ceremony

If you want a Catholic ceremony in Boston’s Back Bay, you don’t have a ton of choices. St. Cecilia is a big church but it can be very pricey.  The Cathedral is also huge but is well into the South End and may farther than you wish. Let me introduce you to a little church that is beautiful, warm, inviting, and French!  Our Lady of Victories is a little gem of a church with beautiful pink / grey details and gorgeous stained glass. I never knew this was here as it is tucked away near the Park Plaza close to the highway.  Apparently, it began as a church to service the needs of the French speaking people in the area.  The people here were wonderful to work with and the musicians were fantastic.

Here is the Program of our ceremony in case you were looking for a format to borrow from – https://bostonwedding.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/church-program-tea-size.pdf.

A perfect photography equation = Craigslist + MyPublisher

I feel very lucky to have found the amazing photographer I worked with for my wedding.  As you may know from reading this blog, budget was top of mind in every decision we made, and budgets on photography was highly variable. We started looking at the standard pros in the area but their packages were in the $1000’s of dollars.  Our next thought was to ask a friend who was photography savvy, but she smartly declined as a main photographer given the need for specialized equipment in darker settings. I am glad she did, even though at first I was not sure where else to turn. That’s where Craigslist came in.

I posted an ad on CL for a photographer and explained what we were looking for. I also found a few people who were posting ads for their services and I thought I would reach out to some of them as well.  Within a matter of days I had several leads and viewed several portfolios.

Cliff Francoeur was one of the photographers who replied to my ad. He was very upfront with us about his skill areas and experience, and while he didn’t have a ton of wedding experience, his portraits and scene shots were truly stunning. He was a talented photographer looking to break into the wedding area.  He also seemed super willing to work with us on what we wanted.

Cliff made us feel like he cared about how our photos would turn out, and we did an engagement session and a tour of the venues with him to allow us to get familiar with each other and the day.  I appreciated how much time he spent with us – he really stood out among the others we looked at.

Cliff brought along Nathan Tia and Hanh Tran, also amazingly talented photographers, for the big day. The trio did a spectacular job and stayed with us from morning until late in the evening. We wanted to capture the getting ready photos, which had us starting in the late morning.  At the end we wanted to top the night off with photos on the roof overlooking the spectacular Boston fireworks, which started after 10pm, so you can imagine how long and hard these guys worked.  They brought specialized tools and equipment as well, ensuring I had the best possible photos. The portait above is my favorite of the portraits, and this shot of new hubby and I is a favorite couple shot.  This shot was taken on the roof with the Boston 4th of July fireworks in the background.

After the wedding we had over 1500 photos, and we narrowed down to about 700 or so that we liked.  With that volume of photos, we knew a traditional album wasn’t going to work for us. Plus, given all the effort we put into making the invitations, the placecards, the programs, the giftbags, *everything* – we had a story to tell and we wanted that to come through in our album. So, since I no longer had a wedding to plan, why not put those PhotoShop skills to good use and make my own album? I had ordered from MyPublisher before and liked the quality of their books a lot (I was stunned the first time I ordered from them).  Their canned layouts are ok, but I needed more and thus decided to make each page myself and import them into the MyPublisher tool.  Several weeks and ninety-four pages later, we had an album we were happy with.  We ordered a large one for us and 2 smaller ones for our parents.  Luckily, we finished while they were still having a 40% off sale!

If you are interested in seeing the finished album, which chronicles the wedding day, click the image below.

If that link doesn’t work for you, you can go to http://www.mypublisher.com/bookshelf/friendbook.php and type Order Number 1233145 & Password 2764416.

If you enjoy the pictures and wish to use Cliff, please let him know the Boston Bride sent you!

We did it! We got married! And everything went perfectly!

I can’t believe it’s been almost 4 months since our wedding. What a perfectly bright and sunny day we had, especially after 2 straight weeks of rain. I couldn’t have asked for a better one. I started the day by having all the ladies over to my place for getting ready, with my fabulous maid of honor doing all their makeup.  After getting ready, we went to the church and started the ceremony *on time* (take that, wedding project plan non believers!).  The ceremony was lovely, and afterwards we hit the Boston Public Garden for photos. Since it was the 4th of July, the park was packed and we had quite a crowd watching our group do pictures. I felt like a celebrity – which I guess is totally appropriate on your wedding day 🙂 Afterwards, we hit the Lenox Hotel for our reception, which went off without a hitch. Even though we DJ’d ourselves (via iPod), we had an outgoing friend manage the mic / announcements / playlist switching and it all went very smoothly. I can’t think of a thing I would change, but if I do, I’ll be sure to let you know. The best part is: one of maids is engaged! Which means the Boston Bride blog gets to continue venue hunting and tip tracking in a new area – the west suburbs!!!!!! So excited to do this again!

The Boston Bride is now married!

It’s been rather quiet on this blog, hasn’t it? Well, that’s because the Boston Bride just had her wedding! Stay tuned for details on what the Boston Bride picked for her special day!