Real Wedding - February 11, 2011

Jessica and Eric got married in the Harbor Ballroom on February 11th - yes, a Friday. The date was 2-11-2011 and a lot of couples like having a cool anniversary to remember. (That's why 9-10-11 is such a popular date this year.)



Their ceremony was held on the steps in Harbor I, just as Melissa and Mark's was last month.



Jessica and her future mother in law worked on most of the decor themselves, including all the bouquets and centerpieces. The Abbey provided the lighting and paper lanterns to finish off the look. I have pictures of the ballroom with the lights on and off, so you can see the difference:

A big thanks to Michelle, from Jamie & Michelle Photography, for sending me these images. And congratulations to Jessica and Eric on a beautiful wedding AND for choosing JAMAICA as your place to honeymoon in February. Excellent pick, guys!

New Year's Eve

Ok, so it wasn't a wedding but I thought I'd post a couple of pictures of how our Harbor Ballroom looked on New Year's Eve. The colors were black and silver with burgundy accents. The tablecloths were called "Black Bombay" and had a silver circular pattern on them. And, of course, black satin chair covers with silver ties.

In this pictures you get a closer look at the centerpieces, designed by my talented counterpart, Hayley. She spray painted curly willow silver and we worked tirelessly making many, many large tissue paper pom poms. It was definitely a fun-looking room!

Real Wedding - November 27, 2010

Michelle and Jarrett got married at The Abbey on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We didn't have snow at that time, but they did brave some pretty cold temps to get these beautiful outdoor shots prior to the ceremony...

All images courtesy of Alyssa Miserendino Photography.

In lieu of a traditional pillow their adorable ring bearer carried this dish down the aisle, which will be the one they put their wedding rings in when they're not wearing them. I love this idea!

(In case you can't read the words, it says "To Have & To Hold")

I told Michelle about a hundred times that their tasting was one of the most fun afternoons at work I've ever had! It was just her, Jarrett and Michelle's dad and they had me doubled over with laughter almost the whole time. Here's a picture of Michelle and her dad coming down the aisle where you can just tell how funny they both are. I love that their smiles almost match!

That's Marcia officiating Michelle and Jarrett's ceremony. I hadn't had Marcia conduct one of my ceremonies in some time and having her here that weekend made me remember why we always recommend her. She makes the ceremony completely personalized for the bride and groom and is such a calm, peaceful presence to have here on a wedding day.

After the ceremony in the Sandbar, guests went up to the Ballroom Foyer for cocktails and then into the Harbor Ballroom for dinner. There were about 130 guests, so we only used 3 sections of the ballroom and put the dance floor up near the windows.

Floral (and those trees!) provided by Renee at Frontier Flowers of Fontana.

I love these pictures from the reception. Thank you to Alyssa Miserendino for sending them over. Alyssa was so sweet to work with and I think she did a wonderful job capturing the "organic" feeling Michelle and Jarrett were going for with their wedding.

One more thing to note: As cool as I always thought Michelle was, she became even cooler on her wedding day when she told me she was donating her GORGEOUS wedding dress and shoes to an organization that provides bridal gowns to military brides. I'm not sure of the exact organization she's donating hers to, but you can read more about this cause here.

Congratulations to Michelle and Jarrett!

Real Wedding September 4 - Part Two

I'm so incredibly excited to share these images with you from Saturday night. The Harbor Ballroom looked AMAZING and Matt Mason captured it in all it's glory just before the wedding guests entered. Thanks, Matt!

The bride had a vision of a "Roaring 20's" feel with lots of feathers and black and white. The only flowers were the girls' bouquets which sat on the head table, so the centerpieces on guest tables by Gia Bella Floral were made of either feathers or candles.

Our AV department really outdid themselves on the lights. There were 16 "uplights" all around the room and an additional 10 under the head table. They also had a GOBO on the dance floor in Courtney and Elmer's monogram.

We had white chair covers on all the chairs except for the head table, which had black covers. All the chairs had black and white ties. All guest tables had our house white table cloths but rented black napkins.

There were two square family tables at the front of the room. We created the rectangular shape using our conference tables and then special linens were rented. We chose to do those in black to really set them apart from the rest of the tables. Because there is a seam down the middle, we used a runner that matched the chair ties to hide it. These tables looked appropriate using the house white napkins.

Ah, the head table - this absolutely took my breath away! They had two tiers with seating for 8 on the riser and 10 on the floor. The linens matched the chair ties and then we had the black chair covers behind them. To really set it off, we did black draping behind the table and lit both tiers from underneath.

The crisp whiteness of the cake atop the black cloth really looked amazing, don't you think?

Real Wedding - May 15

Sorry for the delay in posting pictures from the May 15th wedding here at The Abbey. There was a technical issue and I'm not very technical, so I had to enlist help to get back up and running.



We had a gorgeous day for a wedding last weekend - nice and cool (60's) for the groomsmen! It can get hot out there at the Gazebo in August and the groomsmen get a little antsy in their tuxes sometimes.



There are a lot of different ways to walk down to the gazebo. This bride chose to leave from Building 2.







This wedding was for approximately 130 guests and they had their reception in the Harbor Ballroom. They ended up using the entire ballroom partly because they had a large stage for the band and they set their dance floor in the 2nd section of the ballroom and their tables in the last two sections farthest from the windows. They used the 1st section (the one with the windows) as a cocktail area, as we normally do.







I really like a mix of centerpieces to add interest to the room, especially if all the tables are round. These centerpieces were brought in from Pesche's Greenhouse in Lake Geneva.

All photos courtesy of Mozart Photography.

Congratulations to David and Kelly!

Real Wedding - May 1, 2010

We had our first outdoor ceremony of the season this past Saturday and the weather was excellent. I can't imagine a prettier setting for an outdoor wedding, can you?

After cocktails on the patio, guests went to the Harbor Ballroom for dinner. The colors were khaki and coral - an interesting combination I haven't seen nearly enough of around here.

I like how the colors worked with the existing banquet chairs, too.

Rather than the typical banquet rounds, this bride had us "build" long rectangular tables. I have seen brides use a mix of the two types of tables, but this is the first one that's had all rectangular tables.

Her favors were small white buckets with wrapped See's Candies and a scratch-off lottery ticket. Hayley and I had fun chatting with the bride while we put them together. We got to hear their love story and she teared up while telling us about him. The best part of doing weddings is the personal side of it. Who doesn't enjoy a good love story?


The bride had a beautiful cake from Cakes by Dea. It was cheesecake - my personal favorite!

We usually recommend a colored linen for the cake table to set it off. This one was gorgeous!

Congratulations Kristen and Dave! Best wishes for many years of happiness together!

All photos courtesy of Mozart Photography.