“Our wedding was Gatsby inspired, but with a more modern feel. We wanted glitz, glamour and black tie – but we also wanted it to be fun!” Allison began.

“I also created a lot of posters of varying sizes that had meaning to us, and put in them in frames around the room. We love both the city, and the beach, in fact we live in Hoboken, NJ (outside of New York City) and also have a beach house in Lavallette, New Jersey. I ordered small posters from Zazzle (where you can customize everything) of Hoboken, and Lavellette, and of New Jersey with our initials near Hoboken and “love” near Lavallette.”

“During our ceremony, we chose readings for each other (Mike chose “Thank You” by Led Zeppelin, I chose “A Lovely Love Story” by Edward Monkton. My reading was about a male dinosaur who is stuck in a cage of ice and meets a lovely other female dinosaur who is keen on shopping and falls in love. One of the posters had an adorable pair of T-Rex dinos and said “I love you this much” and the other saying “That’s not very much” (ha!)  Another large poster had the lyrics from our first dance (Frank Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight”) – “And I’ll feel a GLOW just thinking of you”.

“For colors I knew I wanted neutrals and metallics (I’m not a color person.) but there was a point where I just couldn’t decide on a color scheme for flowers. Pinterest has become this wonderful thing for wedding inspiration, but there are also some really over the top, hard to pull of ideas. I knew I wanted to incorporate something totally unique using flowers for our wedding. Our ceremony was in the Boathouse Chapel (a beautiful chapel with stone mantle and fire place out on a dock at Mallard Island.) Our florist Melinda suggested stuffing a frame with fresh flowers and hanging it above the mantle during our ceremony. I finally decided to use shades of pink for our flowers with white anenomes (they have navy centers which matched Mike’s custom tux!), and bought a large, gold frame at a vintage store. The arrangement turned out perfectly! We leaned it up against our table during the reception, and it acted as the perfect decor. I had also bought matte black miniature vintage vases on Etsy, and asked Melinda to put one white anemone in each and scatter them on the head table. They turned out so adorable, I stole one and put it on our table during the reception. I LOVED my flowers, they came out exactly as I envisioned them. The best part was bringing them all home and scattering them around our beach house!”

“If anyone is a details person like me, I would advise to NOT wait until the last minute to get all your cute details in order! That caused me some unnecessary stress. People told me to slow down on my wedding day and to be in the moment – otherwise, I will blink and it will be over. I reminded that of myself all day – to just be present, and take in my surroundings. I did not feel like my wedding was over in a flash, I felt truly present and immersed in it the whole way through. I would also suggest writing down some of your favorite moments the day after, to capture the feelings you have before they slip away. I would highly recommend to get a videographer, even if it’s a super reasonable one. I got one at the last minute, and I CANNOT wait to see our video. That will allow me to relive the wedding. I am so happy someone convinced me to do that. I’ve already forgotten my sister’s speech and parts of our ceremony. I cannot wait to hear the words again.”

“Lastly, I know wedding planning is tough. It can drive you crazy and cause you to be unable to focus on things (like work!)  And because it’s one day, you might question your madness and all the preparation going into it, but now I understand why people say it’s the Best Day Ever. It’s truly a magical experience to be surround by everyone you love, who loves you, who is happy for you to make this commitment and start this new chapter of your life.  The chaos is worth it, I promise.”