Wedding Week Special - Final Day!

This week really flew by! Today I'd like to share some of my mini projects, as well as, personal touches I've included on my special day that really paid tribute to New York City, the city where my husband and I spent our entire, now almost, 12 years together.

For us, Central Park has played a huge role in our lives. In fact, we spent our first Valentine's day together at the Central Park Zoo (we were probably playing hooky ha!) and we used to celebrate my birthdays by having brunch at The Central Park Boathouse, and afterwards, we would spend the day row boating in the pond. So it made a lot of sense that Jay would get down on his knees and propose to me in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of a Central Park View Room on the 54th floor of The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in NYC. We spent a weekend at The Mandarin Oriental after we got engaged and never left the Time Warner Building where we had wonderful meals at Bar Masa, Bouchon Bakery, Asiate and the Mandarin Lounge. The first step I took in planning my wedding naturally, was to visit all the possible wedding venues in The Time Warner Center. We looked at the Mandarin Oriental's grand Ball Room on the 36th floor of Time Warner, Cafe Gray with it's pretty open kitchen dining space overlooking Columbus Circle, Per Se and Jazz At Lincoln Center's Allen Room. I would recommend any of those venues as they are all beautiful, but Per Se was clearly the choice for us. We wanted something intimate and we love to eat - especially great food, and thought it would be truly amazing to treat our guests to a meal at one of the three restaurants in NYC that's received 3 Michelin Stars.

Not only was everything about the restaurant perfect but, the service was outstanding. It's rare to find a restaurant that's so highly rated with service that makes you feel like family. We were never too shy to say we'd never tried a certain type of wine or ingredient before and even our guests noticed how great the staff were. We were treated so well and every detail was thought out for us, in fact, the restaurant's excellent event coordinator even went as far as booking my bridal suite - the exact room that I got engaged in at The Mandarin Oriental, 50 stories above Per Se (funny story, as I ran back to the room to change into my reception dress, my maid of honor and I took the elevator up with Kanye West).

photos by David Willems

We wanted everything to be super convenient so we had our rehearsal meal at Bouchon Bakery, also a Thomas Keller Restaurant (yes, we are Keller Groupies!). Logistically we couldn't have our rehearsal in the afternoon as Per Se's restaurant was open and serving a full house of diners. Instead, we rehearsed early in the morning and afterwards, took an escalator ride down one flight and enjoyed a delicious Rehearsal Brunch.

Again, Bouchon, like Per Se were very accommodating with customizing private event menus; we had a dessert that Per Se's Pastry Chef and also head dessert god at Bouchon, invented on a whim - it was a gorgeous dessert - Macaron au Cassis .

I sent over my motifs (a taxi cab clip art image from my invitation suite and a monogram my dear friend created for me) to Bouchon's private event coordinator and she had super adorable menus printed out and slipped them into chocolate brown window pocket cards from Kate's Paperie. It was very convenient that I planned my wedding colors around both Bouchon's and Per Se's colors - the menus looked great! I loved seeing our monogram, the one used on our Poster Programs and Wedding Reception Menu, being used and tying in so well with our rehearsal soiree.

In the midst of my last minute planning frenzy, I forgot about the rehearsal invitations and had to whip one up quickly. I requested a jpg of Bouchon's logo, found a cute wedding rehearsal poem online and created my own invitation.

Since I am such a huge fan of Bouchon Bakery, I worked with Per Se's chef and Event Coordinator on 6 custom macaron flavors for our favors. We wanted macarons in our wedding colors so we had two cream, two green and two chocolate brown macarons. The two cream flavors were peanut butter with a concord grape jelly filling, and almond-base cake with a Jasmine filling; the two chocolate brown flavors were chocolate cake with red velvet icing center, and Pumpkin Pie; lastly, the two green flavors were green tea with red bean filling, and green apple with a caramel center. They were packaged in clear rectangular boxes and my maid of honor and I created personalized tags for them.

photo by David Willems

We did a double tag, one chocolate brown with a silver "thanks" stamped on it, and the other, silver on the backside and white with a special "wedding" stamp design in chocolate brown on a white background. The two tags were fastened together with silver eyelets.

I had such a fun time making these tags, and after doing so, became slightly obsessed with rubber-stamps. So...I created a tag for my kissing bellsas well. I found a sweet stamp at Lee's Art that reads "kissing makes you beautiful" and thought it would be perfect; I also loved the vintage feel of the font.

  Photo by David Willems

Another project I took on was creating something that would let my guests know about the self-portrait studio, as it was tucked inside the restaurant's smallest private dining area. I've always liked the notion of raffle tickets and wanted to somehow incorporate them. Inspired by something I saw in Martha Stewart Weddings, I came up with a card that had a raffle ticket attached to it via tiny brads.

 

These photo-studio tickets were displayed on each place setting atop the menus and alongside some great NYC trivia cards that a lot of guests enjoyed reading. Again, I liked the Art Deco font on these cards and thought it would work really well with the entire look of our tabletop design and tie in well with our NYC theme and Cross Street table names.

Photo by David Willems 

As our last ode to NYC, we decided to take photos in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn where we would catch, in the background, the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. We took a limo ride immediately after our wedding with the Best Man and his wife and had a lot of fun having our photos taken; it was the perfect way to end our day.

Thanks so much for visiting my site and following my Wedding Week special. If you have any comments or questions (want some feedbacks on some of my vendors or more information) please feel free to post them or contact me.  

photos by david willems 

Comments

[At Home with Kim Vallee]

Congratulations on your wedding. I love the attention to details. The Thank You tags are pretty.

[Aggie]

I just found your blog via Chere Amie, and I think your wedding was just brilliantly stunning.

[jackie]

where did you get the paper to make your thanks tags? i absolutely adore your stamps...any good rubber stamp sites you recommend on line? michael and I are getting married on numverber 1st, 2008 at the ritz carlton, downtown sf....
becomingoh.com is our website!

thanks for all the great tips and lovely blog...

[Pat]

Hey there - Im a frequent visitor to your blog - finally decided to say hello

[ADENA]

Thank you for sharing that link, I didn?t know. That will give me some ideas.