JORDAN + ERIC | Westchester Country Club | Rye, New York | June 2017

This wedding appeared in the pages of The Knot in January 2018, on Inside Weddings, inside Westport Magazine, on Carats & Cake, Style Me Pretty and Westchester/Hudson Valley Wedding Magazine. 

This wedding was a class act filled with creativity and smart choices! We LOVE the vendors we love and cannot say enough about how hard they worked with us on this wedding to make everything come together on point. And the spirit and love at this wedding equaled its beauty! 

As most wedding decor, we started off with an inspiration board that came out of Ashley Douglass's first conversation with the beautiful and fun Bride Jordan. We both shared our love for home design, kitchens in particular, marble, mixed metals and pillows. You can see a screenshot of a portion of the first design inspiration board Ashley Douglass sent on to Jordan below. As you can see the wedding in the end did reflect some of these initial ideas, which is not always the case.  

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Then somewhere down the line, once we have the florist contracted and in this case the lovely KDJ Botanica who we adore collaborating with, will get more specific on details and arrange a decor rehearsal day, the most fun you will have while planning!  KDJ and us have the same taste and could at times finish each other's sentences and I think she would say the same. Not to mention how stunning her arrangements are and the quality of the flowers she is able to procure time and time again! 

We played around with adding marble as an element or adding more grey/blue chiffon like runners and a zillion linens. In the end the result was a bit less romantic and more bright and a more refreshing take on modern for a wedding while still being happy and soft. The marble sealed the deal, as did the linens and then which shade of candle to be used. We love colored candles - so many options! 

This crowd was a super passionate, loving and happy a crowd, and clearly knew how to bust a move on the dance flower with fabulous tunes and endless amounts of time on preparation by Starlight Music NYC. 

We can't thank the Bride, Groom, and family enough for being open to ideas and having fun playing around until we got everything just right. It was a super fun night and thank you to the team at Westchester Country Club for accepting our endless back and forth with logistical ideas and details, and helping to make the planning perfect for both entire families. 

This wedding was featured in PRINT in The Knot New York. Check out the fabulous (and large) three page spread below and on newsstands all throughout New York! Vendor credits below as well! Thank you, thank you! XO 

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Thank you to the fabulous team, including our own! Thank you Paige, Julia, Rachel, Page, Sarah and all! 

Planning + Design | Ashley Douglass Events

Florals + Design | KDJ Botanica

Photography | Melani Lust Photography

Venue | Westchester Country Club

Gown | Caroline Castigliano from The Plumed Serpent Bridal, Westport, CT

Bridesmaids | Joanna August from Bella Bridesmaids

Band | Starlight Music NYC

Cinematographer | Seaglass Studios

Lighting | Social Decor

Make up | Truly Happy Beauty

Tent | NY Tent

Rings | Diamond Cellar

Invitations | Bella Figura 

Poster Sketch of Dog | Social Alchemy Design

Day of Stationery | GCD Weddings

Lounge Rentals | Gather and Lounge 

Rentals | Borrowed + Blue

Rentals | Party Rental LTD. 

RACHEL + DAVID | Ritz Carlton, Westchester, New York

Every wedding is different as every family is different, let alone each couple and venue. Planning a wedding for a couple that has been together for over a decade has its own special characteristics too. Also, this is a second marriage for them both. The inclusion of children became most important, and sweet, and honoring both family members and friends that have been by their side through thick and thin, for decades. 

While most couples today want their ceremony to be over as soon as possible, it’s the ceremony we talked about most while planning this wedding. For one, limiting the bridal party was hard! Does the Bride and Groom keep it to friends or to family because having them both was just too many people! In the end we got very creative which made for a more personal, goose bump worthy ceremony. 

First in the processional came the Bride’s closest friends, some of which have become the Groom’s as well. These friends were coined “the flower friends”. They walked first and to assigned seats, which lined the ceremony aisle. Once they got to their assigned seats, they stood by their chair until it was time for them to sit. In their hands they carried a portion of Rachel’s bridal bouquet. Then came her closer family members - her niece, the Groom’s niece, siblings and then last, the Bride’s two daughters, all of which stood under the Chuppha with the Bride and Groom, and Rabbi. Rachel then walked the aisle by herself making her way from one flower friend to the next, building her bridal bouquet as she walked. Each piece was wrapped in ribbon with a heavy duty magnet inside to help keep the pieces together. Once she got to the Chuppha her long time friend and mentor, who sat in the front row, met her by the Chuppha. This friend has been in her life since they met at Summer camp when he was just a few years older and her CIT - “Counselor in training” for those of you who never went to camp! He helped her tie the pieces of her bouquet into one, and lifted her veil over her face as a father would, and helped her walk up to the Chuppha to meet her Groom. It was a tear jerker to say the least. Guests hummed to Do Di Lee along with the musicians.  

When it came to design, she would use the words such as lush, feminine and romantic. While she loved the pictures she accumulated that were more traditional for a ballroom or hotel setting, she also loved more modern weddings and couldn’t really make up her mind what direction she wanted to move. In the end she felt if she went too modern then she may regret it later on, so the sense of modern was minimal, such as chairs we chose. This is a common conversation that comes up with wedding gowns more often but for venue design as well. If I really express myself and how I feel today, will I regret not having been more traditional in design twenty years from now? For her the answer was yes.

The venue was chosen for a host of reasons and in the end, the main ingredient they wanted in a venue, which was to be by the ocean, was not possible. The couple resides in Westchester and needed the venue to be rather local to accommodate all the people they hoped to attend - more important than the ocean. Having hotel accommodations on-site to make the weekend easy for all far away family members, many of which have children, and to be close to the city, close to LaGuardia and close to their home. The Ritz in Westchester is located near metro north and there is another hotel that is brand new as of 2016 right around the corner for those that wanted to spend a bit less on accommodations.  The weekend started with dinner at a near by restaurant and ended on Sunday with guests being shuttled to the couples brand new home in nearby Rye, New York - something that was very important to them both. 

We got lucky that day on traffic. As sometimes is the case we watched WAZE like a hawk and all roads were clear, so the couple, along with their fabulous photographer we love so much, Roey Yohair, traveled to Greenwich to get in some waterfront photos.  Then on the way back they also managed to take a quick pit stop at their home in Rye, NY to include Ackerman, their family dog in the festivities. Then back to the Ritz in time for the Ketubah signing and ceremony. All roads where clear and gosh are we thankful. The risk was worth the reward said the bride and I was happy to oblige as long we the risks were understood. Thank you to the traffic gods!

Thank you to all the vendors that made this wedding exactly what the couple wanted it to be! They waited a awful long time for this day to come and they couldn’t have been more thrilled. I will never forget the look at Rachel’s face when she entered the reception room during cocktail hour and her jaw fell. She screamed, “My white dance floor, my big white dance floor” and began to dance as the band, The Carlos Estrella Band, warmed up. They were fabulous by the way and nailed the very much rehearsed first dance the couple had prepared with them for weeks beforehand. 

Photography below by Roey Yohair 

Planning + Design | Ashley Douglass Events

Florals + Design | Fleurs NYC

Photography | Roey Yohai Photography

Venue | Ritz Carlton

Gown | Austin Scarlett

Band | Carlos Estrella Band from Hank Lane

Cinematographer | First Day Films

Lighting | Social Event Decor

Make up | Amanda Shakleton

Gown Dresser | The Stylish Dresser

Invitations | Bella Figura

Caligraphy & Design | Sarah Hanna

Rentals | Nuage Designs

Rentals | Party Rental LTD

The Connecticut Bride, in print

The Connecticut Bride, in print

Thank you to The Connecticut Bride for featuring one of our 2015 Connecticut Weddings from this past Winter, in print! Charlotte and Chris could not have been more lovely, dapper and classic on their wedding day.

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