Marisa and Dan’s Wedding Blog

Yesterday was a very productive day for us, wedding-wise.

First we met with Paul at Stefan’s Florist, who showed us what he had come up with for our table centerpieces. LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT. I’m not going to get too specific or post any photos because I want everyone to be surprised when they arrive at the Royalton, but I will say that Paul perfectly captured the essence of “us.” The centerpieces are elegant without crossing the line to overly ornate (i.e., no three-foot trees that will make it impossible to see the person sitting across from you), contain two things we love (wine and candles), and coordinate very well with the bridesmaid dresses. I’m extremely confident that Paul is going to make our wedding day as beautiful as I ever could have hoped for. (Pardon the dangling participle!)

Then we headed over to Gennaro Jewelers, the place where I had gotten my engagement ring appraised and resized, to investigate wedding rings. We didn’t expect to buy anything on the spot, but we at least wanted to get a feel for how much cash we were going to need to drop. Of course, the best laid plans…

Gennaro is an extremely popular place and is, accordingly, very crowded at all hours of the day, so we waited awhile for help while munching on the ever-present free bakery cookies and iced tea. Eventually it was our turn, and we found exactly what we were looking for pretty quickly. My ring is a platinum band of diamonds closely matching the band of my engagement ring, and Dan’s is a thick titanium band with two very thin stripes of yellow gold at the top and bottom. Of course, we were offered a deal if we purchased the rings that day, and out came the credit card. The damage? Well, suffice to say that Dan’s ring cost 10% of what my ring cost. No joke. But we love what we picked out and can’t wait to be able to wear them on a daily basis!

Our wedding rings.

Just a quick update to say that OUR WEDDING INVITATIONS HAVE ARRIVED! They look amazing and I couldn’t be happier with how they came out. They’re very “us,” and if you’re invited to the wedding you’ll see what I mean when they go out next month…

I can now highly recommend Wedding Paper Divas if you’re looking for any wedding-related paper goods. In fact, we’re going to order our programs from them, too.

Next up: appointment with the florist next weekend to see what amazing centerpieces he was able to whip up. Hint: there will be wine bottles and candles involved.

Once again, it’s been awhile since we’ve posted, and that’s because we didn’t have much new and exciting to say during the month of June. But now July is here, and with only four months left until our Big Day, wedding planning is kicking back into high gear and you’ll be hearing from us more often.

The exciting news of the day is that our wedding invitations have now been ordered. While trolling the Internet for all things wedding-related, I stumbled upon Wedding Paper Divas, a paper goods site with a HUGE selection of wedding invitations. I knew I wanted our invites to incorporate a wine/vineyard theme since, well, we’re winos, and Wedding Paper Divas did not disappoint. I’m going to maintain an element of surprise here by NOT posting the gorgeous invitation proof currently residing on my computer’s desktop for everyone to see, but suffice to say that it’s simple, elegant, and accurately conveys who we are and what kind of vibe we want to infuse our wedding with. The invitations haven’t arrived yet so I can’t attest to their quality, but I did have the company mail me a sample several weeks ago and I loved it. And their site is incredibly detail-oriented while remaining easy to navigate. Two thumbs up.

In related news, today I traveled with my mother and stepmother to the distant land of Wading River, New York to visit With All My Heart, a well-regarded wedding store located within the East Wind Inn (a very popular wedding venue, for all of you non-native Long Islanders). Our mission: determining whether we wanted this store to engrave the addresses on our invitation envelopes. Karen, one of the managers, very quickly convinced us that this was just the place for us. Not only are they going to do the address engraving once Wedding Paper Divas delivers our invitations, they’re also going to create custom place cards and table number signs that look very similar to the invitations (to keep the wine theme, er, flowing), and they’re going to create something cute and quirky related to our favors (intentional vagueness here). I highly recommend With All My Heart to fulfill your wedding printing needs (and they’ve got plenty in the way of decorations and accessories, too).

Dash looks on as we order invitations on my laptop.

The weather in New York this May has been less than ideal. Over and over again, Mother Nature has teased us with a day or two of warmth and sunshine, only to follow it up with days and days of clouds, rain and below-average temperatures.

During any other year, this kind of weather would probably really get to me. But not this year. Nothing’s getting to me this year. With a month of homeownership under our belts and only five months until the wedding, Dan and I are still flying high.

In terms of the wedding, we’re in that quiet phase that bridges the flurry of activity right after the engagement and the even greater flurry of activity right before the Big Day. Pretty much everything’s been booked, the bridesmaid dresses are in, it’s not quite time to order the invitations yet, and there are still a couple of months before our food and cake tastings (drool). There’s a pervasive sense of “Should I be doing something I’m not?” — and the answer is “Not really.”

Luckily, that’s where the house comes in. I’m feeling more and more than Dan and I picked the absolute perfect time to purchase our little corner of paradise. We went to contract right before our engagement party so we knew exactly what house-related gifts to ask for (thanks, everyone!), and now the house is filling our time and providing us with a sense of purpose until the wedding planning picks up again later this summer.

And what a wonderful sense of purpose it is. We are madly in love with this house. Its understated beauty, its bright and airy spaces, its green and sizable (at least for Long Island) yard, the quiet neighborhood we’re nestled in, even the ubiquitous rabbits that will probably make it impossible to maintain a vegetable garden — everything about this house is exactly what we’ve always wanted. Next to finding each other and deciding to spend the rest of our lives together, I can state with confidence that this is the best thing that’s happened to either of us.

Every morning I wake up and take stock of what surrounds me: the man I love with all my heart, my two adorable cats, my perfect home. Then I’m filled with a renewed sense that I’m finally where I want — and need — to be.

This truly is what it’s all about.

Using the Flip Mino camera given to us by Paul and Rayna (thanks again!), we decided to utilize the capabilities of Web 2.0 and create youtube videos for a video tour of our brand new house! Expect more to come as we decorate and redecorate and generally update the house over time. For now though, enjoy my amateur video-making skills as I make you all dizzy with how often I spin around in circles:

Sorry for the recent silence, oh loyal reader(s?). Between business trips and weeks of mortgage application hell, neither Dan nor I have found ourselves capable of mustering the energy to post much lately. Tonight, however, I feel refreshed and revitalized, ready to face the blog world once again. Why?

Because we’re now homeowners!

That’s right — at approximately 3:30 this afternoon, Dan and I officially closed on our beautiful split-level home in Commack, New York, where I grew up. Much money was exchanged and many (many, many) papers were signed, and then the previous owner forked over the keys.

Dan and I will spend the rest of this week packing up our apartment, and bright and early Saturday morning we’ll be moving all the big furniture over to our new digs (which are, luckily, only about 15 minutes away from where we’re currently living). We both took off days from work next week to continue the move and complete the cleaning out of our apartment, which we have until April 30.

Goodbye, landlord who doesn’t care if we live or die! Goodbye, property management company who decides it’s okay to dig up the entire sidewalk in front of our building without any prior notice, only to replace it with cement that looks far worse than the original! Goodbye, drunkard neighbor who receives frequent door-to-door deliveries from the local liquor store!

Hello, ability to do laundry without leaving the comfort of my own home! Hello, quarter-acre of property! Hello, debt! Hello, adulthood!

(Check our Photos section for pictures from the closing and afterward.)

Our new house!

Hi everyone — apologies that it took so long to upload these, but what with the house closing date bearing down on us we’ve been understandably preoccupied. Nevertheless, I just recently uploaded Karin’s photographs of the engagement party. Check them out in the Photo Gallery section!

…that is, if you consider renting out an Italian restaurant in western Nassau County, packing in 75 of our closest family members and friends, and stuffing our faces with food and booze for 4+ hours a “regular old Sunday afternoon”!

That’s right, this past Sunday Dan’s parents threw an engagement party for us at Fianona, a wonderful little Italian spot in New Hyde Park. My mother and I used the party as an opportunity to test out some wedding hairdos and makeup at Paul Anthony Salon in Manhasset, which was recommended to her by a co-worker. We LOVED what they did for both of us, and will definitely be using them on my wedding day. I barely recognized myself!

The party itself was fantastic. Dan’s parents pulled out all the stops for us, presenting Dan and me with an arsenal of meaningful gifts (including the bonnet Dan wore home from the hospital shortly after his birth, Dan’s grandfather’s pocketwatch and bracelet, and a personalized fleece jacket reading “The Future Mrs. Fedele” for me!) and plowing us all with enough wine, beer and liquor to keep everyone smiling all afternoon long. Members of our families also got to meet each other for the first time, and I was finally introduced to some of Dan’s father’s relatives, all of whom were very sweet and gracious.

A cute shot of us:

And one of me with my bridesmaids (unfortunately minus the Oregon-based Christina, who couldn’t make the cross-country trip):

There are more great shots in the Photos section, although I must warn you that there’s a strong bias toward select members of my family and my bridesmaid party. If you attended the fiesta and have any of your own photos to add, please email them to us ASAP.

The moral of the story? Sunday’s party reminded Dan and me of how lucky we are to have families and friends who are so supportive and who care about us so deeply. We had a great time and it made us even more excited for November 14! Oh, and the truckload of presents we received didn’t hurt either. It took us nearly two hours to open everything after the party, and we’re still in awe of how much we got. Suffice to say our house-to-be is going to be filled with beautiful new things. (Thank-you notes are coming soon, I promise!)

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks at work for both of us, not to mention that Dan is 12 hours away from officially owning a new car and we’re gearing up for an engagement party being thrown for us by Dan’s parents on Sunday, so we’ve been remiss in updating the blog as of late. Apologies.

The latest news is that our wedding will now have music. Whoo hoo! We’ve hired Dancejock Productions, the “recommended” DJ and entertainment company of the Royalton Mansion (not to fear, we took the recommendation with a grain of salt and did plenty of independent online research before electing to meet with them — the reviews were almost unanimously positive). Hate the name, love the company. We were very impressed by the women we met, whose name is failing me at the moment. She put my whole family at ease and didn’t try to sell us anything we clearly didn’t need.

Enjoying some family time at the Dancejock office.

So here’s the musical lowdown. It’s been my dream for many years to have a string quartet play at my ceremony (rather than the traditional organist), and Dancejock is going to do that for us since they employ a network of local musicians. During the cocktail hour, guests will enjoy a jazz trio complete with keyboard, saxophone and stand-up string bass. The reception will feature a standard DJ with an MC, not to mention a smorgasboard of multimedia treats that I’ll keep under wraps for now. Suffice to say, all the parents will be crying.

Now, time to steal a few hours of sleep before picking up Dan’s beautiful new Honda Accord coupe (which I’ll let him ramble more about in a future post) and getting a pre-party manicure/pedicure with my mother. Good night!

Just a little off topic, but monday was the first blizzard we’ve had in a while and I felt it was necessary to introduce our cats to their first 12+ inches of snowfall.

Dash was very excited about the snowfall. Violet on the other hand preferred to stay inside and peek out from behind the couch.

Edit: Just added a few more pics from the blizzard in our photo gallery. Check it out!