Details, details, details...

Here are some of the details of our wedding day, including some close-up photos (click on the for the photo).

Invitations: We ordered our invitations through a catalog and addressed them all ourselves. We skipped a lot of the additional inserts and only ordered the actual invitation and reception/response card.

invitation front
invitation middle
invitation last (main)
reception card
response card

Rings: Our rings are gold bands. Stacey's has a row of five diamonds. Mike's has a small diagonal row of diamonds.

Stacey's wedding & engagement rings (left) & Mike's wedding ring (right)

Attire:
Dress: The bridal gown was bought at Fran's Bridal Shoppe in Corning, NY. Stacey's grandmother bought the dress as a gift.

magazine photo of dress
magazine photo close-up of dress

Bridesmaids Dresses: Stacey's mother made the bridesmaids dresses from a floral material that Stacey and Mike picked out.

close-up of fabric
bridesmaids in dresses

Flowers: We used silk flower bouquets, assembled by Stacey's mom and Nancy Morley. Stacey carried a spray of pink, lavender and blue flowers. Each of the bridesmaids carried a single-colored bouquet attached to a lace fan (Melissa- purple, Julie- blue, Christine - pink). The throwaway bouquet was used as part of the cake decoration.

bridal bouquet
bridesmaid bouquet
throwaway bouquet

Tuxes: The tuxes were provided by BonJulie's in Horseheads, NY. All of the guys wore black tuxedos with vests - Mike's was black with small silver checks, the groomsmen wore black with lavender checks.

tuxes

Ceremony:

program (Adobe PDF)

Church: Bentley Creek Wesleyan Church, Gillett PA.

Pastor: Rev. Harry Barrigar

Pianist: Jennie Peters (Stacey's longtime friend)

Soloists: Melissa Walrath (Because You Loved Me, Celine Dion) & Bob Totoritis (Through the Eyes of Love, Theme from Ice Castles)

Scripture:

Genesis 2:18-24 (Matthew Huffman)

1 Corinthians 13 (Brenda Dowd)

Vows: We chose our own vows from a book and edited them until they were what we wanted to say.

Other details: The ceremony began at 2pm. Stacey has played piano for many years and hates organs so we did not use an organ during our ceremony. For the same reason, we did not use the traditional wedding ceremony music. The processional was to "Angel Eyes" by Jim Brickman. We had Communion only for the bride and groom during our ceremony. Our unity candle was lit before the ceremony by Stacey's mother and Mike's Aunt Brenda.

Transportation: The O'Donnell's provided us with our comfy wedding day transportation - complete with much-needed air-conditioning and champagne! Mr. O'Donnell himself chauffeured the bride and groom!

transportation to reception

Reception:

Location: Elmira Clubhouse, Horseheads, NY

Menu: Our food was prepared largely by ladies from the Wesleyan Church. We had chicken, baked beans, potato salad, deli meats and rolls (thanks Gramma and the members of our meat-rolling party!), with punch to drink. We did not have alcohol, except for the bridal party to use for the toast.

Cake: Nancy Morley made our cake as a gift. It included several tiers, ribbons, flowers (my throwaway bouquet), fans, cherubs, stairs, pillars and even a fountain! All of the cake was yellow, some with buttercream filling and some with lemon filling. We used a Precious Moments figurine as our cake topper. The cake was absolutely beautiful and tasted just as great as it looked!

cake by Nancy Morley
Precious Moments figure from top of cake

Favors: Stacey and Christine made all of the favors by the hand. This included hand-folded fans made from a pretty wallpaper, complete with pearls, silk flowers, and ribbons with the names and date. We also wrapped Hershey Kisses in lace for the reception tables.

folded fan favors

DJ: Don Moss of All-Star Entertainment provided music for the reception. Don did a great job, too bad none of our guests were big dancers!

Don the DJ

First Song: Shania Twain, Still the One

Bridal Party Song: Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World (thanks to Kim Cohan for filling in for Christine, who disappeared during the dance)

Father/Daughter Dance: Butterfly Kisses, performed by Bob Totoritis!

Mother/Son Dance: Billy Joel, Just the Way You Are

Bouquet Toss: Bridesmaid Julie Pettapiece caught the bouquet

Getaway Car: Mike & Stacey left the reception in their new (to them) Nissan Sentra, just purchased the day before. When purchased 24 hours prior, however, it did not include 50 balloons (that Mike actually got suckered into helping blow up), 20 pounds of birdseed, bells in the hubcaps, and ribbon.

getaway car (front)
getaway car (inside)
getaway car (back)
getaway car evil-doers

Other:

Photo location: We had some pictures done at the church, but the majority of the bridal party shots were taken at the O'Donnell's house on Ridgebury Lake. We used a trellis made by Stacey's grandfather for some of the poses.

wedding party at Ridgebury Lake (home of the O'Donnells)

Photographer: Warren Winner (A Photographer - yep, that's the name!) was our photographer. He came to the rehearsel the night before to get a feel for the people and how things would work, which I thought was a really good idea. He gave us our proof book without PROOF stamped on everything, which I thought was also really cool. His prices were reasonable and he did a decent job.

Videographer: We decided to skip hiring a professional videographer and instead bought our own video camera. Stacey's brother Matt took video of the day for us.

Honeymoon: After getting off to a bumpy start (wedding night hotel gave away our room, we didn't get to a hotel room until 5am), we stayed several nights at a bed and breakfast in Henderson NY called the Dobson House. We spent our days wandering around the Thousand Islands in Upstate NY. After a few days of relaxation, we returned home to pack and move into our new apartment.

Special Thanks: to our families, Stacey's gramma, our attendants, Sean & Brenda for coming in from Florida for the big day, the ladies from the church that helped with food, Nancy for the cake and flowers, Uncle Andy for helping out at the reception site, the O'Donnell's for a ton of support and fun and so much more, and the many other people that were part of our big day.