Our friends Two teacups hosted an event on July 27th at The Colonial Inn.

Many vendors from all parts of events’ business gathered this night to share their services!

There was a tour around The Colonial Inn, which is a great place to host a wedding or any sort of event.

Then they served delicious food and drinks for all the guests.

Each Vendor sat behind their tables and showed off their services.

Good job, Two Teacups!

Thank you everyone who participated in Build a Wedding!

We focused on make up and photoshoot this time around~

We had this great backdrop to make you feel like a star!

It was a chocolate fondue melting over candle light kind of a night!

Please mark your calendars and inquire us for more information!

See you all there

Pittsburgh-based aluminum producer Alcoa Inc. says it will make the donation to Peter Geyer and Andrea Parrish as part of their effort to pay for their wedding by recycling 400,000 cans.

The Spokesman-Review says that gives them about 260,000 of the containers – almost two-thirds of their goal.

Parrish says the worldwide response to their can-do wedding is better than they could have hoped for.

The wedding is scheduled for July 31.

Because we’d like to help you save money on your wedding planning,

we’d like to offer you free makeup & hair trials!

Please join our event! And enjoy free makeup & hair trials!

Participating Artists:
TBA

Date:	Friday, January 29, 2010
Time:	6:30pm – 9:30pm
Location:	Tae Photography
Street:	16 W. 32nd Street
City/Town:	New York, NY

For past events photos, please check out our gallery.

For inquiry, visit our events page and shoot us an email

and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!

MOST brides worry about the bridegroom developing cold feet before the big day. But Joseph Edmund Barrett most certainly did show up at the Holiday Inn in Staunton, Va., on Dec. 19 to marry Renea Rhiner-Campbell.

The problem was with the wedding coordinator.

And several dozen guests.

And the bride’s three brothers.

And two groomsmen.

And the couple’s minister, all of whom failed to arrive at the hotel thanks to a severe storm that plastered Staunton with nearly 24 inches of snow. At 1:30 p.m., when the wedding was to have begun, “everyone was still stuck in their driveway,” said Ms. Rhiner-Campell, 19, who met her fiancé in April and was engaged in November.

So Ms. Rhiner-Campbell did what any good bride would do: She freaked out. Badly.

“I yelled at a lot of people,” she said. She also considered holding the wedding the next day, but the hotel was filled with stranded travelers and quickly running out of food. “And they couldn’t bring in anyone to make it,” she said.

Sometimes, what makes a day memorable is not under the couple’s control. This is especially true in winter.

Just ask Heidi Howard and Brett Allen, whose wedding the same night as Ms. Rhiner-Campbell’s, at St. John’s Church in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., went as planned — minus 22 guests from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia because of the snow. At first the bride, 31, was upset. “It never snows on Long Island,” she said (as an administrator at Bates College in Lewiston, Me., she knows a bit about snowy weather). To fill empty seats, she invited friends’ children, baby sitters and acquaintances of her parents at the last minute.

“I just wanted everyone there,” said the bride, now known as Mrs. Allen. “People kept telling me it didn’t matter as long as my fiancé was there.”

Everyone came to Joanna Mason’s and Michael Anderson’s wedding at the Union Theological Seminary in New York on the night of the storm. The hurdles arose after the party ended at 11 p.m., when guests, many of them bedecked in high heels and evening gowns, had to traipse through eight inches of snow and hope a taxi would pick them up. “It was a little shocking at the end,” said Erica Mason, the bride’s mother. Although the bride’s family dropped a set of cuff links as they trudged through the snow, everyone made it home just fine.

Harriette Rose Katz, a wedding planner in New York for 31 years, has seen more than her share of party natural disasters. About three years ago, Ms. Katz was forced to postpone a wedding because of predicted severe weather. The celebration was scheduled for a Saturday, but when she heard the forecast she and her staff spent all day Friday telling guests not to attend. By some stroke of luck, the hotel did not have another wedding scheduled that weekend, so they moved the event to Sunday. “Some people arrived on Saturday anyway,” she said. “Terrible.”

Back in Virginia, where the governor declared a state of emergency, Ms. Rhiner-Campbell was busy trying to pull everything together. She and Mr. Barrett had to marry that day; the bridegroom, a specialist in the Army National Guard, is to begin a 400-day deployment to Iraq in early January. Their first child is expected in April.

After moving the ceremony from 1:30 to 5 p.m., the bride set about arranging the flowers and reorganizing the seating plan. But there was still the matter of the minister, who was snowed in.

“I had to take her out of the room for a while to calm her down,” said Joyce Shoop, a cousin of the bride who had driven seven hours the night before from her home in Danville, Pa. “I said: ‘You know how people always ask if there’s a doctor in the house? Well, maybe we can go to the front desk and see if there’s a minister in the house.’ ”

Unbeknown to them, a sweet-faced woman named Emilie Weitz, a visitor from Dunblane, Scotland, was sitting on a couch doing her cross-stitch, and eavesdropping. Suddenly she piped up, “My husband is a clergyman.” If they couldn’t find anyone else, Mrs. Weitz said, he’d be happy to fill in.

And so the couple spoke for about 10 minutes with the Rev. Marty Weitz, a minister of the Church of Scotland. After researching online whether it was legal for a minister from another country to marry a couple (in Virginia, it is), the couple took their vows before 25 guests (50 fewer than were invited). “This marriage was a miracle,” Mr. Weitz said.

The happy couple danced to Louis Armstrong’s version of “La Vie en Rose,” and feasted on spice cake with butter cream frosting.

Ms. Shoop reflected on the experience: “When everything looks horrible and it looks like nothing’s going to work out, there’s still hope. There’s always hope.”

-nytimes-

Purchasing the perfect wedding dress seems like it would be the ultimate pre-marital headache, but the New York Times reports that more and more brides-to-be are buying not one, but multiple white gowns for their big days…yes, even during the recession!

Annie Hunter of Seattle bought four:

She bought two at a sample sale in Seattle for $3,800 combined. She bought a third dress, an Amsale, online for $3,000. “It had pockets,” she said. “I wanted pockets.” She wore it to a small wedding ceremony she and her bridegroom held in Mexico, but felt it was a bit too revealing for her formal wedding. The fourth, and final, dress she bought at a shop in Seattle, a Monique Lhuillier for $3,400.

Her husband purchased the first two, she bought the third and her mother shelled out for the fourth.

With the rise of wedding dress resale websites like PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com, there is a developing niche for brides who want to buy and sell–and feed their dress addictions–at bargain prices. However, the Wedding Report, which tracks marriage-trend statistics, doesn’t have any numbers on how many women can’t settle on one gown.

Most weddings are planned about a year before the actual date of the event. I am sure that brides who were engaged this year never realized how a recession could affect their wedding plans.

Most brides are young and may not even realize how the recession is affecting their weddings; it may be just their parents who are affected by it. I speak to hundreds of brides a year and have noticed that this year more than ever some are worried about planning their wedding because of possible job losses for themselves, their fiancé or even worse their parents.

One thing to do to beat the recession is either to downsize the wedding or plan longer so you can pay the wedding over time. Readers can refer to a past article I wrote on budgeting for your wedding. One of the best ways to cut back is to cut down the guest list. I have recently noticed and after researching, it was confirmed on the Today Show that most bridal shops across the country are noticing that brides are waiting until the last minute to order their gowns.

I understand a wait and see approach, but if the wedding date is set, the longer you wait the more stress you will have trying to fit everything in. Also, if you wait too late you will have to incur rush shipping charges.

At Facchianos, we feel that ordering with plenty of time allows you to enjoy your engagement and gives time for multiple fittings, as well as bridal portraits before the wedding.

Due to the recession, a lot of local vendors have come up with special pricing and new packages. Do not always be lured by lower prices; look up any and all vendors on the Better Business Bureau’s Web site. DYIbride.com gives some excellent advice on knowing when not to hire a vendor.

In times of economic trouble, businesses also feel financial pressures. They’re trying to survive just as much as you are. Knowing a bit about your vendors is key. How long has the vendor/venue been around? Have they weathered economic storms before? While you’re not going to be privy to their financial statements, you can ask around about their reputation.

The wedding industry is small. Word gets around fast when someone is in trouble or is a monumental pain. Some warning signs to look out for are deep discounts that are out of line with their normal prices, severely undercutting the competition, poor customer service (not returning calls, evasive answers to simple questions, hostility), recent staff reductions, vague or odd contract wording (or willingness/desire to work without a contract) and recent bad press.

I have been in the bridal business for 16 years in Tulsa and have seen lots of places come and go. Always ask other vendors or friends for recommendations. At Facchianos, we will not discount due to manufacturers strict pricing guidelines, but we are giving our brides something special that we have come up with that has never been done before. We want to help brides beat the recession, so we have gone to all the best vendors in the area and have asked them to give our brides a special rate, coupon or gift certificate. We are offering it to any and all brides that order their gown starting right now in December; it is called Facchianos Wedding Stimulus Package.

Normally we give our brides information on everything they need to do or have for the wedding. We still give that, but now we are giving them over $1000 in savings. Participating are caterers, photographers, beauty spas, venues, flowers, party rentals, chair covers, centerpieces, makeup artists and a fantastic disc jockey.

We are adding more vendors every day, so the value is sure to go up. Hopefully, so will the economy. We have picked the best in the area so brides do not have to search around, and they can save money at the same time.

Facchianos is trying to stimulate the economy and help all the local brides have a great wedding without going into debt. Most people know the recession will eventually end, so they don’t want to skimp on their wedding day and regret it later once there are better economic times. Just remember to spend on what you think is most important and save on things that you do not.

I have watched the news and they say the recession is turning around and for all our brides I hope that is true. If you need some ideas about budgeting for your wedding feel free to contact me, Jennifer Thompson, through our Web site, www.facchianos.com.

For their weddings, some lovebird-nerds like to embrace not only their adoring spouse, but also their complete and total geekiness — and what better way than with their wedding cake?

Forget bows, boxes, and pastel: these newlyweds ditched the conventional cake designs to create unique, supergeek creations, from edible Lego towers, to Super Mario castles and dead Star Wars figures.

The amazing collection of the nerdiest-ever wedding cakes below are sweet, geek, and too cool to eat.

Click to view more Geeky wedding cakes!

Move over cupcakes, these wedding cakes will dominate the dessert course.

Wedding Cake Trend #1: Buttercream-frosted Cakes

There’s nothing more irresistible than buttercream frosting piped on thick. Go back to basics — have your wedding cake covered with melt-in-your-mouth chocolate or just-wanna-lick-the-bowl buttercream.

Wedding Cake Trend #2: Haute Chocolate Cakes

Chocolate isn’t just for groom’s cakes: This pleated chocolate cake, accented with oversized sugar flowers proves it.

Wedding Cake Trend #3: Playful Lines

Two-dimensional pop art-style orange sugar flowers add a little rowdiness to a very square, symmetrical cake that’s trimmed with orange and white-striped fondant bands.

Wedding Cake Trend #4: Dramatic Color

A charcoal and white Art Deco pattern calls for a couple of natural accents, such as bright red chrysanthemums.

Wedding Cake Trend #5: Cake Trios

Small white square cakes mimic the main attraction — a white-three-tiered fondant cake with a punched-out blue and orange vine pattern. Blue sugar-made hydrangeas soften the look while simple risers (no plastic columns here!) add height to the display.

Wedding Cake Trend #6: Global Patterns

Consider your wedding cake to be the perfect opportunity to honor your heritage. This pattern, reminiscent of an old-world Spanish tile design, was hand-painted onto sugar plaques.

Wedding Cake Trend #7: Sophisticated Monograms

A monogram this stately — hand-painted in a scripted style on a beveled gold sugar plaque — really deserves a regal backdrop. Soft, hand-painted golden leaves, crimped tiers, and simple yellow bands do the trick.

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