Featured Wedding-Areal Maduri and Danny Cesario

 

Wedding Date: August 5, 2007
Ceremony Venue: Barrington Country Club gazebo
Reception Venue: Bertram Inn
Used from Jerry Bruno: The Avenue band for reception; Harpist Xiao Lei Salovara for ceremony
First Dance: “Far Away” by Nickelback
Florist: Bouquets-Petitti’s; Certerpieces & Decor-Lowe’s Greenhouse
Photographer & Videographer: New Image (all photos in this story courtesy of New Image)
Cake: The Cake Loft
Dress: Catan’s for the bride; Henry’s for the bridesmaids
Honeymoon: A private island called Matangi in Fiji. There were only ten other people on the island!
Make-up: Mac Cosmetics
Hair: Patrick’s Hair Salon

How they met: “We met at a wedding in Chicago, March 2006. He was friends with the bride and I was friends with the groom. We were sitting back to back the whole night at separate tables with our families. His friends bet him he couldn’t talk to me, and he did.”How he proposed: An elaborate scheme. Study this one, guys! Danny rented out an entire movie theater room and placed a fake ad in a fake version of a newspaper about the theatre bringing back movies from the Golden Age. The second week would feature Areal’s favorite movie, “Roman Holiday.” Areal saw the ad, called the number to purchase tickets (the number was her friend’s new cell number, which her sister has strategically removed from Areal’s phone so she wouldn’t recognize it). Fake tickets to a fake movie screening arrived in the mail.

When they walked into an empty theatre, Areal was elated that she and her boyfriend would be getting a seemingly private screening. Once the theatre went black, Areal’s beloved movie did not play. Instead, a video montage put together by Danny of their favorite photos appeared, with Nickelback’s “Far Away” as background music (their song, as the two lived in seperate towns).

At the end, the screen read, “I love you, beautiful. The End?” As the lights came up and Danny got on one knee, both their families emerged, Areal’s father prepared with pink champagne.

How they heard of and decided on Jerry Bruno Productions: While Jerry and Areal’s father, Christopher Maduri, go back for years, Areal saw The Avenue perform at Catan’s Bridal Fashion Show at the Renaissance in October, 2006. She knew right then that that was the band she wanted to play at her wedding, even though she was not yet engaged at the time! Ironically, The Avenue’s Geoff Short was working at Channel 3 at the time, where Areal works now…at Geoff’s old desk!

How they decided on their other vendors: Bridal fairs and past experience of working with the vendors for other events.

Biggest wedding planning challenge: “We planned on getting married outside and it actually rained the morning of. It worked out to our benefit because we ended up getting married under the gazebo at Barrington Country Club where I had wanted the ceremony originally. The rain cooled the temperature and it was so romantic the way steam was raising as we walked down the isle.”

Biggest wedding day payoff: “Everything. Honestly, the whole thing was PERFECT. Seeing the ceremony set up in such a romantic way, dancing the night away with my friends and family, my flowers were incredible!! Everything had it’s ‘best’ part.”