Wedding Date: September 6, 2008
Ceremony Venue: St. Ann’s Catholic Church, Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Reception Venue: Sammy’s University Club, Cleveland, Ohio
Used from Jerry Bruno: Bottom Line
First Dance: “Someone Like You” Van Morrison
Photographer: Z Media
Bridal Gown: I actually purchased my dress online from a boutique in Baton Rouge, LA. I found the dress on the designer’s website (Emerald Bridal) and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, it was a dress from last season. After several hours searching for it online, I finally found it at at Jeannie’s Bridal. Local seamstress Fredda Barnes did a fabulous job on the alterations.
Bridesmaid Dresses: Melissa Sweet – Ordered from All Brides Beautiful in Hudson, Ohio
Cake: The Cake Loft
Florist: Hirt’s Flowers
Honeymoon: Niagara-on-the-lake, Ontario
How we met: Brian and I meet during Happy Hour at the Lava Lounge in Tremont. So yes ladies it true, you can meet your future husband in a bar!
How he proposed: I woke up one morning to a room full of flowers and an engagement ring.
How we heard of and decided to use Jerry Bruno Productions: I played on a softball team with Scott Jones’ wife (Scott is the Office Manager for Jerry Bruno) and we started talking about music at my wedding. After I told Scott that we wanted “as much Motown as possible at the wedding reception,” Scott told me that he had the perfect band for us! Scott gave us a promo DVD of “Bottom Line” and we were completely sold after 3 minutes of watching the disc.
How we decided on our other vendors: I’m a former professional classical flutist and a self proclaimed “foodie” and Brian is an Architect, so it was important for us to have live musicians, good food, and interesting architectural facilities. Booking musicians for the church was easy since they were all friends and finding the band was a stroke of pure luck (I should mention that I am VERY particular about the quality of the music and musicians and really couldn’t have asked for better than what “Bottom Line” delivered). The cake was easy once I tasted a piece of cake from “The Cake Loft” at a Bridal show, I knew I couldn’t go wrong. Choosing Sammy’s University Club was like killing two birds with one stone – Good food and a BEAUTIFUL building. Our flowers were done by Hirt’s florist out of Strongsville, they’ve done wonderful work for other events and have been around for quite some time. We knew exactly what flowers we wanted and Paul was really great about refining our selections.
Biggest wedding planning challenge: I decided to play Martha Stewart since I’ve done event planning before, so the biggest challenge was managing my own time. Thanks to my friends and family (who now know how to do an array of different wedding craft projects) I was able to get everything done in time. The management staff at Sammy’s really made everything easy as well. I gave them all of our decorations (centerpieces, menus, favors, etc.) several days prior to the wedding. They set everything up the day of the wedding so we didn’t have to worry about taking care of anything at the reception hall.
Biggest wedding day pay-off: That’s a tough one to narrow down. We were extremely happy with our venue and cake (I’ve never tasted a cake so good!). But I think forgoing a videographer (we just had a few friends record with their cameras) and tossing that money towards a great photographer and live band was the biggest pay-off. “Bottom Line” was exactly what we wanted and the vibe they created was perfect. I must have had 40 different people tell me how wonderful the band was and wanted to know how we found them. They really kept the evening lively and fun, and thankfully all was captured with beautiful, artistic pictures (which you can click below to view full size).