Oops! I had more pics of Alyssa and Samuel's wedding!

I loved this picture of Alyssa and Samuel. You could really tell they were having the time of their lives! The flash behind them looked really cool too.

I really loved the tulle draped in the front of the chapel. I wasn't sure I would like it, but it turned out to be very soft looking and a very nice touch.

We used gunmetal silver chair ties on the 6 tables that are adjacent to the dance floor and the head table. Lots of bang for your buck!

They mixed it up with 3 different designs of centerpieces. Their favors were Christmas ornaments in several different designs--all sparkly silver. We provided a special napkin fold that held the ornaments at each place. It all looked spectacular!

Alyssa's mom, an Italian through and through, chose a fabulous dinner with antipasto trays, and amazing appetizers, followed by a wonderful dinner with an Italian flair. The cake was served with authentic gelato in triple chocolate and white chocolate raspberry marbled together. Yum!

All in all, a great way to spend the day after Christmas!

Alyssa and Samuel, December 26, 2009

Alyssa and Samuel were such a delight. Alyssa is a diminutive little fireball of a gal! She and Samuel have been together since early high school.
Their colors were gunmetal silver and dusty pink. Lovely. Another color scheme that nodded to the Christmas season without screaming Christmas! So pretty.

You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words! It was really a beautiful event.

There was just enough snow falling to make it a beautiful winter wonderland. I'm sure they got some amazing photos in the falling snow. I love the winter pictures because they are a little different from what everyone has. The things that are memorable about weddings are the things that are different!

Elena and Bart December 19, 2009

Ok, well the pictures won't move for some reason--sigh. So I guess we'll just have to talk about them in the order that they were downloaded. I'll tell ya, I have to get all these photos off of the desktop of my computer! It's running soooooooooo slooooooooow!

So, Elena and Bart. What a terrific couple! Elena is from a very large, and very close Philipino family--and they are definitely up for any party! Bart's sister, Jolene was married here at Aberdeen last spring. She and her husband, Larry, were both attendants. Everyone, including me, had such a great time.
Bart and Elena have the distinction of being the first couple to have a photo booth at Aberdeen Manor! I was excited to see how it all came off. The guests REALLY enjoyed it! It was set up in a corner of the ballroom and manned by a couple from the company that took care of setting up a "guest book" with photos of the guests from the booth, on which the guests provided little messages. The guests also received copies of their photos to keep. It was busy all evening! This booth was quite large, so groups of guests could go in and take a picture. Of course, as the evening went on the photos got crazier!
Elena and Bart are both involved in environmentalism, and this was reflected in their wedding decor. Natural twigs and greenery decorated the tables. The cake topper was adorable! Two little love birds among some twigs. So cute.

They took advantage of the free dance lesson from Transaudio, and threw in some smooth moves for their first dance. The crowd, and their photographer, loved it!

Here are some photos of their tables. The chocolate brown bichon tablecloths really looked amazing and set off their elegant and simple centerpieces perfectly.

What I loved about this reception was that it was "seasonal" without screaming "Christmas!" Their red roses in the bouquets, and evergreen and cranberries on the tables, just sort of whispered it.

The cake was so beautiful. The twigs were real twigs that had been dipped in chocolate and sugared. Sugared cranberries also decorated the little groupings up the sides and on the top.

Best wishes Elena and Bart! We are all so glad that we'll see you, and your families back this summer for Matt and Kara's wedding!

Color of the Year--Turquoise

Well here you have it, the definitive word from Pantone is that THE color for 2010 will be TURQUOISE!
Click here for the full scoop from Pantone.
My first thought when I think of turquoise (that is my first thought after "how do I spell turquoise!) is Tiffany Blue. Tiffany has been a huge accent color, particularly with brown or black the last couple years. I like the idea of Tiffany blue standing on its own as a main color.
I think we can do some really beautiful things with this color in the coming months.
Stay tuned!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS ABERDEEN COUPLES!

Just so that you can make your plans and have it on your calendars--our next TASTE OF ABERDEEN will be on March 14th from 2 to 4 p.m.
This will be our ONLY opportunity to try our delicious menu items, until November. We will also have our usual bridal fair with 18 or 20 of our preferred vendors for you to talk with and check out their work.
The Taste of Aberdeen is by RSVP and is only open to our couples that have future weddings booked with us. Invitations will be sent out in the next couple of weeks, however we wanted you to have a heads up. Many of you live out of town, and have to make plans in advance to attend.
We will also have many wonderful door prizes contributed by our vendors. It's a lot of fun, and we look forward to seeing all of you!

Computer issues continue

I never really thought about how dependent we have become on our email and internet capabilities!! Not only our day to day contact with our brides has been affected--there is also the issue of tux registrations, contact forms from our website, communications between us all at Aberdeen; so many things that we have come to expect and take for granted that they are "there"!
Our email is apparently not "going away", it's just hiding somewhere out there, waiting to eventually get to our inboxes. I must admit though that it makes me feel REALLY insecure to not have it working in top form!
I've been using email since 1995 when we got our first desktop--a Tandy Sensation! Woohoo! What a powerful machine THAT was! 386 megabites of raw power! We really thought we had made the big time with our dot matrix printer that took about 3 hours to print a page!!! Back then they called it a desk top because it literally took up ALL of your desktop with peripherals--huge drives for CD's, huge monitors, huge hard drives, huge CPU's, the whole thing was a monster! My have our times changed since then!
Now we have cell phones that have several times the power of those original desktops! Heck there are watches and handheld video games that have more juice! It really is truly amazing. What is more amazing is that we now have teenagers that have never known life without computers and email and the internet. We have college kids that have to really think to remember life without those things because they were little preschoolers when it all came about. And THAT is why I get my knickers in a bunch when our email doesn't work! Our couples, our brides, are used to communicating with us instantly, and receiving answers instantly. I must check my email at least 20 times a day. It's rare that a message sits for more than an hour in my inbox without an answer. When my email lets me down, I have this terrible fear that I am letting my gals down. And that REALLY bothers me!
I guess I have to be very zen about all of this, and realize that it will be resolved, and life will go on, and we won't be any worse for the wear. That's a tall order though.
I need to go do a little yoga---center my karma! Oommmmmmm..............

EMAIL PROBLEMS!

Just to let you all know. We are switching our hosting for our email today and we have had some issues with receiving mail. So if you don't hear back from me, PLEASE RESEND!
While my old address will hopefully be forwarding for a while, you should all know that my NEW EMAIL ADDRESS will be Denna@AberdeenManor.com so change your contacts now to update this.
Hopefully all of this will be solved in the next day or two. Hopefully, I hope, oh gees I hope!!!!!! :)