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| My Community Bio | ||
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| Knot Name: MrsJeffsWife2B | ||
| Location: Deerfield Beach, FL | ||
| Age: 32 | ||
| What I do when I'm not on The Knot (occupation): Web Designer | ||
| Where you'll find me on The Knot (favorite board): Reception Ideas & Etiquette | ||
| About our wedding: Ariana Daner & Jeff Falerni. April 9th, 2006 Check out the new Resource for South Florida Knotties!
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Vendor Reviews & Lessons Learned from My Wedding **Click here for Retouching before & After Pics ** PRO PICS Getting Ready Gazebo set-up before ceremony Procession The rainbow that appeared in the sky as the wedding party processed to "somewhere over the rainbow".. yeah, almost too bizarre to be true! (non pro) MOB Father of Groom
Me & Dad
Listening to vows
At the Beach Wedding Party
Cocktail hour First Dance Father Daughter Dance MOH speach
FOB speach Best Man Speach
Me playing a song
Tables Sweetheart Table Menu Cake Table Song Contest ( a total surprise to us!)
My sister caught the bouquet..
Honeymoon in Tuscany (with a 1 day stop in London first) Very Big Coffee at heathrow
I lived at this apartment when I studied in Siena my Junior year of college At the piazza del campo in Siena Drinking Prosecco at the Enoteca in the Medici Fortezza View from the rooftop of the Ufizzi in Florence Ponte Vecchio
A random Arch in Florence At the Duomo We took a trip up to Piacenza (near Milan) to see the hometown of Jeff's Great Grandmother and meet the relatives that did not emigrate and still live near the same town The building on the right is the house that Jeff's great-grandmother was born in The town of "Vinci" as in "Da Vinci" where Leonardo was born.
In front of Da Vinci's birth house Rome Trevi Fountain Pantheon Colloseum The Forum The Vatican
Palazza Venezia
Bernini's "Four River's" Fountain in Piazza Navonna
After a Very long dinner with many bottles of wine
Watching our love story video: Our Monogram/logo - We had an vintage miami art/deco theme..
STD Magnet
Website Invitations Invitation front and back
RSVP Card front and back
welcome dinner front and back
The inner envelope with Seal
DIY Map Insert front & back
The Custom stamp from stamps.com Program Mock-up Inside Close-up of Cover Salsa Place card Favors (Peach Salsa made by my MOH) The label has a drawing of our dog sammy and says "Sammy's South Beach Peach Salsa"
Close-up of the sticker They will be in Silver Boxes, with tags for each person with their name on the front and their table on the inside with a history of the hotel (we are using south beach hotels as our table names) The inside of the favor tags Table Favors: Cloisonne Bookmarks with our logo on them from Hookmarks.com. back of box with seal:
Inside box:
Bookmark close-up:
Poloroid Guest Book Outside of Book
Inside Pages (filled out):
Other Details: We named our tables after old deco hotels in south beach. Finished table frames Here are two close up Vintage 40's topper I won on ebay..underneath the bride and groom is a swatch for our tablecloths and also a casablanca lily for added effect because that is what we're decorating our cake table with. Menus Sage green 5x7 Cardstock from www.papersource.com for the first layer. Then I am using Avery 3380 Ink Jet "print to the edge" white postcards to print the white top layer. A close up of the design (without the green border) OOT Guide Books
We called it Jeff & Ari's Guide to South Beach. 80% of it was local things to do (tours, restaurants, etc) and it also listed the wedding events (in case anyone forgot their invitation) and a "Best of" style list like New York Magazine's "Best of NY". Example: Best place to flaunt what you've got: Haulover Nude Beach. Etc. Here are some of my favorite page spreads:
Its a large file (13MB) but if anyone wants to see it in its entirety, South Florida Girls who just want the word doc (without the layout) that contains the DYI Luggage Tags (Shower Favors) My sister and I designed these little luggage tags as favors for my bridal shower.. We designed and printed them all the morning of, so I was actually 30 minutes late to my own shower! But they were a big hit so it was worth it. I bought the self laminating luggage tags like these from staples: click here . from the front from the back close ups of the graphic design on the image part of the tag We found the vintage postcard image online (thank you google images!) It says "Beauty on the Beach in Florida" and in the bottom left we put our logo that we made to look like it was "postmarked". The floral elements we added to match the look of my invitation. We just again pulled elements of my invitation design for the back. Click here to watch Love Story Montage using Windows Media Player .. we used Jack Johnson's "Better Together" for growing up pics
Beaded Caparros, size 8.5, 3.25 inch heel height. asking $50 email me at wedding@arianadaner dot com if you are interested in these items. Photo-retouching before and after , roll your mouse over an image to see the before version: Knottie djk9473 from her fabulous honeymoon! Knottie Monica (Mrs.MGC) who has the best cheeckbones I've ever worked on! :)
Knottie Nov24th Bride (who is totally gorgeous before AND after!) Inspired by the inredible celebrity before/after touch up shots on this site http If you are interested in having me touch up your wedding/engagement pictures, email me your original digital images (i.e. not the small ones in your bio!) to wedding@arianadaner dot com. The Palms: C The Palms was a total disappointment. I should have known things wouldn't go smoothly when we arrived for our rehearsal at the gazebo which was scheduled in my contract for 3:30 and I was told we had to be on time because there was another rehearsal scheduled for 4:00. Well, it wasn’t another rehearsal it was another wedding! So we made everyone come up to the palms for no reason at all, we had to rehearse downstairs where we couldn’t even see the gazebo so it was pointless to meet at the Palms. Our catering manager Shelagh Smith who had been very helpful through out the planning process inexplicably did not show up at the hotel AT ALL the entire day of my wedding. She never even apologized for not being there. As a result, there were many things that went wrong. They lost my wedclean dress box, didn’t put out our bookmark favors on the tables because they couldn’t find them, put out my placecard favors on our tables instead of at the cocktail hour (so my coordinator had to run around collecting them all!). The food was also not NEARLY as good as at the tasting and several of the items were different (and not in a good way). For example the chicken Provencal was supposed to have spinach. Instead it had some lame looking carrots and peppers. The snapper wasn’t cooked all the way through. There was no goat’s cheese on the asparagus and no Ceviche at the tapas display. The ONLY reason that I gave the palms a C and not a D or F is that the the serving staff was very nice and the banquet manager managed to find me chair covers and have the staff iron them because we had to move the reception indoors and I was freaking out about using the brown banquet chairs. I totally appreciated his extra effort there, but I also found out he was pretty rude to Dawn and Tara who was assisting her. But he also helped our ceremony “DJ” set up the sound system when her sound person didn’t show. Those things I appreciated and told Shelagh so, but the rest was inexcusable. I did tell shelagh how disappointed we were and she offered us a few free nights at the hotel as compensation. I thought that was nice, but honestly I would have rather had an explanation as to WHY these things weren’t taken care of. It doesn’t make sense to me given that everything was written down in a “social” contract that we approved and it was almost like it was ignored. For the price, I thought their attention to detail was totally lacking and bordered on negligent. Shelagh was nice enough to upgrade my room for the night before the wedding to a suite so I wouldn’t have to check in and out of the suite the day of my wedding, but the room wasn’t great. The phone by the bed was broken, the TV remote was broken and the TV wouldn’t show any chanels below 17. Not a big deal, but still! The worst thing about the room was that there was no mirror anywhere near the windows. There was a mirror in the bathroom and the hall that were unuseable for putting on makeup because the light was dark orange (I’m not kidding) and you couldn’t see anything. I had to get Dawn to buy me a mirror at target to put on the desk by the window so I could touch up my makeup before the ceremony. I could go on and on, but luckily most of the snafus were corrected before the guests knew anything was wrong and only Dawn and I knew how bad things got. Dawn Yap – Firefly event design A+ The cocktail hour flowers were so beautiful and they smelled absolutely amazing. Our personal flowers were very pretty, though he did add some unexpected touches of colour in dark pinks that I probably would not have chosen myself, but again because of the hot pink bougainvillea it all worked great. My only real disappointment (and its a big one, hence the B+ instead of the A+) was that the calla lillies in my bouqet weren't the bigger thicker stemmed ones like I asked him for. I wouldn't have chosen a completely different flower if I had known he would give me those little ones.. he told me something about them being too big to hold but M&A06 had exactly the ones that I sent him a picture of and they worked for her! I'm very sad that I didn't get to have the boquet I really wanted. Eddie is warm, wonderful, intelligent, suave, entertaining and made our ceremony incredibly moving and meaningful. He is a pleasure to be around and he just emanated this amazing energy.. I can’t explain it exactly but I know for SURE that there is no one in the world that I would have rather had marry us. Our guest told us it was the most beautiful, meaningful and touching ceremony they had ever witnessed. Photographer Tony Gajate: A- Tony was SUCH a joy to work with the whole day. My wedding party and guests commented on how he seemed so happy and pleasant and they really enjoyed his personality. He really went above and beyond by showing up early and staying until the sparkler exit. He also commented on how all the details were so beautiful that I should do them professionally. I really appreciated that coming from him because I know how many weddings he's seen! There are alot of wonderful shots but, many of the pictures need a bit of post processing work: blown highlights, too much forground flash, incorrect white balance etc.. Luckily I'm good with photoshop and can correct them (to a certain extent), but still I didn't realize I'd be spending so much time on this... Plus he shoots in JPG and not RAW. If I knew as much about retouching then as I do now I would have insisted he shoot in RAW, at least for the tricker lighting situations and essential shots (like the cake cutting). There were also some details he missed.. like a close up of my centerpieces, any pics of my signing table, Jeff taking off my garter etc. This is mostly my fault because I didn't give him a must take list which I am kicking myself for.. I guess because he's a photojournalistic photographer I didn't want to give him a long list and insult him, but I should have mentioned at least a few things that I really wanted. I'm also disappointed that there aren't more than about pics of the reception hall in color. It would have been nice to have at least one great color shot of the whole room after I stressed so much about matching all the colors etc! Lesson learned: Don't assume anything, ask for everything you want! :) Artistry Wedding Video: A+ Again, I haven’t seen my final product yet, but Alan has been amazing to work with from the beginning. He completely “got” us as a couple. We showed our love story montage during our rehearsal/OOT dinner at Da Leo on Lincoln Road. People on the street stopped to watch and clapped when it was over. It was such a wonderful thing to have and show at the dinner. The day of the wedding Alan was the first vendor to show up and stayed until the very end. He even decided to get a third camera person to shoot the ceremony even though only 2 were included in the package. He and his staff were incredibly nice and fun people.. his assistant Robin was always smiling and my wedding party commented on how great they were. I can’t wait to see the final product because I KNOW Alan will do an amazing job, he’s a true artist and I am so grateful that I found him. I was really worried that my bad mood about having the reception indoors was going to somehow effect the photo’s and video and it was such a relief when both Alan and Tony told me at the end of the wedding that they had gotten GREAT stuff. Stay tuned for some video clips! Ana Paz: B+ Beautiful and delicious! I would have given them an A but half of the chocolate layer had some other kind of dryer chocolate that wasn't as good as the kind we ordered and wanted. Also I don't think they sent a box for the top layer. Island Heat Wedding Band: A+/C The A+ is for the band who were AMAZING. I’m a musician and I’m pretty picky, but they just sounded great, were very nice to work with that night and kept the dance floor packed. The C is for their manager Lynn who is pretty difficult to work with. She’s nearly impossible to get in touch with (I guess she travels with the band a lot?) she doesn’t return emails for months and then confuses you with other people when she does. Supposedly they plan a lot of weddings, but you wouldn’t know it by the process of choosing songs etc. They don’t have a playlist you can see to choose from or anything, they just kept telling me to “request” what I wanted and if they couldn’t play it they’d tell me.. that’s just too much work to be doing, or at least it was for me. I wanted at least a starting point! I just had to let it go and keep my fingers crossed that the band would deliver and they really did. Its too bad they aren’t more organized because for the price (they are really reasonable!) they are the best wedding band I’ve ever heard. But if you hire them its for talent alone because the planning part will not necessarily be easy! Dance All Nite (Ceremony/cocktail hour DJ): B- Eddie the owner is INCREDIBLY sweet and helpful and the price can’t be beat. His wife was supposed to be the “DJ” and he had a sound person that was supposed to come to set up the equipment for her who never showed up. As a result, the ceremony started late and my officiant and the palms banquet manager had to help her set up (thank god they stepped in!). Also, I had told them I wanted a mixture of old Jazz standards (Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Billie holiday etc) mixed in with some more Cuban stuff (like Buena Vista social club) and maybe some brazillian jazz like Atrud Gilberto etc. The songs I heard were some weird techno lounge stuff. I think we had a lot of difficultly communicating with them. They did call a bunch of times to make sure they knew what we wanted which was nice, but somewhere it got really lost in translation. I was afraid this might happen so I brought a back up CD which I ended up asking them to use because they kind of missed the mark on the music selection. Eddie was very nice and called me the very next day to apologize for the technical difficulties which I appreciated. He also said he fired the guy that didn’t show up. I give them an A+ for personality and a C for execution. Van Michael Salon: A+ I had some trouble deciding on a hair style and was a little worried that even after two trials I didn’t know exactly how my hair would look. I also worried that I was too shiny after my makeup trial but I brought the picture to show the makeup artist so she could adjust the makeup to be less moist. I shouldn’t have worried because the whole team did an AMAZING job. My mother, my aunt and my bridesmaids looked GORGEOUS! The master stylist Siobhan who did my hair was great but I was also really impressed with Greer who did most of my bridesmaids. Leslie (the co-owner and makeup artist) is a genius. She does the makeup seminars and training for Aveda nationwide and has tons of experience with video, fashion and weddings. What we all loved about the makeup was that it wasn’t “bridal”. She listed to what we wanted and just made us glamorous. The staff at the salon was really easy to work with setting up all the appointments for us and the people that work there are just great people and it was a nice relaxing haven for us before the craziness of the rest of the day set in. The only downside is that if you want them to come to you they charge DOUBLE. This makes them not very affordable if that’s what you want. But if you don’t mind going to a salon I would highly recommend them. Its too bad the weather was so humid and rainy which wreaked a bit of havoc on our hair. Da Leo Trattoria (Rehearsal Dinner) A+ What a find, thank you HisPrincipessa!! For $30 a head, the food was amazing. They set up a long table for the 50+ of us and even scattered rose petals down the center! The service was excellent, the location can’t be beat and my guests had SO much fun. They were also super accommodating about letting us set up and play the Love Story DVD and mini sound system. The staff was so snice, they told me what a wonderful group of people I had etc. I’m so incredibly grateful we got to have that amazing dinner outside, particularly because I didn’t get the outdoor wedding reception I had my heart set on. If you are getting married in Miami Beach, you can’t go wrong with Da Leo. Our guests: A++++ At every event our vendors commented to me about what a great group of people we had.. at one point during the reception some friends organized a song contest that I knew nothing about. Each table had to come up with a love song and stand up and sing it together. It was SO much fun and totally unexpected. I can’t wait to see the video of it. Even if every vendor had failed us or if we had our reception in a brown paper bag it would have been fun because that’s the kind of friends and family we have and with that kind of support you can’t go wrong. Lessons Learned from my wedding: I know that Sulla has the best tips around and I am neither as eloquent nor as funny as her, but I still thought maybe these would be useful to someone. These obviously reflect my own personal experience and may not apply to everyone, but these are the lessons I learned from my recent wedding: 1) Stand your ground: My hippie parents couldn't for the life of them understand why I wanted to hire a videograper or even why I wanted such a "traditional" wedding to begin with. They enjoyed themselves at my wedding more than anyone and now are the first in line to ask when the video is coming in! Throughout the whole planning process they pooh poohed many of my decisions, it was painful at first especially when you really want their support and instead they question every decision. Then I decided to look at from the perspective that part of getting married is separating from the nest (even if you haven't lived in the nest for a while!). Not to get all psychological, but I think its kind of a natural and healthy process to learn to stand on your own that way - or at least that is a good way too look at it because it keeps you from getting down about it. And in the end they will probably have the best time of their lives! 2) If you're having your wedding outdoors, make sure your reception decor that you chose for outside will also look good in your back up location if it rains. Our back up ballroom was ALL white which thankfully looked great with our deco green and pink reception theme. Had I gone with hot pinks and oranges like we originally were going I think it would have looked out of place in the ballroom and I would have been even more upset about having to move the reception indoors due to weather. 3) Don't take on any last minute coordinating tasks in the days leading up to your wedding. The day of my rehearsal dinner my bridesmaids decided they wanted to get mani/pedis with me where I was going. I ended up coordinating 6 mani/pedi appointments for which I was the main contact. That day when people decided to cancel or were late I was getting calls from the salon every 10 minutes and it was a HUGE amount of stress I didn't need. If you all want to do this together ask your BMs to make their own appointments and make sure you ask about the cancellation policy. 4) If you're cycle is pretty regular and you can calculate it out a ways try NOT to book your wedding for when you will be PMSing or having your period. Enough said. 5) SCHEDULE a nice quiet time with your BMs to give them your gifts and don't wait until your wedding day. I thought I would give it to them the day of when we were getting dressed and "waiting" to have our pre-ceremony pictures taken. Well we were running late and I pretty much had to throw the gifts at them as I was leaving to go have our first glance pictures taken. It definitely took away from the moment. 6) Hire a coordinator if you can possibly afford it. This also gets filed under "don't believe your catering manager when they tell you you don't need to hire a coordinator because they will handle it." This one amazes me. I know my location tells perspective brides that they will handle all the details. My catering manager didn't even show up the day of my wedding! Not only that, but we had a whole contract with all the necessary details that the banquet manager had but they still screwed up just about everything that was on there. If it hadn't been for my coordinator, there would have been NO one there who could advocate for me and get things set up the way she knew they were supposed to be. She spent almost the whole day running around putting out fires the hotel started and I can't even imagine what would have happened if she weren't there! 7) If you have a lot of OOT guests, consider inviting them to the rehearsal dinner if you can afford it. We invited all of our OOT guests to our rehearsal dinner (which we called "welcome" dinner) and it was one of the best decisions we made. It allowed our guests to get to know each other before the wedding and have more fun that night and also allowed us to spend time greeting guests the night before so we could also relax and have more fun the night of the wedding. 8) The devil is in the details.. in this case I was the devil :) I really obsessed about every little detail from programs, to favors, to guest book, invitations etc. Though my friends and family thought I was nuts during the planning stages, the day of everyone commented on how all the little details were beautiful and special. It made everything worth it! Even if no one else understands why you are obsessing, just don't talk about it with them and do it for yourself. Even if no one had noticed I would have known and it made it more enjoyable for me and I felt like I brought our personalities and style into the wedding which is priceless. When the videographer and photographer both told me I should do this professionally, it made all the long nights of designing, printing, cropping and tying bows totally worth it! 9) Have back up plans for unknown factors: We hired someone to DJ our cocktail hour. I had a suspicion that they didn't quite get what type of music I was looking for so I brought a mix CD I had of things I liked. We ended up using my CD, I don't think I need to say more. 10) Hire the best photographer you can afford even if it means skimping on albums or prints. When all is said and done, photo and video are all you will have to remember your day. The images themselves are what's important. You can always have an album made later, but you can't get a fabulous photographer to reshoot your wedding! 11) If you care about your guest book, make sure you have someone who takes this responsibility seriously and is not shy to be in charge. We did a Polaroid guest book and I asked a close friend of mine to be in charge of it. The guest book was one of my favorite things from the wedding, the polaroids made everyone look glamorous and it was so much fun to look through the next morning. I heard from guests later that my friend Ben was really persistent about gently nudging the guests to sign the book. I'm so glad he did! 12) Look over your contracts very carefully. For some reason in my contract It said 3 boutonnieres for Groomsmen and we needed 4. I totally missed it, but luckily my florist was still there and was able to improvise, but again, I got lucky. 13) Make sure you can walk backwards AND forward in your dress: Sounds silly, but we did a choreographed foxtrot for our first dance and while I had no problem with the forward steps I couldn't step backwards without stepping on my train! 14) Have extra cash on hand for tipping even beyond what you think you'll need. We hired a 4 piece band but they sent 5 members. Also the catering manager procured us chair covers on a Sunday for free with no advanced notice so we wanted to give him extra. You never know what will happen the night of your wedding so having a little extra cash on hand for service that is superior is a good idea. 15) Find an officiant that you LOVE and who shares your values. This is something so often overlooked but really, the ceremony is what its all about. I was guilty of this as this was one of the last vendors I hired. Once we found him I realized he was the most important one and I couldn't beleive I didn't place more empahsis on it to begin with. When everyone's hearts have been opened by a moving, touching ceremony you FEEL it for the rest of the night and it sets the stage for a warm, celebratory experience. Thats it, I'm sure there are more that I will think of later but for now I hope some of these suggestions help someone else have the wedding of their dreams! Complete List of Vendors and Contact Info: Search the South Florida Planning Boards steal this code / make this work for your city
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