Dinner Party Wedding at Brooklyn Winery
Taylor and Jake had a very simple vision for their wedding day: a delicious dinner with loved ones where everyone gets to dress up, dance, and eat cake. What could be more perfect than that? M2 Photography, Square Mile Events, and Designs by Ahn were all brought on board to help out on the big day, and they all worked wonders — though we have to give special credit to the incredible floral design that still has us reeling!
From the bride, Taylor: We originally wanted to get married upstate somewhere outdoors, but the travel for our guests felt unnecessary. Jake’s family was flying in from Australia and we wanted our guests to be able to relax once they go to New York and to enjoy the city we love so much. Brooklyn Winery checked off all of our boxes. It was rustic and immediately personal. Every staff member was genuinely excited for us, they felt like an extension of the guests. We wanted to hit that sweet spot of making it comfortable and approachable for us but formal enough that it felt like a wedding. The flowers really made that difference! It was like a great dinner with great food and all your friends and family got to dress up. Our friend Francis Lombardi played original music and covers during the cocktail hour. We are friends from college so to have him play at our wedding and bring everyone together was really sentimental. Then we go to just kick it and dance and laugh and eat cake. It was perfect!
Flower recipe: My bouquet was a mix of sweet pea, astilbe, lisianthus, tuberose, jasmine, passion vine and ranunculus, all in shades of white. The chuppah was made of birch and decorated in hydrangeas, lisianthus, passion vine, dahlia and green vines to coordinate with the winery. The table arrangements were a colorful mix of my bouquet plus dahlias, and the groomsmen wore yellow garden roses to pay respect to the groom’s grandfather who tended and grew garden roses at his home and wore one in his suit everyday.
We really wanted the guests to feel like they had walked into a big house out in the country, where we would be eating from the farm and decorating the space with flowers from the garden. It was full of nostalgia. Oak barrels and repurposed wood from a church was used on the walls to make the space more inviting. In the dining room there is a wall filled with plants to make you feel as though you are outside. It was very romantic and personal. The dance floor was right next to the bar to encourage the guests to mingle and get to know each other.
Any advice for couples planning their weddings now? Wear what you want, eat what you want, play your favorite music. The day really does go by in a flash, so the more if feels authentic and comfortable then the more easy it will be to relax and enjoy it. And hire a good photographer and videographer! You can’t be everywhere at once on your wedding day and being able to look back and watch my father’s speech or see my best friends laughing and enjoying themselves, it really is a gift I’ll treasure for years.
Wedding Music:
Processional: “The Wedding Song,” Peter Paul and Mary
Recessional: “Pompeii,” Bastille
First Dance: “Latch,” Sam Smith (acoustic)
Music is so important to us. It is something that as a couple we bond over, going to shows, discovering new band, etc… Scratch actually told us that they’d never received so many song requests from a couple before…oopps. I love soul and 90’s hip hop and r&b, he loves alternative rock. We played everything from Kings of Leon, Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, Chaka Khan, NIN, Paramore, Rihanna and all that new fun music like Zedd and Kid Cudi. Then our DJ freestyled with some great club mixes and mashups for the last hour. Things got crazy in a good way! Bring on the dance circles!
From the photographer, Melissa of M2 Photography: Bride and groom both wanted more of a dinner party feel for their wedding, the “anti cookie-cutter wedding” if you will. Taylor is a pastry chef for the world-renowned chef Jean Georges and Jake is a self-described food snob so they knew their wedding had to incorporate an amazing menu and wanted a focus on the food and beverage. One challenge Jake and Taylor faced was figuring out a way to tastefully blend their inter-faith marriage. Taylor is Catholic and Jake is Jewish so they incorporated both a Priest and a Rabbi into their ceremony. Taylor also spent a few minutes privately with her twin sister and parents at their UWS church prior to heading to her wedding. When it came to choosing the location to host their wedding, Taylor wanted to make sure she had more of a hipster-vibe at her wedding in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Winery was the perfect location. Taylor was adamant about not having a wedding cake at all – until Jean George’s head baker offered to bake her a cake as a wedding gift. Jake’s gift to Taylor was a long weekend trip to Paris. Taylor’s career as a pastry chef has made Paris a dream vacation destination for them both. Flowers: Designs by Ahn used an assortment of orange dahlia and yellow ranunculus as well as Juliet garden roses. Taylor and Jake’s color palette was vibrant yellow and orange flowers as well as cream, blush and pale pink accents. They had a birch wood chuppah decorated with branches, hydrangea, stock, lisianthus passion vine and orange dahlias. Their wedding style aesthetic was fresh, modern and timeless.