NYC Brunch Garden Wedding
It’s hard to beat getting ready at The Wythe Hotel, celebrating with friends and family while enjoying a delicious brunch, and an after-party at a bowling alley, and that’s the exact day that was in store for Angie and Domingo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Redfield Photography captured the whole day and Sprout Home did excellent work as always with the floral design!
From the bride, Angie: The overarching theme of our engagement & wedding was “The Perfect Recipe.” We love to cook and love good food and in the end wanted that to be reflected by our small personal touches. Domingo and I are big fans of cooking and eating, delicious food. He makes breakfast every morning (which he continued to vow to do!) and I try my best to make dinner at night. Because of this, we wanted our wedding to reflect this love that we have for all things food. Additionally, we’re really early risers (he proposed at 8:16am over breakfast and when I sent out the announcement texts the majority of our friends responded with “LET US SLEEP!” and “WHY SOO EARLY??” instead of the expected “CONGRATULATIONS!”), so we knew we wanted a day wedding. We wanted to be able to take advantage of the day and the sun, and do as much as possible.
Funny thing, I had asked my husband-to-be at the time, on a whim, that if he could select one thing about our wedding, what would it be…without a second thought; he announced that he would want the wedding to take place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He had lived in Williamsburg while he was in college and loved it. Had a real soft spot for the neighborhood. It wasn’t too hard to convince me as Williamsburg has awesome eateries. So, despite NOT living in Williamsburg, we took ourselves to Brooklyn. Now that we had a general location and theme, it made searching for a venue a bit easier – our options were narrowed down. We had agreed that we wanted something that felt intimate. After a bit of research, we stumbled upon Aurora Ristorante. We already knew we wanted a day wedding and reception, however…we figured it would be easier to checkout the venue in the evening during the week. One evening, we decide to go scope it out and when we walked in, we were completely disillusioned… not because the space isn’t beautiful, IT IS, it was just too dark for what I wanted, and I was sad. But Domingo convinced me to give it another shot and go during the day. We did just that! The following week, we took another visit to Williamsburg to have brunch at Aurora and COMPLETELY LOVED IT! As in floored by the greenery, the space, the rustic-ness and the food was amazing! It obviously all worked out in the end but goes to show you how visiting a venue during the envisioned time of day, really plays a big part in making the decision.
We got married May 23 and Domingo’s birthday was May 19. While the wedding itself was amazing and we were on cloud nine, I have to admit that the best part of the day for me was surprising my husband with a birthday cake at Brooklyn Bowl (at the after party). We were both so consumed with all things wedding, he thought I had either opted to celebrate his birthday by, well, marrying him, OR that it just wasn’t worth making a big deal of it (his 30th), because he was getting married! In either case, he was completely blown away and genuinely surprised that I had arranged the delivery of his favorite cake and that we acknowledged his birthday. It was the best feeling in the world, because he’s always surprising me and I was really happy to be able to do the same for him (for once)! While in the end, we were extremely happy with the results; so much sweat and time went into creating the personal touches throughout the event. I did everything from the ceremony backdrop to the burned initials on the wooden spoons, with Domingo’s company on tow (he tried to help and failed – he’s a charmer, not creative). We got to spend some serious time together while I completed these tasks.