Weddingbee boards

OMG ISMINI! I am getting married in Middletown on 10/9/2010 as well!!! Crazy.

Did you steal the Wesleyan Chapel? J/K ;)

So the details:

When: 10/09/2010

Ceremony: First Cong. Church Middletown

Reception: The Barns at Wesleyan Hills

What we have so far:

Dress, Website, Photographer, Videographer, Catering (comes with Barns), and Officiant...thinking of ordering STD's, invites this week

I've officially asked 5/7 of my bridesmaids...kind of have colors, styles picked.

Otherwise, lots of googling for decoration inspiration and rehearsal ideas.

@ismini, and other Connecticut bees: do you know much about Middletown? We picked it b/c it's the midpoint between NYC and Boston, but fiance and I have only been there once and we didn't hit downtown. I've heard it's a great place with lots to do.....

Don't feel behind! We know our photographer and videographer so we didn't have to search for them! And catering comes with the reception venue, so we didn't have to look for caterers either :) Anything we know about Middletown has come from Wesleyan's website too! I guess I'll just have to go there before the wedding. We haven't even see the church in person, so a weekend in Middletown might have to happen.

Another CT Bride...

Date: May 8, 2010

Ceremony & Reception - Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk

Catering: Philip Stone

Cake: TBD

Photog: Studio 1923

E-shoot with the above studio on 12/5 around Yale in New Haven

DJ: Eric Bruce

Flowers: Braachs

Invites: Invitesite.com

Dress: Kleinfeld's

Alterations: HELP!

Hair/makeup: DD Nickel

Blocked Rooms: Hilton Garden in Norwalk

Rings: Derek Simpson

Ketubah: Jennifer Raichman

JP: Sharon Brown Drumm

I'm DIY crafting like crazy, we're making our own oragami centerpieces, chuppah, placecards, favors, menus and what feels like a bazillion other items. I'm still trying to figure out the veil and jewelry and poor mom cannot find a decent formal reasonably priced MOB dress so were on the hunt for those items. I live in the New Haven area and knew nothing about Norwalk when getting started and found the KNOT to be the MOST UNhelpful and stressful website. If you need recs in my local area or or Norwalk, I'm happy to try and help.

Mrspeacock - thanks so much. That's a huge help, I'll start my seach after the new year.

I got married this past July in West Hartford. If anyone is looking for ideas, etc, let me know. We had 150-guest wedding, blac-tie, and I DIY'd everything! I had such an awesome time planning my own wedding, I decided to go into wedding planning!

@ sophie10-Welcome and thanks so much for the offer. My fiance & I are looking for cakes in that area. I'll follow MrsPeacock's suggestion & try Dimares. We also have an appt with Chocopology that I'm soooooooooooooooooo excited about.

Would you know a decent BYOB restaurant for a rehearsal dinner in that area?  My fiance's family is from the UK (HUGE drinkers) & we feel it's the best way to have a super nice, yet, affordable rehearsal dinner but I'm not that familiar with Fairfield county.

I also got my dress at Kleinfelds. They were taping the bride next to me and everytime I tried on my gown, Randy came out to chat. It was a GREAT experience. Congrats to you, can't wait to see your episode. My dress hasn't come in yet. When it does, I'll need to decide who to use for alterations. Unsure it will warrant the Kleinfeld fee, I'll see when I go back to try it on.

Hi @otherstuff - we're getting married at the Barns in three weeks! So far it has been a great experience and the staff has been extremely helpful - I was on the phone for about half an hour with one of the staff members hashing out details and she was very patient and answered all of my questions.

The only sort of "unexpected" cost is that the per head cost goes up a LOT when taxes are figured out, which my fiance did not like (I guess I expected it?!) but with me coming from the Boston area and him having just moved here from NYC, we still think the cost per head at the Barns is reasonable, though I've seen other people on the 'bee call it expensive. Guess it's all relative. We're also choosing to have the Barns decorated by whatever vendor they use to string up twinkly lights in the rafters. We could've done this ourselves, but the thought of me or my family on a ladder before the wedding was keeping me up a night, so we decided to go with the decorating service which in my opinion, is wwaaaay overpriced. My parents are paying for it as sort of a "gift" though, which helps :)

We're excited about the food options and so are our guests! I'd love to tell you more when we get back from our honeymoon in about a month (yikes) but from our experiences so far, I give the Barns two thumbs up!

will do :)

OK, this is long and pic-heavy. Feel free to skip, skim, or PM me with any questions!

I can't recommend the Barns at Wesleyan Hills ENOUGH!! Someone mentioned it was wedding factory-ish and the food wasn't great, etc, but I couldn't disagree more, and we got married during a weekend when there were three events planned at the barns. My event coordinator made me feel like I was the only bride she had to look after all weekend - we never felt rushed, and we received tons of personal attention. I've been to weddings where the staff kicks the guests out in order to set up for the next wedding - that's "wedding factory" to me, and that's pretty much the opposite of what I experienced at The Barns!

The guests LOVED the decor and the food - well, and I loved the food too, I sat down and ate it while my groom wandered, lol. The staff at the Barns took my pile of "stuff" (card box, framed bird pics that matched the theme, centerpieces, guest "book" picture, etc etc) and made it look pulled together, thoughtful and beautiful - all I had to do was bring everything down to Connecticut and sit for about 30 minutes going over how I wanted things to look. She also had the room rearranged how I wanted it. At the end of the night, the staff made sure that my parents and bridal party had everything they needed as well, i.e. the ceremony shoes I had taken off and ditched in the back room and left without, card box with TONS of cards in it, all the pictures, decorations. They were fantastic. Highly recommended.

I think someone may have mentioned price too. Being from the Boston area and husband being from New York city, we know how much it costs to have a wedding in either of those cities, so The Barns was perfect in terms of our price range. We also went all out with the sit-own dinner, premium open bar, added a cake to our wedding package, added decorating, etc. There are ways to bring down the per person cost if it is more than you want to spend. For some, it may not be a reasonable option, but to us, the per person cost was worth it!

As for decorating - to me, it was worth the money because the Barns looked how I wanted it and I didn't have to do any work. It did cost us $1600 and when I first worked it into our wedding package, I was kind of horrified we were willing to spend that much on what seemed like basic decorating, however, when it came to the wedding weekend, I was dealing with about a million different things, and knowing that the Barns would be lit up beautifully and not having to worry about it was AMAZING. Plus I was at The Barns while the guys were stringing up the lights and it seemed time-consuming and pretty unfun, not something I'd want to burden our guests or family with the morning of the wedding (never mind worrying about my dad/uncle/groomsman on a tall ladder!) Here's how it looked:

From the balcony:

We were lucky on our wedding day because the weather was fantastic. The grounds of the barns are beautiful. The lawn was a bit damp, but other than sinking into the grass a bit, we didn't encounter any problems, no bugs, nothing like that. The pro pics will have a much nicer angle and better lighting, but here's an idea of the outdoor space:

Also recommended: The Inn at Middletown - we had a rehearsal reception here as well as our room block. Not only was the staff amazing to us and our guests (e.g. recommending restaurants, making a copy of the bridal suite key when DH and I arrived after the wedding locked out of the room) but the property was also perfect for taking pics:

Other recommendations:

First Church of Christ, Congregational: I'm from Massachusetts and wanted my pastor to marry us. We chatted with the pastor at First Church, put my pastor in touch with him as well, and worked it all out. They were really lovely about everything.

Esca Restaurant and Wine Bar: one of the top ten best martinis I've ever had (lavender martini) and a fantastic meal. Wish we had known about this place when we planned our "meet the families" dinner - we had it at Amici, which was excellent as well, but Esca? Yummmm.

Serenity Salon and Day Spa, Wallingford CT: I found them by googling. I booked two spa packages only to find out my mom wanted in as well, and they totally accommodated us. The women there bent over backwards to make us feel comfortable and the service was top-notch. I wish I lived closer, because I'd make this my "home" spa. Plus they use a lot of earth-friendly products (bamboo brushes, vegan nail polish) - LOVED IT. They even gave us coupons as "first-timers," which we couldn't really use not being from the area - we gave these to the women at the front desk at the hotel! 

Our DJ was also amazing - we went with Peter H. from Club T productions. We had seen him DJ before and loved his style, reassured that he would play the type of music that would keep the party going 'til the end of the night without leaving us with ringing ears (even my grandparents danced almost all night). He was FANTASTIC!

So that's that. Thanks for reading, hope this helps some of you Connecticut brides!