Results tagged “weddings”

What once housed the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, a slew of dentist offices, and now luxury condos, will take on yet another purpose: wedding hall. The Brooklyn Paper reports that "the landmark ground floor of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building will open in September as a sumptuous catering hall for weddings." Mmm sumptuous. They'll also host your bar mitzvahs, corporate Christmas party, or any other high-end special events. Prices start at $15,000 to book the beautiful space in Fort Greene, which will be called the Clocktower at One Hanson (despite being many floors below the clocktower); the booker called that figure "Brooklyn-sensitive pricing."

Books, or at least book shelves, must be on this couple's wedding registry: The Post has a cute story about a couple whose engagement took place at the Strand Bookstore. Joshua Reich and Shianling King "always told friends they met at the Strand," but they actually met online - their first date was supposed to be at the Museum of Modern Art, but the lines were so long that they went to the Strand instead....

There have been a few ads in the NY Times weddings section that spoof the real wedding announcements. For instance, we believe we recall a few for divorce services, but less ironically, there have been ads for marriage-related movies, like The Starter Wife. And this week, there's an ad for an upcoming wedding on the ABC comedy Ugly Betty. Of course, the ad is a lot wordier than the usual NY Times wedding announcement, but any mention of Wilhemina assistant Marc St. James is worth the extra ink.

Couples planning their weddings and receptions often face a dilemma with their guest lists. With relatives to consider and budgets to stay within, some send invitations to single friends without a plus one.

Brides hate being disappointed, especially on their wedding day! And Elana Glatt is no different, as she, her new husband and mother-in-law are suing their wedding florist for a number of floral mistakes.

The current New York Magazine dives deep inside the navel with seven sprawling pages on Gawker. The rather tame procedural is conducted by Vanessa Grigoriadis, who's up front with the disclosures: Her NY Times wedding announcement was savaged by Gawker, New York Magazine currently employs two former Gawker editors, and Grigoriadis peeped managing editor Choire Sicha’s underwear.

This week, the NY Times has some suggestions for wedding gifts from stores affiliated to museums, reasoning that those stores have wonderful gifts that are appealing to "people who are tired of shopping in the same old places — and might enjoy spending a couple hours in a museum as well." We wholeheartedly agree - when you know the couple well, that is.

This past week, the big wedding wasn't even real! According to the many paparazzi photographs of the Sex & the City movie filming, it seems that Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw is finally stepping down the aisle. With, we assume, Mr. Big. The wedding between the fictional sex columnist-turned-author and the rich business guy (it's never been totally clear what Big does, except smirk and show up at the right and wrong times) took place at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The bride wore Vivienne Westwood, her bridesmaids did not wear matching bridesmaid gowns. We'll know more when the movie comes out next year.

Yesterday, the NY Post revealed that the dingy Manhattan Marriage Bureau would be getting a deluxe makeover. First of all, the City Clerk's Office will move from 1 Centre Street at the Municipal Building to 80 Centre Street. Second, Mayor Bloomberg's personal decorator, Jamie Drake, will be overseeing the redesign - at a discount (we doubt the new bureau will have the touches that Mayor B's swank townhouses do), but the budget is still $13 million.

We haven't checked in on Gossip Girl since the show was filming around town and the producer touted New York as a main character in each episode. To summarize: the show is like a New York-based version of The OC (in fact it's another Josh Schwartz creation), except the rich kids don't act like kids, they act like their parents. Meanwhile, the omniscient, omnipresent, anonymous oggler Gossip Girl blogs about it all.

People planning weddings - or people wondering why they've seen so many weddings outside lately: Theres a nice article about the trend towards weddings in parks and other public spaces in the city in today's NY Times Style section. With parks - complete with dazzling views - getting cleaner and safer, couples are getting married in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn and Gantry Plaza in Queens. The most important thing to investigate is the kind of permit or permits you may need (depending on the size of your party, whether you have music, chairs, photographers with tripods, etc.). Here's the Parks Department FAQ about events, including weddings in parks. If you're not having a complicated affair (small, no music, no chairs), it's just a $25 permit.

The NY Times has a slide show of assorted items that could be perfect wedding gifts for book lovers. Suggestions range from whimsical bookshelves to personalized book plates.

With all the news of identity theft, of course it would have to hit couples who are getting married. The Post has an alarming story about a number of couples who, when applying for a marriage license, have found themselves already "married." It's believed that thieves use other people's identities to get marriage licenses and green cards. Denise Daskalkis "filed two appeals, multiple petitions, and attended a hearing at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings," calling the two-year process hell while a Laura Berrios was "denied a domestic partnership with her lesbian lover because she had supposedly been married - to a man - for a decade." Berrios dryly said to the Post, "I've been out of the closet since I was 16. Trust me, I never have and never will get married [to a man]."

There's an excellent Vows column in this week's NY Times Weddings & Celebrations. It's the one for Fran Boyd and Donnie Andrews, two Baltimore residents whose difficult lives were the basis for the HBO dramas The Corner and The Wire. Boyd and Andrews were featured in a page one story in the Times last week, and the Vows column explains more of how they met and how they supported each other during prison sentences, while overcoming addiction, and as they tried to put their lives back together.

We all knew the real estate bubble was causing insanity, but we should have known it's encouraged people to divorce. There's a NY Times Styles section article about some who wait until the market's at its peak to divorce - that way, they can benefit from an even bigger profit when selling their homes.

Customizing your wedding is standard these days, and wedding planning businesses aren't the only ones who are benefiting. There's been a boom in people applying online to be ordained to officiate friends' and families' weddings. But there's an unexpected catch: Sometimes those Universal Life Church ordinations aren't legal in the county or state where the wedding is being performed!

Aha! We were right when we suggested that August 8, 2008 might be another coveted wedding date to consider, now that July 7, 2007 has passed. The date 08/08/08 is considered very auspicious by Asian cultures (in fact, the 2008 Olympics in Beijing will start on that day), and some weddings planners who specialized in Chinese weddings are seeing a big rush. One told LJWorld, "We like to do three weddings max a day, but we might end up doing four to five because of this hot date."

Before we dive into the Times' weddings and celebrations announcements, we'd like to note that the Styles section has an article for guests thinking about buying tableware gifts for upcoming weddings. The article suggests buying colorful accessory plates and bowls for couples who may have registered for white-only dinnerware. We're fans of white-only dinnerware, because it's very versatile, it doesn't have to be too expensive, and it can be dressed up or down. If you should break a piece, you won't be too heartbroken because it shouldn't be too hard to replace.

There are lots of great stories about how couples meet. Kindergarten, the Peace Corps, a subway platform, by chance at a bar, you name it. But we love this Daily News story about how one couple met, because it appeals not only to the romantic in us, but to our respect for jury duty: Traci Nagy and Jonathan Cinkay met while serving on the same jury during a Queens murder trial. A fellow juror told Nagy "I thought you should date John," and Nagy explained to the News, "We were in the jury room so much and we weren't allowed to talk about the case. We talked about movies, travel, everything. It was a very good way to get to know someone."

Yesterday was supposedly the luckiest day of the century and many people got married to better their marriage success odds. The Post has a feature on a couple who met while they were waiting for a 7 train - the wedding of Diana and Joseph Saporito included seven bridesmaids, seven groomsmen, 21 tables (21 being a multiple of seven) and Lucky 7 lotto tickets.

In the NY Times' Styles section, there's an article about how there may actually be a three-year itch when it comes to relationships. Divorce lawyer Raoul Felder chalks it up to various technological changes in society: "We’re all addicted to a television-clicker lifestyle." Dr. Ruth, though, cautions against believing in a three-year itch, "How dangerous it is to say something like that. From now on, everyone who’s getting married will say it will last three years and then I will have to look for someone else.”

If you ever thought wedding planners were a waste of money and a huge headache, you'll love this NY Times article about them. Sure, there are good ones out there (if you have any suggestions, feel free to list them in the comments), but there are many horror stories, like a couple who went through two "planzillas" (including one whose planning was turning their wedding into a million-dollar affair) until finding one they could tolerate. Our advice: See how much the catering manager of the venue you're planning your event is willing to take on. And then rope in an understanding, super patient friend or relative who is Type A enough to want to help you out. And if you have any other advice, let us know!

The most charming weddings article in the NY Times today is not in the Styles section, but the City section: It's about the many Queens couples who get married at Queens Borough Hall, a three-and-a-half story brick building designed by William Gehron and Andrew J. Thomas. About 9,000 couples got married there last year, and after being married by a deputy city clerk, sometimes they pose in front of a retired Redbird Subway car that is in the courtyard. The Times has a cute slideshow, too.

This Memorial Day weekend offers the most 2007 weddings so far in the NY Times' Weddings & Celebrations section: A whopping 43 weddings! But, of all the announcements, our favorite is the one of Thea Spyer and Edith Windsor. Spyer, a 75-year-old psychologist in Manhattan, and Windsor, a 77-year-old retired computer systems analyst for IBM, were married in Toronto earlier this week, but actually met decades ago.

Dr. Spyer and Ms. Windsor met in 1965 in New York at Portofino, a restaurant in the West Village.

Continue reading "Times Weddings Highlights: 42 Years in the Making"

The most powerful suggestions in this week's NY Times Weddings & Celebrations? If you write about dating or a hapless love life, all is not lost! Actually, we got that idea from Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City, too, but not everyone can end up with Mr. Big or marry a hunky principal dancer at the NY City Ballet. Anyway...

One couple who got married this weekend had a leg up on many other brides and grooms: They know event planning. As Lauren Berger and Stuart Ruderfer's NY Times wedding announcement explains, Berger works for NYC Big Events, a city agency that works on landing and promoting high-profile events, while Ruderfer is the founder and CEO of Civic Entertainment Group, which creates marketing opportunities and events. And they met when Berger worked at Civic Entertainment, where they got to know each other.

As their feelings deepened, she said, “I realized it was probably better in terms of the company and the other employees that I look for another job.” She left in 2003.

Continue reading "Times Weddings Highlights: Wedding Planning Is As Easy as a Concert in the Park"