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A Late Summer River Side Wedding In New York State

late summer bride and groom on the shore of the Hudson River

Engagements are fun and exciting times, so why do we spend most of our time during an engagement trying to plan a wedding as quickly as we can? Amy and Mick decided to take a few years to live life and let the perfect wedding happen when it was best. They do say patience is a virtue and oh boy was this couples patience rewarded with a gorgeous "Grandma Glam" wedding day on the shore of New Yorks Hudson River! 

Seriously, how could you not want to learn more about this wedding day with the description of grandma glam just hanging in the air? Keep scrolling to find out just what that means and be sure to check out all the photos in the full gallery, thanks to the wonderful talents of Sasha Felix

floral inspired wedding stationery


floral crown for the bride bride getting wedding ready

summer inspired wedding bouquet

Waiting For The Wedding You Want

From the Bride: After being together for seven years, Mick and I were constantly fielding the question “When are you getting married!?” Over time, we cultivated the response, “we are waiting to have the wedding we want.” We traveled, focused on our careers, we planned, and in September finally had the wedding we had been cultivating for nearly a decade. 

We wanted our wedding venue to have a story, life, and purpose outside of hosting parties. When we found Clermont State Historic Site, overlooking the Hudson River, we were sold by its river views, the overgrown gardens, soaring tree canopy and the open green lawns surrounding the historic Livingston home. 

Save The Dates

Our save the dates were designed by my friend and co-worker, Stephanie Shank. She created a custom animation of Mick and I, featuring our two little dogs, Frank, and Beans. Frank and Beans are the centers of our family, their presence was extremely important to us on the big day. 

hand drawn wedding save the date


the bride and grooms wedding dog Frank the bride and grooms wedding dog Beans

getting wedding ready

Ceremony

Mick wrote our ceremony and we cried through the entire thing. We included a Celtic handfasting. Our officiant noted for the handfasting we should use ribbons or chords that were symbolic of our life together. Naturally, we chose our dog’s leashes to bind our hands (and hearts) together. It was also important to us to highlight Mick’s Filipino heritage and birthplace. Our ceremony used some Tagalog (the language of the Philippines) specifically the phrase, "Mahali kita," which means "I love you". The men of Mick’s family wore Barong, traditional Filipino formal wear, at our request. 

Mick and I have spent our careers working in television and film. We met while working down the hall from each other at the same post-production facility. We produced our first feature film together as we were wedding planning. We still don't know how we pulled off both the film and the wedding over the same year and a half! 

Music Of The Day

Our ceremony music was taken from films that were meaningful to us, specifically “Your Song” by Elton John, the version sung in Moulin Rouge. It was performed live, as was all of our reception music. 


gorgeous wedding venue in New York State sweet late summer bride and room style

outdoor wedding ceremony

latesummergrandmaglamweddinginnewyork35


bridesmaids holding hands just married

the groom and his groomsmen

The Set Up

I chose a sailcloth tent to overlook the lovely Hudson River views. The supportive catering director at Main Course catering (Amanda) helped me to create a tent layout of long farm tables and food stations with a huge bar in the center. We built our menu around the end of summer favorites including peach sangria, sliders, an oyster bar, BBQ and tacos. 

Our bar featured local Hudson Valley beers. I sourced a variety of vases, table runners, and frames focusing on white and gold details. North Country Vintage provided vintage place settings, goblets, and gold flatware. North Country also provided vintage furniture placed around the cocktail hour and reception tent for our guests to lounge in. 

wedding kiss


romantic wedding venue on the shore of the Hudson River fresh oyster bar


the bride and her formally dressed dog Frank white peach sangria wedding drink

Grandma Glam

We focused on a color palette of gold, white, soft green, yellow and peach. As my vision took shape throughout our engagement, I started to refer to our wedding aesthetic as “Glam Grandma.” Each place setting contained an individual golden pear with a vellum name tag indicating a seating assignment. 

Two nights before my wedding, my aunts, sister and brother in law and I stayed up late eating pizza, drinking wine and painting pears and attaching the tags. It took forever. My little flower girls really tried to help, but I was mostly worried about them getting covered in gold paint! 

We were really pleased with how everything turned out; soft and feminine with hints of vintage and wild. Our florist, Mairead of Flowerkraut, built gorgeous floral centerpieces using local flowers that sealed my vision. I loved our florist’s style. Her arrangements were slightly asymmetrical and included a vast variety of blooms and herbs which added some modern balance to an otherwise antiqued tablescape. 

gold peach and light green wedding table decor

tented wedding reception lace doily runner with summer mix florals for your perfect grandma chic table decor bright and summer inspired wedding floral centerpiece gold pears and floral mismatch china

grandma glam wedding table decor for your late summer reception

first dance flower girls in tulle skirts and wedding halos

naked wedding cake topped with fresh fruit

A Little Bridal Advice!

The bride Amy was such a peach, and she had some of the best wedding advice we have run across in a while! We highly recommend you give these next 10 well thought out points a read through. They are all great ideas, but I think our favorite is number six, Girl we get the nervous rambles too, and would have loved to hear your thoughts on GoT! 

1. Encourage guests you intend to take photos with to wear colors complementary to your wedding day's color pallet. The photos will be much more cohesive and form a composed album.

2. Do the wedding hashtag and choose something very easy to spell! Your guests will be drinking and will confuse your hashtag if you try to come up with some witty pun. It seems corny, but waking up the next morning and going through all the photos everyone took is really fun.

3. Meet with all your key vendors in advance of contracting. If they are unavailable, uninterested or inconvenienced by meeting with you, move on.

4. Do not go into debt for your wedding! You should wake up the morning after your wedding better off than you were the day before in almost every way. Wait. Save. Have the wedding you want, not the wedding you settle for in order to have it right away.

5. Some advice I received...after the wedding, write down 5-10 things you want to remember about the wedding day. Re-read these notes with your spouse on your anniversary every year. This way, your memories will come from your head and your heart rather than just the photos.

6. Plan a thank you speech! We were called up to say hello and thank you to our guests after dinner and we were not prepared. I rambled something about Game of Thrones? What???

7. Ask your catering director or member of the bridal party to make sure you get desserts. We were so excited about the dessert spread and missed the entire thing.

8. it is a long day. Try to keep the getting ready time as chill and zen-like as possible to conserve energy for the evening.

9. Plan an exit strategy. At the end of our wedding, it was dark and pouring. Our venue was tucked into a little valley in the woods. We hadn't really considered how dark it would be and tricky to walk in the event of rain. Discuss late night lighting and departure plans with your venue! Especially if you have older guests who have trouble walking. 

10. I would have worn a different dress. When I tried on my dress it was in a sample with a very small cup size (bra size) and the dress looked great. When my actual dress came in my cup size (DD) my boobs looked huge. I was very uncomfortable. By then there was nothing I could do, the dress was mine. Ask the person fitting you what the dress will look and how it could change when it arrives in YOUR TRUE SIZE.

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