I have to say, I think The Brooklyn Botanic Garden has to be one of the dreamiest venues I ever did see. There, I said it. My love struck proclamation might have a little something to do with this stunning soiree captured so beautifully I could cry by Aurelia D’Amore. It’s a Brooklyn beauty if there ever was one, and it’s all waiting for you right here.
From the Bride…My whole family hails from Brooklyn. We were scattered throughout the borough for years, but over the decades we all slowly moved away, and our ties to it have grown more and more tenuous year by year. So my family was really excited when Aidan and I re-established our roots there by moving to Park Slope in 2009—but they were ecstatic when we decided to get married at the Palm House at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
We had a late-fall wedding, and we spent months panicking about the weather. And then, the night before the ceremony, there was a pretty epic rainstorm (a week later we had Hurricane Sandy, by the way). But that Saturday morning, we woke up to bright, sunny skies: barely a cloud in sight, temperatures in the sixties… pretty much the perfect day. So nice, in fact, that Aidan walked with his groomsmen (and one groom’s lady) from our apartment to the wedding. And later on, during the ceremony, as the sun set into a clear, starry sky in full view of the all-glass Palm House, we knew we really couldn’t have lucked out more.
The ceremony, not surprisingly, was my favorite part of the night. Our friend Cody, who introduced us seven years ago, officiated, and the three of us wrote the whole thing together. Cody is a fantastic comedienne, and she had everyone laughing and crying throughout, which was perfect. We didn’t want the ceremony to be boring, but we didn’t want to make light of it either. Case in point: for our two readings one was Cody and my brother Jordan (also an actor) performing a classic comedy routine that my cousins first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 60s; and the second was Aidan’s boss, Lewis Lapham, reading a beautiful poem by the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi.
It was all perfect. We used a ring that had been first worn by Aidan’s great-great-grandparents in the 1890s and was used in over a dozen ceremonies in his family since. My two grandmothers and Aidan’s grandmother walked down the aisle during the processional, arm in arm with Aidan’s groomspeople—the oldest and the youngest generations flanking us to remind us of the family who produced us and the future that this wedding was a promise toward. The bridesmaids got multiple catcalls during from the audience as they came down the aisle, and before Cody said a word, there were tears and hysterical laughter from all sides. And Cody knocked it out of the park—she was basically the best officiant/emcee anyone could ever hope for.
Following on the heels of our weather luck, we soon discovered how fortunate we were to have selected the vendors we did, because they were all amazing. Of particular excellence was our photographer, Aurelia D’Amore, who flew out from Los Angeles. Her pictures are gorgeous, and we still can’t figure out which ones to choose for our wedding album– they’re all too good! And our DJ, Taro Baugham, who works with Sugartown Industries, nailed every single section of the night, from ceremony to last dance. For us, after the venue and the ceremony, the music was our biggest priority. We’re both obsessive music nuts, and Taro was extremely patient with us as we handpicked each playlist and requested a ton of must-play songs, and he took the way-too-many songs we selected for dancing and crafted a perfect set. The dance floor was packed all night; it didn’t matter whether Taro played Del Shannon or Phoenix. And watching our grandmothers shimmy with equal fervor to the Hava Nagila as they did to ODB was a real treat.
Our friends and family came from all over: Los Angeles and New York, England and Singapore. And after weeks of planning and worrying, everything went off without a hitch—and we were left with the perfect night that we will forever treasure.
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Wedding Photography: Aurelia D’Amore | Wedding Venue + Catering: The Palm House at The Brooklyn Botanic Garden | Stationery: Flax Pen to Paper | Wedding Bands: The Clay Pot | Wedding Dress: Cymbeline | Bride’s Shoes: Kate Spade | Groom’s Suit: Hugo Boss | Floral Design: Denise Fasanello | DJ: DJ Taro @ Sugartown Industries | Hair: Sadah Saltzman /Salon AKS