About the food and beverage...
• With 20 collective years between us in the restaurant industry, Friday night
was catered by a good friend, someone both Essam and i worked with. And Saturday night was catered by our friends and favorite restaurant
• The bar was tended by our friend Jackson and one of my best friends'
brothers! And technically also the reason Essam and I met
• Friday nights food was Spanish themed because exactly two years prior,
Essam told Emily "i love you" in Spain over the best meal of our lives
• The food was inspired by Essam’s Arabic culture and Emily’s Jewish and
Armenian culture - the goal was to find the intersection so we settled on
dolmas, hummus, and and kitbeh as well as baklava and kanafeh, foods
both the bride and groom grew up with
• Every single bottle of wine was handpicked by Essam and purchased
through his friends and community and sat in our basement for the entire
year, slowly growing in size!

About the music...
• Emily grew up singing, so the first dance was sung by three of her best
friends, all of whom she sang with at different parts of her life. Middle
school, college, and high school
• The Arab music was specifically handpicked by Essam’s father who grew
up in Nazareth
• Our first dance song was Tennessee whiskey because about a month into
dating, Emily and Essam were walking down an alleyway, and he
stopped, put the song on his phone, and we danced. From that moment
on, he would always randomly put the song on and we would slow dance
to it - we even did it in a snowstorm in New York one time.

About the venue...
• Bringing our own wine was a MUST since Essam is in the wine industry
• Hiking and the outdoors is extremely important to us so we knew we
wanted to get married outside. We wanted something beautiful, organic,
but not manicured. We also wanted it to be a little quirky to fit our
playful personalities!
• We really wanted to be able to relax and the bride specifically didn't
want to have to get in a car for the entire weekend, so onsite
accommodations were also a necessity - the hope was for it to feel a little
like summer camp for adults