Susie and Tony returned to the city where they met and fell in love to celebrate their marriage in style. Working on a budget (and who isn’t?!) Susie knew where she wanted to splurge (location, food & drink) and where she was looking for a bargain (flowers & cake). With a little creativity, and a lot of heart, this elegant affair looked like a million bucks from start to finish. Cheers!
Susie + Tony | June 24, 2011 | Tupper Manor, Beverly, Massachusetts
The ceremony
We were originally supposed to have the wedding outdoors by the fountain, but it rained. So we ended up having to go with the “Plan B” which was in the reception area. We had about 140 guests, and it ended up being perfect having it indoors because it became a really intimate ceremony. I am from California and my husband is from Virginia, but we met in Boston, where we did our undergrad, and so it was really nice to go back to the city where our memories were and have our wedding. What was nice was that we went to Berklee College of Music and we’re both musicians, which meant we literally had hundreds of musician friends in Boston. So we had three different bands for our wedding – 5-horn jazz ensemble with a singer for ceremony, jazz trio for cocktail hour, and a 11-piece funk band for the reception. And guess how much we paid? $0!!! All of them were our friends and they did the music for us for FREE. We had the most amazing music!
The reception
Our wedding party entered the reception with the hilarious dance routine to the famous Backstreet Boys song “Backstreet’s Back” played live by our band. I guess the thing about us was that our priorities were the venue, the food & alcohol, and the honeymoon…So we really tried not to spend too much money on flowers and cake. We went to a bottling factory about bought bottles and put wild flowers in them, which ended up being dirt cheap. We got some vintage vinyls to use as our “table numbers,” so the tables were named after famous jazz musicians (since we’re jazz musicians) instead of just being table 1, 2, and so on. And we had the most simple yet classy wedding cake, along with mini cupcakes with our faces on the top. The reception band did an amazing job rearranging pop songs into jazzy funk style, and people had a ball just dancing the night away. Late in the evening, I changed into a custom-made dress which incorporated Korean traditional costume Hanbok with Western evening dress. After a long night of partying, we were sent off by all our guests with sparklers. It was a dreamy wedding!
How Susie found her dream wedding dress
I didn’t really have any particular style in mind at first but after the first day of shopping I guess it became pretty obvious that I liked A-line and tulle. I saw my dress on the very first day of shopping, and though I went to a lot more places after that, I ended up going back to my initial dress choice!
Why she decided to sell her wedding dress
I initially really wanted to keep the dress because I am one of those people that can’t get rid of things very well.. But after spending almost a year with the gigantic box in my house, I came to accept that it is unnecessary for me to keep the dress. Kinda sad, but oh well…
