When a location holds memories of your first date, your family’s home away from home, and is right down the street from your house (and the reason you moved to that neighborhood) why not get married there? This couple did. With help from Daughter of Design, they turned The Bowery Hotel into a wedding locale to die for, and Susan Stripling Photography worked her magic on every single perfect image!
From the beautiful bride… Colin took me on a date to the restaurant in Bowery Hotel when we were first dating. I fell in love with the hotels warmth and character immediately. Since then the hotel and the Bowery area of New York has held a special place in our hearts and few years ago we decided to make a couple blocks away from the hotel our home. Family and friends also decided to make the hotel a part time home, staying in the hotel, eating in the restaurant and using the bar as a type of living room as much as possible. As the hotel soon became a home away from home to so many of the people that we love we figured it would be the perfect place to get married. I was so excited to have a place where so many people already felt comfortable and a place that held those special memories of Colin and my beginning, when everything was new and we were just falling in love. Also, it didn’t hurt that it’s old romantic style was exactly what we love. It truly is one of my favorite buildings in its lovely, unique beauty.
Once we settled on the venue I began googling, pinteresting and blog hunting immediately (Style Me Pretty was one of my favorites of course!) and I was lucky enough to come across our beautiful and extremely talented planner, Annie Lee of Daughter of Design. As soon as we met her she began to make all of our wedding dreams come true. She is in love with the hotel just as we are and we quickly decided to keep the wedding in the intimate, vintage quality of the hotel. Coming from a crafty family, we wanted to make as much as we could for the wedding and involve the guests in the crafting fun as well! We used craft paper over lace as our tablecloths. We had stamps made of doilies and the dinner menus and stamped them at each place setting onto the craft paper. We put pencil crayons on the tables and invited everyone to doodle and play while eating their dinner. My husband and I are completely in love with our very handsome bulldog Eddie, so, we felt it was only appropriate to make him a part of our wedding. My mom made him a red velvet suit and he was a part of our wedding party. His picture was incorporated into our invitations and being a doll maker I made bulldog doll seating cards for each of our guests. I don’t think there is anything lovelier than lace so anywhere we could have lace in the wedding we did. Our inner envelopes of our invites were made from lace paper, the bridesmaid dresses were a crocheted lace, our tablecloths were lined in lace, it was snuck in everywhere! We put as many candles as we could fit and overflowed the tables with flowers. My wonderful brother in law wrote and performed our ceremony. I can’t say how special it was for us to have someone we love so much marry us.
What was most important to us was that the wedding felt authentic to us and that our guests felt all of our love and excitement! We wanted everyone to be as comfortable and have as much fun as possible! We couldn’t have done it without the amazing Annie and all of the special, talented people she introduced us to. And of course our wonderful families. The night truly was more beautiful in every way than I could have dreamed.
Photography: Susan Stripling | Floral Designer: Saipua | Wedding Dress: Vera Wang | Cake: A White Cake | Invitations: Atelier Isabey | Make up: MakeupNV | Hair: Jeff Chastain | Band: Dexter Lake Club Band | Venue: Bowery Hotel | Event Design and Coordination: Daughter of Design | Late night snacks: Pommes Frites | Photograph: Susan Stripling Photography | Video: Naz Films