The Couple: Alison & Mario
Wedding Date: June 15, 2013
Photography by Yuliya M. Photography
Tell us a little about you and your beloved: Mario and I met in an elevator at HP Pavilion in San Jose while we were both working a Shark’s game.
Mario proposed to me on the beach at Lake Tahoe. It was a wonderful surprise! I had no idea it was coming.
What was the most amazing part of your day? There were so many amazing memories from our wedding day. But when I look back and think about what was the best part, I honestly think about after the wedding when Mario and I went back to our hotel room and put on our pajamas and talked about everything that had happened that day. I hadn’t been able to eat my dinner at the reception so we sat together and ate my leftover chicken and mashed potatoes, laughing at all the funny, wonderful memories from the day.
Ceremony and Reception Site, and Caterer: Gar Woods Restaurant and Pier
Ceremony Musicians: LEEP Entertainment
Officiant: Ann Poole Weddings
Photographer: Yuliya M. Photography. I could not have been happier with my experience with Yuliya. Not only is she extremely talented and professional, but she is easy-going, funny and light-hearted…the perfect combination for a wedding photographer.
Another praise I want to say about Yuliya is the speed at which she got our photos back to us. Three days after our wedding, she had blogged about a dozen of her best photos on her website and put together a touching slideshow for us with about 40 pictures. THREE DAYS AFTER OUR WEDDING! Mario and I were looking at our photos while we were on our honeymoon.
Videographer: Chris MacDougall (my co-worker who works as the Multimedia Coordinator for the San Jose Earthquakes)
Caterer: All the food and alcohol was provided by Gar Woods which made things really easy. Gar Woods printed out a menu that went on each of the guests’ place settings. Then the waiters and waitresses served all the tables like they were eating in a restaurant – taking everyone’s order off the set menu and creating each dish according to our guests’ requests. I never had to turn in a list to Gar Woods of how many chicken meals, salmon meals, steak meals etc. we wanted order. It was nice not to worry about that.
Cake/Desserts: Cake Tahoe. I also ordered a cake-topper from ETSY that said “JUST MARRIED” and some cupcake flags that said “A {heart} M”.
Flowers: My flowers came from three different places.
I ordered my wedding bouquet, the boutonnieres and the hand corsages from A Bud and Beyond. I LOVED working with Christina. She helped me out so much and gave me exactly what I wanted. All of our conversations were over email since I was not able to visit her location in Tahoe prior to the wedding. Christina really worked to figure out exactly what I wanted; she visited my Pinterest page and worked with my budget to make sure I could get what I wanted for a price I could afford. She really impressed me.
Then I ordered 200 white roses, 30 hydrangeas and a bunch of arrangements from Costco. My mom, sister, sister-in-law and some of the bridesmaids used these flowers to make the centerpieces for the reception.
The bridesmaids’ bouquets were silk flowers I bought from Michaels that my sister and sister-in-law arranged.
Favors: Instead of doing favors we made donations.
Bridal and Bridesmaids’ Attire: Trudy’s Bridal
Hair: Sylvia Freitas from Main Street Annex Salon and Tiana O’Neal from Salon Bella Vita.
My friend Sylvia Freitas (from Main Street Annex Salon in Los Gatos) came up to Tahoe and styled my hair for the wedding. Sylvia has this wonderful calming zen about her and I was so grateful to have her with me on the morning of my wedding.
Also, I have thin hair and Sylvia helped me pick out some clip-in extensions that I wore on the day. I loved them! They added a little length and volume that I couldn’t get naturally. We had done a run-through about a month before the wedding and I remember thinking, “oh my gosh, I have thick hair!” For all you ladies out there with thin hair, you can fool everyone with some good extensions!
I also hired Tiana O’Neal from Salon Bella Vita in Tahoe City to come and style my bridesmaids’ hair. She did a wonderful job as well.
Make-up: Fab YOU Glam. I loved working with Lindsay Garric. When she did my makeup for the wedding day, it was absolutely perfect. I felt like the best version of myself – a person I could recognize but that also felt glamorous. It made me realize that just because you might like someone’s makeup in a magazine doesn’t mean it’s right for you on your wedding day. That’s why I think doing a run-through prior to your big day is so important.
Invitations: My friend Laura designed my invitations and my mom and I purchased a packet from Michaels to put them together. This is a long process! This probably took the most work out of all our wedding projects. At the beginning of the process I remember thinking about what romantic stamps I wanted to use when we mailed them. By the end of the process, I was like, “just give me the right postage!” I think one stamp was a President and the other was a butterfly. It doesn’t matter.
Signage: My brother’s girlfriend got two pieces of wood from home depot and made a vintage-looking sign that said “Ally and Mario’s Wedding”. We put it by the path leading up to our ceremony site. I had looked at a bunch on etsy and they were all $50 bucks or so – when my brother’s girlfriend made it, the guy at Home Depot literally gave her the wood for free since he had scrap pieces left over and then she stained it and painted it. Awesome.
DJ/Entertainment/Band: LEEP Entertainment
Honeymoon Location: Maui and Kauai.
Any other of your wedding vendor(s) you’d like to call out that we missed in the above questions? I ordered handkerchiefs on Etsy that I personalized for my mom, dad and mother-in-law. They were great tear-jerkers.
I also ordered robes for my bridesmaids on Etsy for while they were getting their hair done and they turned out great and looked awesome in pictures. This was part of my gift to the girls for being in my wedding.
First Dance Song: “With You” by Chris Brown
Any advice you’d give to our readers who are planning their weddings right now? Good luck! This can be a difficult, wonderful, annoying, overwhelming, awesome process. Sometimes you may doubt if all the money, time and effort is worth it. You may want to just throw your hands up in the air and just run to the courthouse with your honey. I’ve been there! Relax. Have a glass of wine, put your feet up and remember that YOU ARE SO LUCKY. You found the man (or woman) of your dreams and you get to spend the rest of your life with him/her. Yes, the flowers, the dress and the venue are all pretty. But they are temporary. But the BEST thing is your relationship.
Anything that you would have done differently if you were given the chance? Only one thing. I wish I would have given a shout-out to my mom when Mario and I gave our speech at the reception. The Father-of-the-Bride gets a lot of love on the wedding day; he walks his baby girl down the aisle, he gives the big speech, he does the father-daughter dance. There isn’t really anything special for the mom. My mom worked tirelessly by my side to plan that wedding. She had a part in every little detail from the invitations, to the tartan heart sewn on the inside of my dress to the mini fan I had hidden under our table to keep me cool. Looking back, I wish I could have told everyone, “See all these sweet little details? My mom had a hand in that.” I wish I could have given her a little recognition for everything she helped me with. That’s probably the only thing I would have done differently.
But I would always pick the same guy!!
Blog post by Real Weddings Magazine’s Social Media Maven, Aimee Carroll.
Photos courtesy of and copyright Yuliya M. Photography.
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