Picking the Place

Choosing the site for the wedding ceremony and reception was our next step. It's important to lock that in first; places book up quickly.

Here's what we knew to start out. First of all, in terms of location, my parents live in White Plains, and most of our friends are scattered throughout Westchester. However, her parents and most of her extended family live in the Danbury, Connecticut, area. And of course, there are also some out-of-towners that we would invite, but basically there are two home fronts, Westchester and Connecticut.

We started our search the first weekend after our engagement in Connecticut. First, Dana and I went to check out a church her Mom had recommended that would perform an inter-faith ceremony. Dana's Catholic and I'm Jewish, and long before our engagement we discussed her sincere interest in getting married in a church, which is fine by me, as long as there is no mass and the ceremony represents both of our faiths; I want both families to feel comfortable and for the ceremony to be about us and our shared values; not too much religious talk. I was not raised in a household that stressed organized religion, and I never had a bar mitzvah. Still, I am 100-percent Jewish, and my culture and heritage are a very important part of my identity. I discussed this with her parents prior to our search and they felt the same way: inter-faith wedding ceremony, no mass.

Here's the ironic part. Sure, the priest at the church was nice, and he was cool about performing an inter-faith ceremony with a rabbi. There was only one problem: the middle aisle wasn’t long enough. Dana wanted to enter the ceremony from the middle and walk down a long aisle like she pictured in her childhood dreams. But this particular church had a modern, semi-circle setting almost like a flattened amphitheater, and the middle aisle was only five rows long, with a side entrance to boot. This was not going to work for Dana. NEXT.

We left the church and met up with Dana's Mom and her older brother, who has been married for a couple years. He's a fun-loving guy and we get along great. The four of us checked out three different reception spots. The first one was set on a lake and was very nice inside and out. It had a great view and it felt right. The other two were okay, nothing special.

The thing about visiting these places is this; first you get a tour, then you sit down and talk about the details with the manager. For the most part, I was quiet during both parts, though Dana's brother wasn't afraid to ask questions and add his two cents, which for me was very entertaining. At the meeting at the first place, I almost lost it when he asked the lady, "Do you have ice sculptures?"

The consensus after our first day of searching was that the first place with the lake was really nice and affordable, but Dana wasn't didn’t want to settle on the first place we saw. Plus we didn't like the church up the road. So we decided to keep looking.

Our search moved south the next weekend to check out some more reception spots, putting the church search on hold for the time being. I couldn't go to every place, so Dana and her Mom checked out a couple places, and Dana and I checked out a couple places ourselves too. Dana ruled out most of them immediately, and one of them was pretty great but DIDN'T FEEL RIGHT. There was one place however that Dana and her Mom visited in lower Connecticut that was worthy of a trip back to see how I felt about it.

So the next day, Sunday, the reception search team includes…MY PARENTS. Walking into the place, we, meaning Dana, my father, my mother, and I, all agreed that it was a great room, with a great stage. But something about the place was a little fishy. My mother, one of the all-time greatest SNOOPERS, did just that, snooped around. She poked her head into their kitchen and? “It’s a mess,” she whispered to Dana.

Dana researched on the Internet for a place the whole next week. Her research kept leading her to the VIP Country Club in New Rochelle. I had been there before (for a Best of Westchester Magazine party coincidentally), and I remembered it being very nice, and it was only five minutes from our apartment and on the waterfront. So that Saturday, Dana and I went to the VIP Country Club. The tour was thorough, the cocktail room was great, the main room was awesome, the menu and the service seemed impeccable, and it was conveniently located near our apartment. Plus they had all these little touches that Dana loved, like spotlights on all the centerpieces and a bridal suite with a private bathroom.

So a couple days later, with full support from our families, we put down a deposit. Dana even talked the guy down on price for a Sunday, which after some debate we decided would be the most cost effective and appropriate day for us to get married. We had a winner.

That's it, right? Not just yet. Now we had to lock in the church. Since we were going to have the reception in New Rochelle, we decided the best place to have the ceremony would be at the Good Counsel Chapel in White Plains where Dana was an alumnus. It’s a beautiful chapel with a LONG MIDDLE AISLE, and it made sense for us to get married in the city where we met and both grew up. I did a final smoothing over of my parents to the idea of us getting married in a church, which went pretty well actually, but when Dana called to book the date, it turned out THE CHURCH WASN'T AVAILABLE. What?

MINOR CRISIS. Dana made the necessary phone calls to fix the problem, and we ended up being able to switch the date of the reception to a week earlier when the church was available. And as of today, February 29th, 2008, a little over one month's time from the date of our engagement, we have our wedding date: April 19th, 2009, 2:30 pm at Good Counsel Chapel in White Plains, with the reception at the VIP Club in New Rochelle to follow. Holla!