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We chose the Legal Sea Foods at Burlington Mall in Burlington, MA, which was the closest place to our wedding location. It has a private dining room that holds about 25 people, so our guests would not be rattling around in a huge space. And although it is in a mall, there is an entrance separate from the mall, so we did not have to wander through a mall in our wedding gowns.
We attempted initially to use the "Request More Information" link on the site to inquire about reserving a private dining room. When we received no response, we called the location. We then got a call back from Elaine Hebert, the Sales & Event Manager. She made the reservation, and e-mailed us a contract, which we signed, scanned, and returned by e-mail. We had to supply a credit card number, but it was not actually charged, just used as a guarantee.
One of the nice things about Legal Sea Foods is that people do not have to make menu selections until they walk in. You can either have them order off the regular menu, or select one of the preset menus. Legal Sea Foods will then provide a menu (with whatever heading you like at the top of it) from which your guests can select.
We got great service from the staff at our luncheon. Service was efficient but unobtrusive. The staff members were clearly excited about the wedding, and friendly with us. Even when two of the guests (who were old enough to know better!) got involved in a whipped cream fight, they just brought wet towels for clean-up, and appeared amused by the whole thing.
Temple Shir Tikvah is a lovely venue. The sanctuary is beautiful on its own, and also has a view out over Wedge Pond through the large windows. The Temple staff were very helpful in working with us, allowing us to do things like set up a chuppah we had made ourselves in the sanctuary. Indeed, they got so excited about our wedding that several of them asked permission to attend the ceremony.
There is a large conference room on the ground level which we were able to use as a dressing room, and to have our hair and make-up done. There is an elevator from there up to the sanctuary, so we did not have to try to negotiate stairs in our wedding gowns. The sanctuary is set up with individual chairs rather than pews, so we were able to set it up with an aisle where we wanted it, and with sufficient chairs to seat everyone while still maintaining an intimate atmosphere.
We wanted arm bouquets, because we felt it looked more natural than a normal wedding bouquet. We found one from Teleflora that both of us liked. It was a rose arm bouquet with peach roses, snowberry, seeded eucalyptus and plumsous. I therefore looked up the local Teleflorist in Winchester, MA, and contacted her to ask about doing two of this bouquet, but with one set up for the left arm and one for the right, so we could have mirror image ones.
Diane of Pondview Florist made things very easy on us. She understood our concept, and said she could do it for us. She was willing to quote prices (which turned out to be quite reasonable), without trying to talk us into items we did not want. She was able to make suggestions about how this bouquet would go with the rest of our wedding colors, and how to integrate it with the maid of honor's bouquet and the boutonnierre for the "dude of honor."
The actual bouquet was considerably more pink than the picture from which we ordered. However, it worked well with our color scheme anyway, so this did not bother us. A few of the flowers in our bouquets seemed like they were just a little beyond their peak, but nothing was seriously wilted.
After visiting three other bridal salons, we found this place. Even though we live in Maryland, it was definitely worth the trip!
When we made our appointment, Ellalyne asked us about our preferences and sizes, so she could have some items picked out for us before we even arrived. Our requirements were tough. I'm a plus size. I am 56, and NotFroofy is 41, so dresses designed for people in their 20s don't work for us. Because there are two brides, we needed outfits that would complement each other. NotFroofy is 5'1", and I'm 5'9", so identical gowns were not going to happen for us. Our budget was low: no more than $500 per dress.
When we arrived, we were the only people in the store, and Ellalyne gave us her full attention. She listened carefully to our preferences, and had an eye for what would look good on us, so we weren't trying on a bunch of impossible gowns. LaBella has consignment gowns as well as new ones, which helped keep the price down. (And she didn't try to push us toward more expensive ones than we could afford.) Throughout the visit, she was warm and gracious. While it was clear that working with a lesbian couple was a new experience for her, she was clearly accepting of us. And unlike some salons, she worked to find something that would look good with our figures, instead of suggesting that we were the "wrong" size or shape.
Both of us found "the dress" there. In each case, it was a dress that we never would have given a second glance to on the rack. However, Ellalyne picked it out, and it turned out to be perfect, with clean, elegant lines that covered our problem figure areas and enhanced our good areas.
Ellalyne showed us veils on our first visit. There were a couple that we really liked, but we were still going through sticker shock on veil prices, and decided to look for something less expensive. However, she called us a few weeks later to let us know that veils would be 50% off that week. We went back and got two gorgeous veils (again different, but complementary) for under $100 each.
Creative Bridal Needlework by Estee Gaithersburg, Maryland 20877
Estee was wonderful! Ours was a same-sex wedding, so we had two dresses needing alterations and bustles, plus we wanted to get identical headbands sewn to each of our veils. Estee did a wonderful job on all of this, and is an incredibly sweet person besides.
We bought our pocketfolds, invitation mats, invitation cards, and enclosure cards from Cards and Pockets.com, and also had them do all the printing from our designs. We were very impressed with Cards and Pockets.com. All of the pocketfolds and mats were delivered promptly, and were of good quality. They noticed that the tiny little wording in the upper right swirl of the invitations was not readable, and sent us free samples of our invitation printed on two different kinds of card stock, so that we could decide for ourselves if we would prefer to have a less textured one that would make that lettering more readable. Since the wording came from the design on ketubah (Jewish wedding contract), and was not important to the invitations, we were not concerned about its readability, but we were impressed that they had taken the time to notice and offer to do something about it.
Rabbi Rim was flexible on arrangements. For example, he allowed a ketubah that was personally designed for us, rather than standard (quite sexist!) wording. He proofread the ketubah to make sure it said what we wanted in Hebrew as well as English. He allowed us to have all of our guests sign the ketubah as witnesses. He permitted us to include the vows from the Church of England wedding ceremony, and to have an interpretation of each of the blessings that did not include references to God. And he was quite supportive on the idea of our building our own chuppah. When we were looking for a place to get ready before the ceremony, he offered his own office, and brought a full-length mirror from home. He's given us lots of good advice, while at the same time working to have the ceremony just the way we want it.
At the ceremony itself, he was warm and welcoming to all our guests. Even when we had some minor glitches (the pen disappearing when we went to sign the ketubah, NotFroofy's veil falling off, our having difficulties breaking the glass), he responded with warmth and good humor.
Amy Fagin's "Embrace" ketubah caught our eye the first time we saw it. We looked at hundreds of other ketubot, but kept coming back to that one. The only issue for us was that no standard Hebrew texts were available for a same-sex female couple, and the cost of a custom text was high.
However, both of us felt that a ketubah that was going to hang on our walls for the rest of our lives was a priority, so we finally decided to get the Embrace ketubah with customized text. Amy was very helpful, first in advising us how we could get permission to use the text (which was developed by another artist), and then in working with us to create the ketubah. She sent us a proof that our rabbi could review, and he approved it with no changes. She then prepared the ketubah itself very promptly.
She also gave us permission to use images of the ketubah available on the Internet as the basis for the design on our invitations, programs, etc. This really helped to tie together our wedding stationery.
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