Wedding - Wedding Outfits

Beach Wedding Groom Outfits

I’ve been asked many times about how I won my dream wedding. Here’s the fairytale story:

When Rick proposed to me in December of 2008, I immediately accepted. As 2009 and the effects of the down-spiraling economy arrived, we soon realized that we wouldn’t be able to plan or afford the wedding we wanted—unless we were willing to wait a few years.

Aside from that, we began looking at typical wedding and reception venues and felt that many of them were very standard and didn’t have the kind of flair we wanted to present to our guests. We thought about exciting ideas like hosting a whodunit mystery wedding or a convention wedding, but these ideas were out of reach.

One of our first ideas involved having the ceremony on a ship. I love the ocean and Rick spent months at a time on a ship when he was in the Marine Corps. Upon investigation, we found that facility rentals for most ships start at ,000—more than twice our modest wedding budget.

Abandoning that idea, we started looking at wedding and reception venues on Long Beach Island with the hope of having an off-season wedding to save money. We still found that we would be stretching our budget to have such a wedding and we decided to wait, but we were disappointed. Each of us spent many childhood summers on Long Beach Island and it was a very important place to Rick’s father—I never had the privilege of meeting him; he passed away years before Rick and I met.

Due to my love of Long Beach Island, I had befriended the LBI region on Facebook. I saw a contest reminder at the end of June, encouraging couples to enter to win a wedding on the tall ship A. J. Meerwald. I entered the contest. Within the week, I received a call from Erik Kent at NJWedding.com asking if Rick and I could commit to the date. We agreed and were soon thereafter notified that we were winners.

Before winning the wedding, I had glanced at dresses online and had looked at one venue: the historic Mount Holly Library. Rick and I had toured the library and found it to be very reasonably priced. We were about to commit to having our wedding and reception there when I won the contest. Since we still adored the library and our budget was limited, we decided to have our reception at the library. This allowed us to have a very grand feel for our wedding while hosting an intimate reception for our family and friends.

Our biggest worry was that we could not afford a photographer along with everything else on short notice. Just weeks before the wedding, Erik contacted me again to let me know that photographer David Toth had offered his services for our wedding and reception. At that point, everything started to come together.

The nautical-themed invitations for our wedding were also part of the wedding package we won. The beautiful designs came from Invitations by Stephanie. Stephanie was a pleasure to work with. She presented the invitations wrapped beautifully and complete with instructions on stuffing the embellished invitations and mailing them. When I went to pick them up, I also observed Stephanie having a consultation with another New Jersey bride and found out that Stephanie had designed my cousin Nikki’s wedding invitations as well.

Kelly Rowles of Convention Fans designed our wedding web site, allowing guests to learn about the bridal party and get updated information.

Also included in the contest win was the unforgettable service, performed by Deb Whitcraft. She had a lot of words to offer about the ocean and love which very much described our relationship.

We enlisted some help of our own for other parts of the ceremony and reception. Since my matron of honor and I are both avid scrapbookers, we created favor bags, guest books, and some of the decorations. Friends also kindly donated some of the décor and helped immensely with set up. Matt Wagner of Seventh Kingdom IGE offered his services as an emcee and sound technician; Zach Long took additional photographs. With the help of the staff and players of Seventh Kingdom IGE, he organized a smooth set up and clean up for the reception.

Our wedding purchases included my dress, by Bonny, purchased from Kay Bridal. I was able to get an off-the-rack discount for the dress, which seemed meant to be worn on a ship.

We did our early shopping on Etsy.com for customized nautical stickers, themed table tents, a wedding banner, and ship cutouts. These details were very inexpensive and custom-created for our wedding.

The most essential Etsy items were our jewelry pieces by Carolyn Buss. Everything we ordered from Etsy was packaged and shipped carefully, delicately, and immediately. Carolyn provided small gift bags for the bridesmaids’ jewelry. I hadn’t thought about the presentation of the jewelry before it arrived, but having it presented so nicely made me feel confident about the gifts.

My matron of honor was kind enough to make the favors—delicious chocolates in sea shell shapes, made in the navy blue and white wedding colors.

Our groomsmen wore formal kilts outfits rented from Piper’s Cove in Kearny, NJ. The bridesmaids coordinated the finding similar navy blue dresses and shoes—even though two of them live in California!

We booked our catering through Christopher’s in Mount Holly. We’d heard good things about Christopher’s from folks at our reception venue and from friends. They were incredibly flexible and also offered us a payment plan to make everything easier. They provided hot meals and plenty of plastic ware, cups, napkins, salad, butter, and bread. Christopher’s also provided coffee for our guests.

Our flowers were ordered only a week before the wedding from Different Drummer Florist in Mount Holly. We saved money by having a cupcake tier instead of a traditional cake—what I didn’t know about these before we started looking is that the top tier of some cupcake tiers include a small cake so the bride and groom can hold to the cake cutting tradition. We ordered the cupcake tier from Red Carpet Cakes in Mount Holly and received many compliments on the freshness of the cake and the creaminess of the icing.

When the day of the wedding arrived, my first course of action was to head to Nadine Janet Salon in Medford to see Renee, my stylist. She’d colored my hair the week before and styled it the day of the wedding. Renee curled my hair and styled a side bang, then pinned my hair up with the custom gold ball-tipped bobby pins Carolyn had designed for me.

While I was there, my handsome groom lost his wallet (still not found) and raced off to get the flowers. Fortunately, we had pre-paid for everything knowing we’d be in a rush that day! The men got changed at the best man’s house (since he lives nearby) and the ladies got ready at our home in Lumberton, NJ.

Since our wedding was in the evening and more than an hour away, we did our posed photographs during the day outside of the library. David and his assistant Danielle caught many of the details of the décor which really expressed the atmosphere of our wedding and reception—not to mention other candid moments which we missed.

The bridal party split up to grab a snack. The folks at Applebee’s were kind enough to temporarily store our flowers in a cool, dry place while we ate. We then met up before the wedding at the dock on Long Beach Island. The weather was spectacular. Some of our guests considered the location convenient as they were already vacationing on LBI, and we greatly appreciate the drive that our other guests were willing to take to be at our ceremony.

My bridesmaids even welcomed me onto the ship with a ladies’ toast. We were able to meet the crew and all of the people that helped organize the contest and event.

Right after the ceremony, we stayed to thank our guests—then raced back to assist with setting up the reception (which went until midnight). Highlights of the reception include the cake cutting (I kind of smashed it into Rick’s face, and then he gave me a nice, cakey kiss), the garter retrieval and toss (Rick put on an Indiana Jones hat and retrieved the garter to the theme), and the fact that two of our dear friends—also a couple—caught the garter and bouquet, respectively.

Many people asked us how we won the wedding. I never really entered contests, but this one seemed meant for us and it was something we needed—so I went for it. My advice to couples: you can’t win if you don’t enter.

Also, if you have connections, use them—especially in these difficult times, you can barter for services or get a good deal on short notice if you spend time looking. If you are having any sort of unique wedding and can get press coverage, use it to your advantage by letting vendors know—they’ll want their goods and services mentioned in the article.

Beach Wedding Groom Outfits