In this issue of Alan & Adrian Get Married, we find out about their creative design for the Save the Date and Wedding Invitation. Are you struggling with the overwhelming amount of choices? Here is how Alan and Adrian navigated the numerous options and found the perfect design!
Save the Date
Q: You mentioned earlier that you selected a wedding date over a holiday weekend so that your out of town guests would have more time to travel. Did you send Save-the-Dates to give them advance opportunities to make their travel arrangements?
A: We did. We felt that our out of town guests would appreciate receiving a Save-the-Date well in advance of the invitation.
Q: Did you go with a local designer/printer or did you use an online resource?
A: We found so many websites and ultimately picked a travel theme card from Minted to match the theme of our wedding. Minted was having a promotion during the time we purchased so we were able to come in a bit under budget as well.
Q: Did you add any special touches to your Save-the-Date?
A: We were sure to include our wedding website on The Knot so that the relevant information needed for travel arrangements was contained in one place. We also ordered a custom wax seal from Nostalgic Impressions. Adding that special touch to our envelopes made our announcement much more special.
Inviting Your Guests
Q: Tell us about your invitation.
A: We found the perfect invitation on Emdotzee. Sticking with our travel theme, we designed an airline ticket syle invite. The design included a folder that held directions to the venue, an abbreviated schedule, and information on guest attire, directions from the airport and RSVP info. The folder also included the ticket (invite) which included our details – date, time, location, and weeding website. We placed these in silver envelopes and sealed them with our wax seal.
Regardless of whether you purchase your invitations from an online stationery store or have a custom design created from a local designer, make sure that your invites reflect the feel of your wedding and the love you have for each other.
In this issue of Alan & Adrian Get Married, we are getting the low down on wedding attire and hair and makeup services for the wedding day. How did two grooms navigate the overwhelming world of fashion? Read on!
Photo Credit: Mi Amore Photography
Shopping for Wedding Attire
Q: What was the first thing that came to your mind when you started thinking about attire?
A: Thank God we don’t have to go through the dress buying process that traditional brides do! We simply needed to find a suit that complimented our wedding colors and that was not difficult at all!
Q: Where did you buy/ rent your suits?
A: We decided to rent all our men’s suits from Celebrity Tuxes & Tails. We saw them at one of Aldea’s open houses and they offered a variety of options and affordable pricing. The rental packages even include shoes, which is an additional cost at many of their competitors.
Q: Can you tell us any details about the suits you selected or is that a secret until the wedding?
A: I decided on a navy suit and Adrian decided on dark grey; both suits will be accented with peach ties. Our groomsmen will be wearing a lighter grey suit accented with a black tie with the exception of my best man, Andrew, who will also be wearing a dark grey vest. For a fun twist, we added Star Wars socks – my groomsmen will be the rebel alliance and Adrian’s will be the empire!
Shopping for Attendant Dresses and Jewelry
Q: What did you find to be some of the biggest challenges when selecting groomsmaid dresses?
A: Understanding the terminology alone for dress styles, necklines and fabric was daunting in itself! Thankfully the girls were able to help make the decision easy. We wanted to let them select certain design elements of their dress (like the neckline) while setting certain parameters for continuity. Ultimately, we decided that they will wear a navy, A-line style, knee length dress with silver/grey heels and each girl can select her own dress as long as it fits that criteria.
Q: Are the girls wearing the same jewelry or can they express their personal style with accessories?
A: My girls will wear the navy earrings that were part of their “will you be my groomsmaid” gift (see earlier post) and Aidan’s girls will wear Star Wars themed earrings!
Q: Do you have any junior groomsmaids or flower girls?
A: We have two jr. groomsmaids and flower girl and we wanted them to feel beautiful in their dresses. Rather than going with the typical tulle style dress, we chose a navy foral lace dress.
Hair and Makeup
Q: What was the most challenging part of choosing everyone’s attire?
A: {Alan laughing} Hands down hair and makeup! We are two guys! Trying to plan a wedding is tricky enough – I mean, we haven’t been dreaming about it since we were five – but let’s face it, our knowledge on hair and makeup is really limited. That’s when Aldea stepped in and recommended Babydoll Weddings. We met them at an open house and the stylists were great about answering our questions about complexions, skin tones, hair types, etc.
Q: What were Babydoll Wedding’s main selling points that led you to book them?
A: One main factor is that they travel to the venue (or other location) where your party is getting ready. That takes away so much stress in figuring out how to get everyone to and from the Salon while budgeting the right amount of time. The package pricing is also very competitive and since we are gifting this service to our attendants, price and value was a huge factor.
Q: Do you have one uniform look for the girls or are they selecting their own color palette and style?
A: We are going with a natural look emphasizing the eyes not the lips. Hair will be in a modified up-do, at the base of the skull, with wispy, romantic curls. A few of our girls have shorter hair which will be styled with big curls.
Our girls suggested a trial so we booked one for four of the girls to make sure that our vision looks good on each girl.
Booking a Trial
Q: How was the trial?
A: It was beyond successful! We arrived at the Salon and were surprised with glasses of champagne for everyone. We shared our vision with the stylists the best we could – we are guys, after all – and showed a couple of pictures and they started styling. The entire process didn’t take as long as we expected. Each stylist was so knowledgeable and they even offered styling tips to each girl. By the end of the trial, each girl was sporting the look we envisioned!
Q: Was there anything about the trial that stood out?
A: The stylists took photos of their finished work and also wrote various notes that they can refer back to on our wedding day. That was hugely comforting knowing that they will have photos and notes to remember what they did at the trial. I can only imagine how many brides and weddings they work with!
Q: Babydoll Weddings offers services for men – specifically a face prep and hair services. Are you and Adrian getting any pampering done the day of?
A: We are! We are getting the face treatment which includes a no-shine service to ensure that we are matte and smooth for photos.
Words of Wisdom
Q: Do you have any advice you can offer our Babydoll Bride Tribe?
A: Include your attendants in your decision process regarding attire. They feel vested in knowing that they will be comfortable and look amazing. Take advantage of the hair and makeup trial. Babydoll Weddings has been nothing but exceptional to work with and they offer an array of services. They take care of scheduling the staff and creating your hair and makeup timeline so you don’t need to stress. Call them and thank us later!
Babydoll Weddings is excited to introduce Alan and Adrian. We are delighted to provide hair and makeup services for their entire wedding party this coming January, 2018. We fell in love with them instantly and were beyond thrilled when they agreed to let us share their love story with you. Alan will be taking over our blog for a special series “Alan & Adrian Get Married” sharing their wedding planning experiences as a newly engaged couple planning a same-sex wedding. We hope you love them as much as we do!
Finding that perfect venue is a fun process, however it can be taxing on a couple when they don’t know what they are looking for in a venue. In a previous post, I mentioned that for our wedding we wanted to keep it in Arizona and to have it on January 14, 2018. Arizona has many beautiful venue options, all with different styles. We wanted to find a place with character that left people talking after the wedding, so for us that ruled out the various country clubs, hotels, and other generic locations. We also wanted to be very budget friendly too.
After browsing online at many possible venues and doing extensive research on each of the venues, we narrowed it down to 2 venues that we wanted to see in person: The Windmill Winery in Florence, Arizona and Aldea at Tlaquepaque in Phoenix, Arizona. What drew us to these venues was that they shared a lot of character in their décor, and they are both all-inclusive locations (I’ll discuss all-inclusive vs. hiring vendors separately in a future post).
Windmill Winery
The first place that we went to was The Windmill Winery. After being greeted in the parking lot by their resident goose, we were met by the venue manager and given a tour. They had two different options for the venue, their 100-year-old barn and their Hampton’s-styled Lake House dock. We first got to see the Lake House where the ceremony would be held on the dock over their lake that overlooks the Superstition Mountains, and the reception would be held inside the Lake House. Since our wedding is in January, we decided to go in the winter months to see what the scenery would look like outside at that time. Unfortunately, a lot of the bushes and grasses were brown and didn’t fit the aesthetic that we were going for outdoors.
The inside of the Lake House is very spacious and sets the mood perfectly for an evening reception. We also toured the barn which had a nice rustic feel to it and plenty of room for our guests. Despite this, we felt that the space would feel overwhelming if we didn’t have a wedding that would fill the space appropriately. This venue can also have multiple weddings going on at once with all the different areas they had to offer and that wasn’t very appealing to us. In the end, Adrian and I felt that the long drive from Phoenix to Florence along with the possibility of having multiple weddings at the same location didn’t make The Windmill Winery our choice of venue.
Aldea at Tlaquepaque
We next came across Aldea at Tlaquepaque and I was blown away as soon as I stepped foot into the venue. Aside from being a carbon copy of Tlaquepaque in Sedona, as soon as you left the parking lot you could barely hear the cars on the road. The venue only hosts one wedding per day, which was a huge plus for us. The grand tour showed the lovely courtyard where the ceremony would take place that also has a tree covered with lights all over it and a bubbling fountain. The reception is held indoors in a large enough space for eating and dancing, but not too large that you feel overpowered by the size of the room.
Adrian and I loved the Spanish décor and architecture. This venue is an all-inclusive venue where one flat amount (that includes tax and tip) includes music, catering, cake, decorations (yes, they provide their own decorations), photographer, and day of coordinator. After leaving that venue I couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful the venue was.
Only a week later is when we made the big decision to lock the date in and we were fortunate that we got the day that we wanted. We are very excited to move on to the tasting process!
Stay tuned for more about Alan and Adrian’s love story!
Babydoll Weddings is excited to introduce Alan and Adrian. We are delighted to provide hair and makeup services for their entire wedding party this coming January, 2018. We fell in love with them instantly and were beyond thrilled when they agreed to let us share their love story with you. Alan will be taking over our blog for a special series “Alan & Adrian Get Married” sharing their wedding planning experiences as a newly engaged couple planning a same-sex wedding. We hope you love them as much as we do!
Meet Alan & Adrian: The Proposal
Alan J. Tomasetti
A couple’s wedding is one of the many milestones in their life that not only symbolizes unity, but it’s a celebration of their love and sharing it with everyone special in their life. Finding that special someone who will share both the good and the bad times with you, who encourages you to be the best you can be, and who will love you beyond the end of time seems like an impossible task to some people, but as my mom would say “never say never” and with that I’ve always been a hopeless romantic hoping to find my someday prince. We’ve all heard of the phrase “trust your gut instinct”, and I can certainly say that I’m thankful that I trusted mine.
How We Met
I first met Adrian in the summer of 2014 on an online dating app. For someone who isn’t into the whole bar scene or having friends setting me up on a blind date, online dating was my option if I had any chance to find a date. Online dating has come a long way since it first started and it no longer carries with it such negative connotations. After talking on-line for a few weeks, he asked me if I wanted to go get some coffee with him. I’m not a coffee drinker, but I thought why not, Starbucks has tea and I need the points to keep me in the gold card club.
Our First Date
If there’s one way to impress me on a first date, it was to take me somewhere unique that I haven’t been to before that has a lot of character. Our first date was just that because to my surprise, he decided to take me to Gold Bar Espresso in Tempe. The coffee shop had a lot of personality and hometown charm, which certainly caught my attention. They also had a lot of tea flavors to choose from, which was also a plus in my book.
When I got there, I saw Adrian was wearing a black V-neck shirt and jeans and we sat outside and talked for what seemed like hours. I’m the kind of person that clock watches because my life runs on a schedule and I hate to be late to things, yet all that time I was with him I didn’t care where I had to be next. We laughed for hours and stayed there past closing time. After we said goodnight and shared our first kiss, I couldn’t wait to see Adrian again and what our future adventures could hold.
“THE” Trip
Fast forward to May 2016, after many adventures both in Arizona and all over the US, we decided to take our first international cruise to together along with some of our closest friends. We visited Ensenada, Mexico on a 3-day cruise and got to enjoy all the fun activities on the ship as well as the local culture and amazing seafood in Ensenada. On the last evening of the cruise, we were having dinner in the main dining room and were just finishing up our dessert when Adrian went back to the room to grab our jackets (I told him earlier in the day I wanted to take some pictures of the sunset and it was getting chilly out).
We made it to the very top deck of the ship and were huddled close to stay warm. We took some photos facing towards the sunset at first and then he wanted me to turn around for what I thought were going to be selfies. Adrian turned to me and said: “This has been the best trip ever, and I couldn’t imaging spending it or my life with anyone else. I’ve never been this happy with anyone else and I love you so much, and so Alan Tomasetti, Alan James Tomasetti, will you marry me”? Of course I said yes!!
The Ring
According to Adrian, he had gotten the ring earlier than he expected and knew the cruise would be going on a few weeks later and would be the perfect opportunity to propose. During dinner, he was able to hand off the ring to our friends at dinnertime to store in his friend’s purse. After we made it to the top deck and took some photos, they made the switch for the ring. After a few stumbling over words, he proposed and we celebrated the rest of the evening!
Being a type-A personality, I’m still shocked that Adrian was able to pull a fast one on me, but it was the best surprise I could ever ask for. I’ve found my better half, my companion in the journey will call life, my true soulmate. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with him.
Stay tuned for more about Alan and Adrian’s love story!
