Even for seasoned professionals who have been planning weddings for decades, the process of putting together nuptials on Long Island is far from a stress-free, pitch-perfect endeavor. There are inevitable obstacles and hiccups along the way that seem determined to alter even the best laid plans.
And if that’s true for wedding planning professionals, the everyday bride or groom who is doing this for the first time is certainly going to face their fair share of complicated moments on the road to wedding bliss. While planning your wedding, the best way to be prepared for anything is just that—to be prepared for anything. Long Island has seen thousands upon thousands of weddings through the years, so don’t despair if you find yourself in a seemingly insurmountable situation. Chances are, someone has been in your wedding planning shoes before!
The wedding experts at the Watermill, one of Long Island’s premier event venues and catering halls, has gathered our valuable nuptial knowledge together to help you navigate the ins and outs of planning a truly memorable event. Below, we answer questions about wedding budgets, when to book the venue, how to find the perfect wedding hairstyle, how to write heartfelt wedding vows, and how our award-winning gourmet cuisine will take your wedding to the next level. All these topics and more will assist you before you walk down the aisle!
November signals the arrival of engagement season—a season that doesn’t end until the calendar hits February! During this time, engagements tend to increase and you begin to see more and more social media notifications featuring smiling couples brandishing shiny new engagement rings.
Indeed, the stretch from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day sees more engagements compared to any other time of the year. According to Wedding Wire’s 2019 Newlywed Report, 19 percent of all engagements happen during December, with Christmas Day seeing more proposals than an other day.
And if you’re lucky enough to be the person that’s gotten engaged this time around, congratulations! This is one of the happiest moments in your entire life, but it’s also the calm before the storm. You’ve got a lot of planning and tough decisions ahead of you, but there’s also plenty of fun and excitement on the horizon. But before you get to work, it’s time to celebrate. Here’s the Watermill’s list of the very first things you should do when you find yourself with an engagement ring on you finger for the very first time!
It can be difficult to know what to do first when your engagement becomes real—here’s a few helpful reminders.
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OK, you’re engaged, now it’s time to get to work! After you get engaged and soak in all that love from friends and family, you’re work to set everything up and plan the wedding of your dreams begins in earnest.
And the first question most newly engaged couples ask is, “how soon should we book a venue for our wedding reception?” It really depends on a few factors that you’ll need to consider. First of all, will your wedding ceremony take place in a separate place from the reception? Are you looking for an event venue that also doubles as a catering hall? How many guests do you plan on inviting? What time of year do you want to get hitched and how soon is your desired wedding date? All these questions and more should be answered before you even begin the search for a wedding venue.
Keep in mind that none of these factors should be taken lightly, after all, this is your wedding day! And if you aren’t sure exactly what kind of wedding you want to have, there are wedding experts out there that offer a smart and handy wedding-style quiz that’s ready to inspire you.
But even before you take that quiz, allow the wedding gurus at the Watermill to deliver our expertise on when you should book a venue!
Once you choose a wedding venue and you see the setting where the event will take place, you can begin to devise what type of style you want your nuptials to take on. The actual look is one of the most important decisions of the entire planning process because, just think about it: There are only a few elements to your wedding that most guests will remember and one of those is the overall style of the reception.
What’s your wedding color palette? Is there a wedding theme? And what is the general atmosphere that you want your family and friends to walk into when they arrive? Luckily many different styles can match perfectly with a Long Island wedding, and themes from classical to vintage to modern can be seamlessly hewn into your wedding style.
Of course, there’s floral arrangements, linens, seat covers, and more, but there’s also more subtle touches that can transform your wedding from cookie-cutter nuptial to uniquely curated event of a lifetime. Here, the Watermill lists some of these opportunities to stylize your wedding.
Wedding decorations go beyond tablecloths and streamers. These days, the delight is in the details.
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Searching for the ideal setting for your Long Island wedding, you’ll likely come across a variety of qualities shared by the very best event venues and catering halls. A large portion of these wedding venue features might sound obvious at first, but truly doing your due diligence while wedding planning means that you cannot take anything for granted. For example, can the wedding venue of your choice accommodate your guestlist? And will all those guests have a place to park their cars? And will the wedding venue’s catering menu boast enough diversity to satisfy the tastes and dietary restrictions of your guests?
These questions and more should be on your mind from the moment you begin preparing, until you wake up on the morning of the event and start to make your way toward the ceremonial aisle. To help you make that moment as stress-free as possible, the Watermill has devised a list of the top seven most crucial features that your wedding venue should absolutely deliver to you and your guests on the day of your nuptials.
When you’re planning a wedding, there are many factors that you must contend with in order for the party to go off without a hitch. But if you’re not professionally experienced in the world of event coordinating, planning the perfect wedding and organizing the day’s events can be a terribly stressful endeavor.
From the floral arrangements to the photography coordination to transportation planning to adhering to a timeline of events, there are a lot of moving parts to a typical Long Island wedding. It can all be extremely overwhelming. This is where the Watermill’s inclusion of an in-house event coordinator truly pays dividends. The Watermill’s event coordinator, known simply as Samantha, has been with the Long Island event caterer for more than 30 years and in that time, she has been the helpful assistant, involved collaborator, and trusted confidante of countless couples.
Samantha guides the Watermill’s clients through all the vendors and services needed for a wonderful event. But it’s more than merely checking off boxes and completing tasks—Samantha also provides a peace of mind. Click here to find out more about her services at the Watermill.
Wedding decorations go beyond tablecloths and streamers. These days, the delight is in the details.
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The traditional wedding timeline consists of many stops that should be familiar to anyone who has been to a wedding. But for the planner, a wedding timeline can be intimidating to sketch out for the first time. No matter how many weddings you’ve attended—whether as a member of the wedding party or as just a random guest—there’s a good chance you were partying too hard to pay that much attention to each aspect and how long each step lasted.
A proper wedding timeline keeps the day organized, while ensuring that you and your guests enjoy every aspect to the absolute fullest. An event-by-event breakdown of the day’s festivities should begin with the photographer’s arrival, typically before the bride begins to get ready. As 65 percent of couples get ready with their wedding party, being surrounded by the people you care for and love the most makes for some great photos and will leave you with cherished memories.
To help you maintain a measure of organization, the experts at the Watermill have devised a reliable traditional wedding timeline for you to follow. But remember that’s it’s perfectly fine for you to veer off this timeline and opt for an alternative approach to a wedding day. After all, this is your special day!
Your guests are hungry. They’ve waited patiently through your beautiful ceremony, your heartfelt speech and receiving line to congratulate you and your partner for getting married. Meanwhile, in an effort to fit into their dress or suit, there’s a good chance your guests haven’t eaten very much over the last 48 hours. Everything and everyone looks gorgeous and the party is set to be a memorable one—but please, it’s time to eat.
A lot of planning goes into choosing a truly inspired wedding menu, as there are so many variables to consider at an event venue or catering hall. Ideally, the venue you’ve picked actually does offers on-site catering, including a wide variety of award-winning cuisine. This relieves so much of the stress and mental anguish that you just do not have time to handle. And if you’ve chosen the Watermill as your setting, you have chosen wisely.
From various food stations during the cocktail hour to an expertly crafted main course to delectably decadent dessert offerings, the Watermill enlivens your guests’ appetite and adds another layer of celebration with its culinary expertise. But for a full complement of the culinary grandeur, you have to delve into each Watermill menu individually. First, click here for a taste of the main menu, then read here about the venue’s menu enhancements. And finally, dive into dessert by clicking here.
No matter how much we love savory food, weddings have the power to bring out the sweet tooth in all of us with desserts to remember.
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For some, the very thought of standing up in front of your closest family and friends while professing your love to your partner at your wedding ceremony is the stuff of nightmares. And when you decide to write your own wedding vows, the existential terror you feel can get exponentially worse.
As difficult as it might be to pull together, your Long Island wedding will be remembered by your guests for being even more special, loving, and romantic if you add your own personal touches—and this includes personalized wedding vows. Your wedding day is the ultimate culmination of your personal love story and this is the approach you should take while writing your vows. Rather reciting someone else’s words about love and marriage, your guests want to hear the romantic details of how you first met, how you sustained your relationship, and the promises you plan to keep well into your marriage.
There are keys to crafting the perfect set of wedding vows and there are ways to make it meaningful without being overly sappy and how to inject humor without being ridiculously silly. The Watermill offers this helpful collection of tips to make your wedding vows the poetic stuff of romantic legend.
The traditional bridal look is specifically designed to elicit gasps of awe from wedding guests. This includes everything from the dress to the shoes and all the accessories in between—but one element in particular tops it all off with an artfully designed style all its own. And that’s the wedding hairstyle.
There’s the always-popular cignon and classically crafted ballerina bun, along with varied takes on styles like braids, ponytails, loose waves, and much more. With a skillful assist from the wedding glam squad, brides typically do their hairdos in ways that match their personality and, of course, their dress and overall style. This means luscious locks can fall in romantically soft curls that drape over their shoulders or in a more refined tight bun that offers a timeless look of beauty. No matter what, the bride must find the wedding hairstyle that combines a feeling of comfort with pure elegance.
The Watermill presents the most popular wedding hairstyles for you to consider—along with some hair-dos and hair-don’ts—as you continue your journey through the wedding planning process.
A spectacular bridal hairstyle can elevate a wedding’s fashionable impact much like that of the wedding dress.
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While you’re busy planning your wedding, you’ve most likely heard from many different people that your wedding day will go by in a flash. And it’s true. The big day is a whirlwind of emotions and frenetic energy. Then, sometime during the last dance or goodbyes at your wedding reception, it will dawn on you that you and your partner achieved the ultimate nuptial victory and everything went so incredibly smoothly and well.
But before you bask entirely in the afterglow of marital bliss, remember that there is one more wedding planning task that you must complete. That’s right, it’s the wedding thank-you cards. It might seem like a relic of the past, but mailing a thoughtfully crafted, physical “thank you” note to each of your guests is a crucial finale of the complete wedding etiquette package.
It might feel like an annoying challenge to be tasked with handwriting upwards of 150-plus thank-you notes, but it’s important to let each and every single guest at your wedding know just how much you appreciate their appearance.
Yes, it sounds daunting, but fret not! The Watermill has pulled together some tips to make the process truly fun—while also making this task less than arduous!
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