Real wedding: Bahareh + Jelsen part 1










Photographer Stephanie Land sent me these AMAZING pictures of Brooklyn couple Bahareh and Jelsen…I just love all the personal touches that bring in both of their cultures. And geez, what about those shoes??? I’ll let Bahareh tell you about it….

The theme was cherries and honey and we tried to carry that over the entire wedding. (Jelsen proposed to me in the Cherry garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden). Jelsen is a designer (JelsenJargon.com) and designed our invites himself. My only request was that he would use the Kraft paper, because I love the organic look of it. Our RSVP cards were postcards that guests returned with messages written to us. It was great because every day we would receive postcards from around the world. (Norway, Germany, Italy, U.S etc). The envelopes where handmade by a stationer in Chicago, Amber Favorite.

Ceremony
We got married by the Hudson in Fort Tryon Park. I had been obsessing about the weather for a month and we even rescheduled our rehearsal dinner because the forecast said rain and we were planning a backyard BBQ! When I woke up on our wedding day, I heard the rain before I even opened my eyes, but couldn’t really let that be an issue anymore. As the day went ahead, the skies cleared up and when we went to have our pictures taken before the ceremony, the light was perfect. By the time the ceremony started at 7pm, the sun was setting and we got an amazing view. Since the ceremony was in a public park, we had a lot of “uninvited” guests that were casually strolling through the park, but it didn’t bother us at all, we were far too excited and they were all excited to accidentally walk into our ceremony it seemed! Guests were handed programs rolled and tied with pieces of my dress ( I had so much left over after altering my dress) and I walked up the aisle to “My Cherie Amour”, performed acoustic by our good friend and artist, Sarah White, accompanied on guitar by DJ Don Cuco.
Jelsen’s sister and one of my sisters each read a poem for us (which made everyone pretty teary eyed) and we finished the ceremony by honoring our ancestors. First by doing the Persian honey tradition were the couple dips their pinkies in honey and feed each other to symbolize a sweet life together, secondly the african-american tradition of jumping the broom.

Attire
Jelsen wore a three piece suit from Dunhill with shoes and shirt from Ted Baker. His green socks were purchased at Clark’s Register in Soho and his cufflinks from etsy.
My dress is Norwegian Wedding Atelier, Agape. I altered it somewhat. I couldn’t find any shoes that fit the image I had in my head, so I decided to pull a Sandra Lee and semi-home make them. I purchased and had them dyed at Coloriffics.com and then made the pearl ornaments to go on the tip of my toes. My veil was from etsy and the lace bolero an Ebay purchase. All the jewelery I wore were gifts from Jelsen from previous occasions except my “something old”, a bracelet that has been passed through generations in my family.
My Maids wore traditional Norwegian formal gowns (I was born in Iran, but grew up in Norway), which looked amazing in this setting and I suspect they got more attention than me – I didn’t mind at all because I loved it.

Cake and sweets table
Indira The Sweet. We showed her a picture of a cake we liked and she made with all the little changes we wanted. Legos has a special meaning to us (Jelsen’s cufflinks were made of legos and my necklace reads LEGO), and she made these great cake toppers for us. The cake and all other sweets she made for the guests were amazingly tasteful.

Flowers
Jessy of Fleurs nyc. Jessy understood our concept right away. Our colors were browns(from chocolate to honey) and lilacs(from powder pink to dark purple) and told her to make arrangements that looked whimsical and wild and she really delivered. The tables were decorated with creme pails stuffed with gorgeous flowers and small jars of honey for the guests to take home. The flower girls carried little pails stuffed with even wilder looking flowers and my bouquet was so beautiful, I placed it in a vase on our table during the reception, so I could keep looking at it. Jessy was really professional and so personal in her work. She actually invited us to the flower market with her at 6 am in the morning one weekend, so we could get a better view of what we could expect to find in season for our summer wedding. We had a blast working with her.

Reception
New Leaf Cafe, Fort Tryon Park. The team, headed by Tiffany Hogan, were flawless. Not only did they listen to all of our requests and answer our every question, but they made sure all our visions came to life – right down to how we like our napkins to be folded! The food was exceptional (luckily we had a tasting before hand, so we knew what we were feeding our guests even though we couldn’t get a single bite in on our wedding day) and guests are still talking about how tasty it was and how attentive the staff was.

Photographer
Stephanie Land was amazing to work with. I told her what my concept of the wedding photography was (I wanted it to look like a fashion editorial of NYC) and she just made it happen! She shot us all over the city and on the A train up to the ceremony spot and really captured some great hidden moments.The very next day she started sending us some of the digital shots she had taken and it was so fun to get to see so many parts of the wedding that I had missed during the party of various reasons. She actually also turned out to be an awesome calligrapher and wrote all the addresses on our wedding invites. It was a great experience and we highly recommend her to anyone and everyone else.

Planners
Maya&Sara of Titans of Industry were kind enough to take on the task of helping us towards the end. Two weeks before the wedding, I realized that I didn’t want to be the one that everyone would turn to for questions on my wedding day. I also didn’t want to be the one that told our families what to do at the rehearsal, so we decided to hire on this great team to help us out. And did they help! They handled everyone in our families SO well, and if there was a problem at the wedding, I didn’t know and I still don’t really know because they took care of it. They were an amazing team that really complete each other. Maya is very practical and gets things done fast, and Sara was always keeping me calm and cool (literally! She was with us during our entire photoshoot just to keep us cooled down and hydrated!). I strongly believe that our wedding day was perfect because of their help.

[images from Stephanie Land]