Exquisitely Unique: Restaurant Wedding Receptions

Sometimes the best of wedding spaces are those that you don’t think of as ‘reception venues.’ I especially find pleasure in weddings and receptions that don’t follow traditional molds. The advent of many brides and grooms foregoing customary venues for restaurants, historic buildings and unique locations is refreshing.

Weddings such as these afford the couple to be totally in control of their time line and enable not only the most eclectic of designs and locations but the chance to really let the celebration take a life of it’s own. Such was the case in this highlighted wedding celebrated at Gigino at Wagner Park.

Overlooking the water where the Hudson and the East River meet, guests were invited to view the ceremony on the park building’s upper level followed by cocktails and then dinner under the tent with stunning views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

From the long tables arranges with low flower arrangements, to the hand written place cards and the individual ‘evil eye’ favors meant to shine luck and happiness on the guests, it was a truly magical evening.

But with such a space, what of the music? How do you integrate dancing? I will be honest, that dancing was kept to a minimum as the space did not afford for it. But it worked out in the most interesting of ways. Lack of a dance floor does in no way diminish the music's importance.

Rob attentively listened to the bride and groom's music interests. Their music selection was eclectic and varied. A mix of traditional and a-typical that reflective their tastes and in turn their guests. Being of Arabic background, we mixed Magharabi and Rai in and had the guests enjoying the music throughout the night. Rob received several compliments about the assortment and diversity of the music and how much it was enjoyed. This kind of integration is truly what Colorblind Productions masters.

On top of that, this group was a collection of scholars and speakers and the night was intermixed with good food, good music and what’s best – stories of life and love as guests took the microphone several times to recant memories of the bride and groom in their youth, current stories and stories of life lessons they could take with them. I left that wedding knowing far more about the guests then I have ever known at any other wedding and wishing that I myself were their friends as they were such an amazingly diverse and interesting group. So whose to say that you need to dance at every wedding. Sometimes things are best left to the way life flows.

And as the sun set over the water, fireworks illuminated the sky in the distance. Events like this make you realize that the perfection in a celebration happens when a couple embraces their surroundings as a reflection of themselves and have everything culminate into the materialization of what they have now become.