Heather John Wedding North Ritz Club Long Island

Venue: North Ritz Club, Long Island, New York

Heather: We met on Match.com and then had our first face to face meeting at a local bar.

John: We only talked online for a couple of hours, and then two days later we met. There was definitely an instant spark when I saw Heather.

Heather: Oh yea, there was a spark! We talked for hours. It was one o’clock in the morning on a week night, and I was thinking, “Oh my gosh! I have to work in the morning!” I felt like I had known John forever.

John: When I saw Heather, my jaw hit the floor: I was amazed, and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I just had this warm, fuzzy feeling.

Heather: It was the same here. I hadn’t felt that comfortable around a guy in a really long time. His eyes said everything. I just melted. It was perfect. To top it off we laughed the entire night (and still do, to this day!)

I was so excited after our first date that I told everyone I knew how much I liked him. It turns out that John and I had grown up just 30 minutes away from each other. We even had mutual friends and hung out at all the same bars – we had just never met.

John: I had this elaborate plan for how I was going to propose to Heather. We were up in Connecticut for Columbus Day weekend. We took a scenic drive up by the rocks and the ocean, and the plan was to do it while we were walking along the shore, with the waves crashing. However, Mother Nature had other plans : it was cold and raining the entire weekend. I was all ready to go – I had taken the ring and placed in my inside jacket pocket. However, Heather didn’t want to get out of the car because of the weather. The rest of the day I was searching for an opportunity to do it – from dinner, to being in the casino – but there were always too many people around. Everything was against me! So finally when we got back to the hotel room I couldn’t hold it in any longer, and I proposed.

Heather: I was very shocked, because I was in a cranky mood due to the awful weather. I was shaking, I couldn’t believe it. And then I started to cry, and said “yes”. I was just so excited! Then we looked at each other and both said we don’t really know what to do next.

The planning went smoothly up until the last two months when I was trying to juggle the end of the school year and the last minute wedding details. We planned every detail of the wedding ourselves, which was a lot to take on.

John: It felt like there were not enough hours in the day in the last two weeks before the wedding. My job was to find the band, we went to showcases together.

Heather: Our wedding was held at a chapel on Long Island where I grew up attending [?]. My favorite detail of the wedding would have to be my flowers. I brought the florists a picture and told them exactly what I wanted. When they brought the flowers in, I had just had my makeup finished. As soon as I saw them I burst out crying. After all our hard work and planning, I felt like everything just started to come together.

John: The most intense moment of the wedding was right before I walked out to take my place on the altar. It was just a [serial??] moment.

Heather: Right before I walked down the aisle, I was looking at my father because he is also a very big crier and he was keeping it together. I didn’t cry I just started shaking because I wasn’t used to having all those people looking at me. The worst part was I couldn’t even see John, but once I saw him everything was fine. Being up on the altar was such a surreal feeling for me.

Heather: Our wedding and reception were huge! We had 250 guests, so there was a lot of mingling to be done. We didn’t have the traditional garter and bouquet toss; instead, we had the anniversary dance. We gave the garter and the bouquet to the couple at our wedding who had been married the longest.

John: At the reception, I played with the band, which was a crazy experience. All of our friends rushed the stage as if it were a real concert.

Heather: Being newlyweds is just easy and quiet. We moved in together two months before the wedding but we were so busy with work and the wedding that we hardly saw each other. So now that everything is relaxed it’s nice to not have to drive to see each other and to just come home to him.