Amy Griffis Sour Kitty: We Found the Ultimate New York City Wedding

Every now and then a wedding comes across your desk that stops you dead in your tracks. I call them the weddings with the trifecta of pretty – beautiful photography, fresh design moments, and a bride and groom whose love practically leaps off the page. The incredible Heather Waraksa and ever swoon joined forces for this Manhattan affair and the result is ALL of the above. Scroll on for taxi cab place cards, cronut favors, and don’t miss the sweet words written by the groom.

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From the Groom… Arielle and I got engaged at the Plaza Hotel under the guise of a very over the top staycation. Having grown up in New York, I felt like it was only appropriate for our engagement and later our wedding to touch upon iconic New York if possible. I had the hotel set up our room to include champagne and originally had asked the concierge to just throw a few flowers about the room (nothing spelled out or anything) as I continued to think that the proposal part would be a surprise for Arielle (I should have realized that how do you sell the woman you are dating that a staycation at The Plaza hotel after dating for years wouldn’t have something more to it!) We walk into the room and spelled out on the bed is “I ❤️ u” in rose petals…well if I thought there was any surprise left, I immediately got down on one knee and asked her to marry me!

When we started to look for our wedding venue, that same New York sentiment kept playing in our heads. We looked at quite a few venues that definitely had that New York vibe but once we saw the rooftop where we would hold the ceremony at TriBeCa Rooftop, we knew it was the spot for us. Now as you can imagine, the rooftop is located in TriBeCa, and it has the most amazing view of New York in both directions. To the south, there is a backdrop of One World Trade Center and to the north the Empire State Building. The idea of getting married while surrounded by the entire New York skyline at sunset was all we needed.

From there, we put everything else together with a similar theme – from our invitations, which was a custom watercolor drawing of the street we live on in Greenwich Village, to the taxi cab place card holders. We decided that as our last piece to the wedding, we had to have Dominique Ansel Cronuts (a cross between a croissant and a donut, for which people usually wait on line for hours to get!) at our wedding as we love Dominique Ansel and thought that it would be a super fun NYC gift to all of our guests who most likely would never be able to get one otherwise. Arielle was so intent on making this happen, that while at his store in the West Village she wrote him a note on the back of a receipt begging to find a way to have 250 fresh cronuts at TriBeCa Rooftop on the day of our wedding. To our amazement, the store manager came over and told us that it would be their honor and the rest was history!

Arielle wanted to add a serious fall vibe to our fall wedding and with the help of Amy Febinger of Bourgeon picked out an entire scheme to decorate the wedding. The evening started with cream and peach hued flowers that made up the chuppah at the ceremony. Beautiful hand-made copper silks tied all of the bouquets together matching the copper lanterns lining the aisle. As we got ready to hold the ceremony, the skyline was set afire by the light from the setting sun over the Hudson River to our west. Simon and Garfunkel started playing and we were ready to take our stroll down the aisle.

As most people who have been a bride or groom will tell you, the wedding goes by incredibly fast. Like lightning fast. A week or two before the wedding, we had both been told this numerous times and given advice like “make sure you don’t miss it while caught up in everything”. After hearing this enough times, we made sure in the middle of the wedding while everyone was out on the dance floor to sneak away for just two minutes and to have it all by ourselves. We snuck up the stairs to the balcony overlooking the entire venue and sat just the two of us watching. I remember soaking in the music and watching all of our friends dancing, noticing where all of our family members were scattered about the room. It was the first moment all night that we felt like we really had to ourselves to hold hands, to actually take a moment and to see everyone who was there even if it was from a distance. I am so glad I actually listened as its the clearest memory of the entire whirlwind of a night.