Steph & Lela's Magical Day

A couple months ago, a friend I grew up with in Sitka, Lela, started campaigning around Facebook to vote for her video. Brian and I have done this type of thing multiple times, so we completely understand and started voting. (Brian met Lela when he was in Sitka managing).

The video was her and her girlfriend, Steph, at a snowy place in Anchorage telling the world that they should be chosen to wed on the top of the Empire State Building through a contest run by Colin Cowie who is a celebrity event and wedding planner. They had made it past the first cut, but they needed to be in the top 4 for voting.

Their efforts paid off and... THEY WON!

They were flown to NYC, got some gorgeous wedding bands from DeBeers, wedding dress and tux from Kleinfelds, put up in The Pierre hotel, and a beautiful morning wedding and reception designed by the Colin Cowie team.

Most of all,

they were the first gay couple to be married on top of the Empire State Building!

Lela and Steph were both gorgeous and all smiles. We were honoured to be part of their special day and couldn't be happier for them.

Here are some shots from the day:

Ceremony Room

Reception Table - tiny breakfast, but delicious

Everything was so pretty!

<3

A Year (and a half) of Marriage

About a year ago, Isa and I met with friends in Central Park for our wedding reception.

We got married on December 28, 2009 with a handful of close family and friends, but we knew how expensive and difficult it is to come to New York in the middle of Christmas and New Year's, so we waited to have our reception until it was more convenient (and less expensive) for everybody. The date was set for June 5, just under six months later.

It was a beautiful (hot!) day, and lots of our friends and family were able to come out and play with us.

Isa's friend Angie made us a wonderful three-layer cake.

Chocolate, Vanilla, and a top layer of Red Velvet.

Part of that top layer has been hanging out in the back corner of our freezer for a year now, and as tradition has it, we're supposed to eat it for our one year anniversary. But it was frozen, so we set it on the counter to thaw. And when it thawed, it didn't look so good any more (I've always been kinda skeptical about eating year-old anything anyways, right?).

And since we weren't sure about eating it, we just left it on the counter. A week passed by with it just sitting out, and now we're SURE we can't eat it.

So we bought a replacement wedding cake: Oreo Ice Cream cake...

...which could possibly be the best cake on earth.

So props to us for making it through a year (and a half) of marriage! Yay!

She Said Yes!!!

I know, this is a little late and most of you know she said yes (probably because you know we got married over a year ago). But I finally got around to editing all the footage of my proposal. Some of the footage (mostly the photos, but also the video of us on the horse-drawn carriage) are from the actual date of the proposal. Most of the video is from our reenactments. We went out several different times to get all the needed shots. We tried hard to keep the continuity, but Isa cut her hair and one time we went out it was freezing, so Isa has a scarf in some shots. But I think it turned out great! Here is the finished product:




A few days later, we found a contest to enter it in. I had to shorten it to 3 minutes and change the lyrics so I didn't infringe on Jason Mraz's copyrights, so here is our entry to the Pop the Question competition (to win a two-week honeymoon in Thailand!!!):

Pop the Question Proposal Competition - Brian and Isa Ciccotelli

Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoyed it! :)

NYC Wedding Reception

Hello everyone!!

We've updated our wedding website with a few more pictures and a few more details about the wedding reception. We're really excited about it! The reception will be held in Central Park on June 5. It will be a picnic style reception so dress casual! We'll be playing games and having a blast. We'll cut the wedding cake, throw the bouquet, and eat some great food.

For more info, check out our site: http://tinyurl.com/brianandisa.

Hope you're having a great day! Can't wait to see you in June.

Honeymoon

We're back from our honeymoon!! It was amazing. Most of the pictures are up on Facebook now, but I'll post a few here to show you all the cool places we went.

Our honeymoon had three parts. The first part was Disney World:


It was so much fun. It was freezing cold, but that kept the lines down in the morning. Big thanks to Isa's friend Tom who works at Animal Kingdom and got us in for free each day. We rode everything from Space Mountain to the Tea Cups. :)

Next stop was Landon and Mel's house in Fort Lauderdale. They're good friends of mine from Del Sol and were kind enough to open their home to us for the weekend. They're awesome. We took out their beach cruisers and rode down to the beach.


And we did a little house shopping.



The last part of the honeymoon was a 12-day cruise. We started in Miami, took two days at sea straight to Aruba (we were next to Haiti when the earthquake hit) and then went to Cartagena (Colombia), Colon (Panama), Limon (Costa Rica), and Grand Cayman. It was pretty darn fantastic. We were excited not only for the itinerary, but one of my friends was the shopping guide on the ship (we had worked together in Alaska last year):



This is us sitting on a Divi Divi Tree on Eagle Beach in Aruba. :) We. Love. Aruba.



Check out the size of this flag in Cartagena! Can you see us below it? We're teeny!!



I still can't believe we went to the Panama Canal! That was so cool to see and so interesting. I HIGHLY recommend it.



We hiked through a rain forest in Costa Rica. We saw monkeys, sloths, and lots of other animals. We ended up on this little beach and we climbed out on this palm tree.



Our last stop was Grand Cayman. If you've been there, you know there's one thing everyone MUST do: Swim with the Stingrays. We went to Stingray City and we loved it! They were so much fun to play with. Apparently, if you kiss a stingray, you get 7 years good luck. With Isa and I just recently married, we thought starting out our life together with 7 years of good luck would be a great start.



That brought us back to Miami and we hopped on a flight back to New York. Now we're getting back into real life, with Isa in school and me getting a temporary job here in the City. (We have a surprise plan for the Summer!) :)

Thanks for reading! See you again soon.

We Got Married!!!

Ok, I know I still haven't updated and backdated all my adventures from Italy, Alaska, and New York, but I will... eventually.

But Isa and I have decided to update our blogs more regularly (she has one too, you can see it by clicking here) and so I'm going to make a concerted effort to do that. :)

So we got married (see pic below) and we're currently stuck in JFK waiting for a hopeful opening on a flight (we're flying standby) to Orlando so we can go to Disney World!! After Disney, we'll have 3 days in Fort Lauderdale before embarking on a 12 day cruise! We're so excited!!!

There'll be lots more to come, but this is just to say hi and to kill time while we wait for a flight.



Thanks!! See you soon (and much more often).
:)