Chelsey & Brian
March 12, 2017
Chelsey
February 10, 2017
We had a blast this Super Bowl, in fact, Brian and I hosted our “3rd annual” Super Bowl party at our apartment complex and rented out our common room. We had a bunch of friends over and ate So much food! A “surprise guest” appeared, which made my night. You may know him if you are a fan of ABC’s The Bachelor and The Bachelorette but one of the Bachelors from JoJo’s season came and I was able to chat with him and got a picture – hehe! That totally made my night before they even won the game!
As for our wedding planning, it is coming along great! We have not yet seen the Newport Marriott’s ballroom, but are waiting to get a few pictures from our event planner. We have our Cupcake tasting coming up this Saturday at Scrumptions in Rhode Island. Very excited for that 
Brian found his suit at Men’s Warehouse, although he has not officially purchased it yet. We ended up going with a Calvin Klein suit because he preferred to buy instead of rent. He and his groomsmen were able to get a good deal too. I am excited to help him pick out the bow ties.
A couple more big things have happened over the last few weeks: We went wedding band shopping and picked out a videographer!
For the wedding bands, we went to the same spot where Brian picked out my engagement ring (Barmakian Jewelers in Nashua, NH.) It was a lot of fun watching Brian try on wedding bands for the first time (as he has never worn a ring before – as you can see from his facial expression in the photo.) With picking out the videographer, we ended up choosing someone who’s film style really resonated with us, he is Jonathan with 4th Henry Productions, based out of Rhode Island. We are really excited to work with him!
Unfortunately, we are not able to attend your highly anticipated Bridal Show in Newport… we are devastated 
However, the reason we cannot attend is due to a previously scheduled vacation we are going on with my parents, brother and his girlfriend to New Orleans, the week before Mardi Gras! Should be an amazing trip! (Hopefully we can also stay on track with the Wedding Planning. ? )
Love is in the air,
Chelsey
January 12, 2017
The wedding planning is coming along though we have not been able to make too much progress on the invitations as we are waiting for official word that King Park is reserved for us. Reserving the park goes before City Council so fingers crossed xx
We were at the Marriott last Friday for our Menu Tasting which was incredible. My brother, Ryan, joined us as were allowed to bring guests and we thought his advice on the menu decision would be helpful. The food was delicious!!
The Marriott’s ballroom was a “hard hat” construction zone this visit, however we did get to see the vision board of the design. It looks beautiful! The ballroom is scheduled to be done by January 26th; we will be making another trip to Newport to see the final product!!
Our wedding will be a formal plated dinner and we chose stuffed chicken, salmon, and vegetarian dishes. We are also really excited about the bacon wrapped scallops and lobster salad that will be passed around during cocktail hour. YUM!
Pending the approval of the City of Newport, we just booked out transportation for guests to and from King Park and also will be booking the transportation for the wedding party this week!
Even though it is said to be good luck to have rain on your wedding day, our back up plan for the ceremony is a really good plan B, the Atrium of the Marriott is lovely. The weather on April 22nd 2016 was 75 degrees and sunny so were hoping that will be our good luck for this year (instead of rain)! Another consideration being outdoors and because my hair is long, I plan to wear my hair up to avoid it blowing in my face during the ceremony ?
Love is in the air,
Chelsey
December 15, 2016
Our style.
Brian and I want our wedding day to be romantic and classy with a beachy vibe. Now that we met with florists, we have a better understanding of how flowers make the wedding day even more magical.
The flowers.
Honestly, from the beginning, I have not been focused on flowers until I began meeting with florists. My mother joined me for the meetings because Brian was not overly enthused about flowers. My color palette is soft yellow, pale pink and white with maybe a few blueish succulents and some dusty miller as well. I think our flower choice will go wonderfully with our bridesmaids’ dresses!
The ceremony and reception.
Will hopefully be (fingers crossed) at the King Park gazebo in Newport and will not need a lot of flowers since it is outdoors. I won’t give too much away but there will be some simple flowers at the ceremony. We are using the Marriott’s ballroom as our reception site, which is currently undergoing renovation and I am so anxious to see the results!! The colors that the Marriott interior designers chose are beautiful and will complement our theme.
The (b-word).
It has been very difficult to stay within budget for the flowers because there are other parts of our wedding that we allocated more money to… but we were able to make it work with the florist!
The details.
In addition to the bouquets, our grandmothers will have classic and simple corsages and all of the men will wear traditional boutonnieres.
Tuxedo shopping.
Is on our agenda for this weekend! We know the color we want and the style (dark blue slim fit). I am hoping to convince Brian that the bow-tie is in! We will soon see 🙂
Love is in the air,
Chelsey
November 17, 2016
Our venue.
We love Newport because we’ve spent many Forth of Julys here and it also reminds us of where we could have almost met a thousand times (since we both went to RWU). But we didn’t think Newport would be in our price range. We were pleasantly surprised with we found Newport Marriott. I’ll never forget Brian’s face when we walked in and he saw the venue. He looked at me like “there’s no way we can afford this!” But once we looked at our budget and their package pricing, we knew we were sold.
Our save-the-date card.
We sent out our save-the-dates card mid-October. All the books, blogs, and websites we’ve read said to wait to send them out between 6-8 months before the wedding. We designed ours on minted.com. The website was simple, inexpensive and made the process stress-free for both Brian and me. I do have some advice–make sure the font you choose is clear. After we ordered, we realized the font for our wedding website was small. My mom said she had to use a magnifying glass just to read it — OOPS!
Our wedding party.
We both chose seven attendants each for our wedding party, including Brian’s sister, my brother and brother’s girlfriend. One of Brian’s groomsmen will also be officiating our wedding! We had a joint night where we invited everyone over and asked them to be in our special day with small gifts. Brian put together a bag with a nip of their favorite liquor and a cigar for his groomsmen. I filled a box with a framed picture of myself with the bridesmaid, a small bottle of prosecco and Jordan Almonds as a joke from my favorite movie Bridesmaids. I topped it off with “Will you be my Bridesmaid” cards and a rose.
Our music.
We like the variety a DJ can bring to a wedding. Some people may cringe when they read this but we interviewed ONLY ONE DJ, Bill from Rhythm Express Disc Jockey Service Inc., and booked him, because he was personable, flexible, located in Bristol and experienced with our venue. I am happy I did! Music is very important to us and Bill was agreeable to taking our ideas and playing our preferences. My advice: don’t over think it! If the DJ is experienced and friendly, I’m sure that will reflect in his performance.
My bridesmaid dresses.
After looking online at several stores, I decided to go with David’s Bridal. I’ve also worn their dresses in several of my friends’ weddings and have liked my experience with them. There are so many options and colors, but I knew I wanted the color gray. It was just a matter of choosing the right shade and style. I liked the idea of my bridesmaids wearing a style that had some detail that was similar to my dress, i.e. neckline, back, cut, etc. I wont go into specifics about what we went with but I think all the girls fell in love with the same dress I liked. I really wanted them to be comfortable so I took them with me along with my mother, whose opinion means the most.
What’s next?
We need to pick our florist and figure out some of the smaller details like accent colors. Brian also needs to go find his tux!
Love is in the air,
Chelsey
October 14, 2016
Boston couple Chelsey Spencer & Brian William Woods will wed on April 22, 2017 in Newport!
How we met.
I grew up in Franklin, MA and Brian grew up in Lexington, MA. We “officially met” on Match.com. However, moments before the first date, I knew there was something familiar about Brian and thought he may have gone to Roger Williams University, where I went. During our first date we realized that we had crossed paths hundreds of times at parties and on campus but had never been formally introduced. Our second date was the following night and the rest is history!
His proposal.
The day after Christmas, as we were getting ready to leave our apartment for dinner, Brian hit the elevator to go up instead of down. When I questioned him, Brian explained that he did something “Christmasy” on the roof that he wanted to show me–he had decorated the entire deck with lights! Brian positioned me right in front of the Boston Skyline and got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Little did I know that Brian’s cousin, Meg Belanger, who happens to be a professional photographer, was hiding on the roof documenting the whole proposal!
Our celebration.
When we went down to the lobby where Brian’s parents and my family surprised me. I was in for another surprise when we entered our apartment complex’s common room. There, 50+ of our closets family and friends waiting with food, drinks and decorations. It was an amazing opportunity to share the moment with everyone.
Our puppy love.
We have two dogs. Chandler Bing is a Papillon and Waffles is an English bulldog.
Our photographer.
We chose Pizzuti Photography thanks to Brian’s cousin. We really wanted Meg to enjoy attending our wedding instead of being behind the camera. Rich Pizzuti happens to be one of Meg’s closest friends and colleagues. We loved the vibrancy and clarity of his photos and felt like they were timeless. We chatted with him over the phone and loved his personality. My biggest piece of advice when choosing is to ask every photographer to send you some albums of recent weddings they have done that are similar to the venue, location and season that you will be having. This helped us with our selection!!
Our engagement photos.
We chose to do our engagement shoot outside our apartment complex with the pups and then in the North End. We chose the North End because we had our first date there and we frequently go there for Italian food, drinks and cannolis!
What’s next?
Our wedding party, Save the Date cards and venue selection!
Love is in the air,
Chelsey
