February 28, 2012
Mai and Craig live in the Bay Area, and they originally found me from a search of wedding venues in Santa Cruz. They set a Santa Cruz venue, but then couldn’t get the dates they were interested in. So, they moved the wedding to Napa Valley and I moved along with them. BUT, then Napa Valley venues couldn’t be secured right either…so they decided to move the wedding to Ithaca, New York since they both attended Cornell University and still had families there on the East Coast. Luckily, I was also included on the changes and had to opportunity to travel along with them to New York.
Since this was a July wedding in upstate New York, I will admit I was a little nervous about the weather. I’d heard stories from all my east coast friends about stifling humidity and heat. I heard about random summer thunderstorms. But, I also heard Ithaca was GORGES. Luckily, all of those things came true…but all at the right times. Ithaca was gorgeous the whole time. The thunderstorm came the day before the wedding. And the heat and humidity came the day after the wedding. Which left us with perfect weather for the wedding day!
Mai and Craig had pre-scouted some areas for us to take photos, although it seemed that every corner in Ithaca could have been a great backdrop. We saw green fields, tall trees, super urban buildings, and rolling hills. The photos on the green fields with that superb blue skies were some of my favorites from the year.
An interesting note about the reception venue…it was held at the hotel on campus at Cornell University. That’s right, there’s a hotel ON campus. It is luxurious and used as a teaching experience for students in the hotel and hospitality studies. So, the whole wedding involved service persons who are actually students in the program. They did a wonderful job on everything from the catering, bartending, decor, and meal service.









































