Right after Hurricane Sandy, we told you about a Morristown couple facing a Herculean challenge: Re-booting a wedding that had come crashing down with the storm.
Their church, banquet hall and hotel for out-of-town guests all were shut down by Sandy.
They had three days to re-book everything.
The bride, Lisa Short DeLiso, will take it from here. After surviving Sandy, we’re sure Lisa and Andrew will live happily ever after!
FROM LISA:
As of Thursday night [before the Saturday wedding on Nov. 3] everything was back on at the church in Perth
Amboy and guests began flying in.
We wound up hosting two groomsmen and one of their dates in our cold, dark condo. We were also running around looking for a place to have our rehearsal dinner since as of Thursday, the Perth Amboy police told us that there was a 6 pm curfew, so we needed to be out of town by then.
Luckily, we stopped in Nagano on Washington Street and asked them if they would be able to host a rehearsal dinner for 22 people in about 24 hours. They stepped up to the challenge and even provided us with a private room. Everyone enjoyed the dinner very much.
Our reception hall was working with the Hyatt in Morristown to move our reception there. On Thursday night/Friday morning we began notifying guests of the venue change.
On Friday morning, as soon as all of the details were finalized and the last of the guests were notified of the change in location, power came back on at our original reception location. We then had to re-notify everyone of the location change once again, but at least at this point we had a church and a reception location finalized.
As for the hotel, power came on sometime on Friday afternoon, and the hotel began calling guests who had reservations to let them know that they would be open on Saturday night, but there would be no shuttle to the wedding since there was a gas shortage.
Basically, for Friday night, we had people staying in our condo without power, my parents’ house, other relatives’ houses, friends’ houses in the area, and hotels at far away as Langhorne, PA. Several relatives also drove back and forth two hours each way from South Jersey, up for the rehearsal and then again the next morning for the wedding.
So after what felt like planning and re-planning our wedding 3-4 times, everything wound up basically as planned. Almost all of our guests were able to make it in spite of the storm, and the majority of guests even made the trek to Perth Amboy and Livingston, NJ, despite the gas shortage.
After the hectic week, Andrew and I were very happy to spend a week relaxing in St. Lucia…..it was exactly what we needed.
