Dana Daily

My best friend, my gift, my husband.

I found the most perfect rehearsal dinner invitations online. We weren't going to send formal invitations, but our wedding party started asking us the particulars and this seemed like an easy solution. Our rehearsal went smoothly along until afterward when Monsignor asked us for the marriage license so he could fill it out and mail it for us. Sal and I just looked at one another. Marriage license?!?!? I could not for the life of me remember seeing it anywhere, but my sweet little 5 year old said, "Mommy, it's on the bed at the hotel." I have no idea how she knew this, but she was right. After about 15 minutes of pure panic we had the license in hand and were returning to the church to give it to Monsignor. With heart rate's returning to normal, we returned to the hotel for our rehearsal dinner. The Ale House at the Quality Inn in Franklin provided the meal, and we enjoyed our dinner in the Garrison Room. We had a buffet with chicken marsala and ham, and...

The subject of programs caused some debate. Sal was adamant that we have them, I wasn't sure I wanted to deal with the hassle. If I was going to spend the time on programs, I was going to do them right. Sal won so I created programs of which we can be proud. I ordered a design on etsy.com. Are you seeing a pattern here? The seller sent me a template and I customized it with our information. I am most proud of the last page which is a poem to honor Sal's parents, both of whom passed away years ago. It’s their little boy's big day today,   Dear Lord, please clear some room.   They need a perfect place to see   their son become a groom.   Let him feel their presence   as he waits before the aisle,   Let him notice their absence   for just a little while.   When he stops and thinks of them,   in a heartfelt way, let him know that if they could,   they would be with us today.   Dear Lord, please clear a s...

This turned out to be one of my favorite wedding-related projects, our Welcome Bags. We have quite a few out-of-town guests and we thought it would be nice to give them a few treats. In each bag was a couple of snack crackers or chips, single dose of Tylenol which we found in the travel section at Walgreens, a rack card for them to hang on their hotel room door (personalized for our wedding, of course), personalized M&Ms, and a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in the Dazzling Diamond scent. For a wedding, could there be a more perfect touch? I created the tags based on a design I saw on etsy. I thought the purple and white bow was a cute, whimsical touch. I hope our guests enjoyed receiving them as much as I enjoyed creating them.

Sal had mentioned taking dance lessons in the past, and I thought our wedding was the perfect opportunity or excuse. We didn't have enough time to choreograph an actual dance, but we did have several fabulous instructor's at Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Pittsburgh teach us the foxtrot. We will be dancing to Frank Sinatra's Fly Me to the Moon . Here we are learning a dip. The instructor, Andrew, took our picture so we could see our form. It could be better, and I think by the wedding we'll have it mastered. We hope to keep up with lessons after the wedding too.