Stina D'Uva
How the West Orange Chamber of Commerce can help you with planning your big day.
Each month, as I write these articles, I endeavor to relate it to the theme of the Lifestyle magazine issue. At first, I struggled with tying weddings into an article focused on our chamber. Then it hit me, as our chamber is known for connecting our members with one another for the use of one another’s products and services, I realized that this issue is a wonderful opportunity to extend the same to the readers of Lifestyle. I invite you to utilize our members for your business and personal use, especially for wedding planning, including the rehearsal dinner, honeymoon and more.
I even have a personal story to tell about wedding planning. Back in 2015, my son Paul and his girlfriend, Kristen, got engaged while living in Ohio. I was so excited to have my oldest son get married. Then, I found out I was to be the wedding planner and it would be a destination wedding in Orlando. At first, I was overwhelmed. Then as I began making my list with the happy couple, I pulled out my chamber directory and got to work.
The first thing I was tasked with was finding them a wedding venue. That wasn’t hard at all since our membership includes wonderful venues, ranging from those owned and operated by our West Orange municipalities to privately owned venues to those located at our theme park member hotels. The range of size, locations, types and price ranges are all within our membership. After finding the venue for the wedding, the caterer came next.
Once again, not a difficult thing to do since I have lots of experience eating and meeting caterers at chamber events. Then came the task of reserving hotel rooms for the out-of-town guests that would be somewhere in between my house and the wedding venue. Again, the directory helped with selecting two price range hotels. Even the bus transportation for the guests was simply a phone call to a chamber member.
Almost every single aspect of the wedding was provided by a chamber member. Even the food for the rehearsal dinner was catered by a chamber member restaurant and the after party was at a local brewery. Photographers, videographers, jewelers, limousines, flowers, gifts for the bridal party, cakes, favors, travel plans and more are all available through chamber businesses. WOCC members will help you make your special day perfect, too.
And as they say, here we go again. My son Steven proposed to Samantha. They will get married in New Jersey later this year. We’re all thrilled, but I am out of a job as wedding planner!
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