Month: October 2011

Carmela’s Banquet House located at 301 Washington Ave in Rensselaer, New York is a great place to hold a small to mid-range wedding. If you happen to be a bride or groom-to-be and have roughly 75-125 people on your guest list, this really believe that Carmela’s could be a super affordable option for you. At the same time, Carmela’s can provide quality in service for your special night.

LOCATION – Carmela’s location itself could be a positive when choosing your venue selection. This banquet house is out of the busy side of Albany and more layed back off the main drag of a Rensselaer residential area. This venue provides its own spacious parking lot, so that your guests have no parking issues. Logistically speaking, the location itself is only a few blocks away from Interstate Route 90, making for a smooth transition to and from the hall, overall.

FACILITIES – The hall provides a separate place for the bridal party to gather and relax after photos for the soon-to-come grand introduction.
Additionally, in the corner of the bar, there is enough space for traditional wedding decorations/activities, like a wedding photo booth, an acoustic guitarist, or ice sculpture, perhaps. In the dining room, there is a spacious dance floor and great adjustable lighting. It is also important to note that there is a nice round bar off of the main dining room, which allows for more people to enjoy the bar experience.

FOOD – Recently, I was the disc jockey for a wedding that had a nice chicken breast, or strip steak, as well as a vegetarian dish available. The food is really tasty! The garnishes that the bride and groom selected were garlic smashes potatoes, and a great mixed vegetable medley of peppers, onions and cauliflower.

STAFF – I really enjoy the staff. they are good people; very friendly and easy to work with.

Overall, I give I recommend this hall for a small to medium-size wedding. Give them a drive by. It could be worth it!

Have you ever been to a wedding where the buffet line is like three miles long and they are only serving on one side of the table. If so, then you know that it can often be a lenghthy, drawn-out deal just to get your plate of food.

With this being said, do you have a buffet planned for your wedding? If so, you also have to consider that there is always the question of when the people will be served. One fun alternative table serving activity that you can try is called, “Sing For Your Supper.”

“Singing For Your Supper” is a fun activity to entertain your guests during your wedding reception that also creates an order for dinner to be served.

As with all wedding activities, this a fun game is one that is chosen specifically only upon the bride & groom at their request. While this may not be for everyone, it is a fun icebreaker that can kill the wait associaed with a buffet line of, say 150 people.

Basically speaking, a microphone is passed from table to table when they are up, and the only way their table can move to the buffet line, is to have a volunteer break into song. In the spirit of the wedding, the song selection is usually supposed to be a chorus of a romantic song, dedicated to the bride and groom from table #6, for example.

Often times reluctant at first, wedding guests will quickly catch on to this activity, after they see how much it brings joy to the bride & groom. Once they buy into it, more times than not, the wait will become very creative and entertaining!

ALTERNATIVE GUIDELINES –
Have fun with the guidelines and make it your own. Below are just a few ideas you could go with to make this activity your own…

“LOVE” – the bride & groom may request that their guests sing any song containing the word “Love”

“DUETS” – Two people may have to sing in order for the table to move forward.

Whatever you do, have fun with it! 🙂

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Each and every time that I meet up with a bride and her groom for what they might want to hear at their wedding, Steve Jobs plays a big part. THe bride plays me a song on her iPod, I pull up the contract on my iPad and her husband-to-be breaks out some photo ideas on his Mac.

Then when the wedding happens, the majority of the music we hear is the direct product of iTunes.

Steve Jobs was the Michelangelo Buonarroti of our lifetime and we can only hope he left notes behind to continue his impactful ways on technology in the years to come.

In the last year, I have become an iPad 2 user. It really is great and I can’t live without it. I use it for calander planning, syncing information with my phone, bringing up song samples, providing photograph samples for customers and also enjoy capabilities and to surf the net. I even watched Toy Story 3 on it the other day, and enjoy a great Scrabble Game called “Words WIth Friends” from time to time. All of this in an easy compact tool that Steve Jobs dedicated his life to, in this great finale release.

Steve Jobs will always be remembered for making modern computing simple, seamless with other mediums and a very satisfying experience. The co-founder of Apple created the old school Apple I & II computers in the 70s. Later, he gave us the Macintosh and the iMac. Then people wanted better music capabilites on the computer so he added music to loop with the creation of iTunes and then the iPod. Then peopl wanted to make connections, so he added phone call capabilities with the iPhone, and then bundled it all together in the end with the Star Trek-like iPad.

Who knows where exactly things will be for apple in the future? I can only imagine Jobs has left his company behind a truck load of ideas for the years to come, and I can only hope that they will see the ideas through.

I just jumped on the apple band wagon the last couple of years, but know that people have been here a long time. Either way, many in the country agree that Steve Jobs will, in fact, be very missed.