Unveiled - A Cinderella Story
{Royal Treatment} Cindy Byno of Northwoods Events writes happy endings for Adirondack weddings by getting creative, getting organized, and making it work.
Making every bride feel like Cinderella is Cindy Byno’s specialty, but she rarely gets the opportunity to be as literal a fairy godmother as she was for Robyn Rezac and Hanif Kassam.
Byno fell in love with the couple as soon as she heard about Hanif’s proposal: He’d secretly borrowed one of Robyn’s shoes from her closet and had a glass copy made of it — a process that took seven months. The wait was worth it, though, when he was able to slip the glass shoe on Robyn’s foot after a romantic dinner and ask her to be his Cinderella bride. Byno’s no stranger to romantic proposals after 20 years in the wedding business, but she had tears in her eyes reading about Hanif’s proposal.
From that moment, Byno was determined to give Robyn and Hanif the Cinderella wedding of their dreams — a task that challenged Byno’s creativity at first, since the couple also wanted a wedding with true Adirondack style. “I first thought twigs and Cinderella might be hard to pull off, but we made it work,” Byno says.
The first step was finding a perfect location. The couple came to Lake Placid knowing that they wanted a lakeside wedding, but Byno’s first-choice site wasn’t available, so she scouted several locations for them to check out during the summer of 2008. Robyn and Hanif wanted a natural feeling and lots of open space for their wedding celebration, and the John Brown Historic Site impressed them immediately as the right spot. Because the site is open to the public in the summer, Byno had to juggle the logistics to make the ceremony location work.
Then Byno tracked down a pumpkin carriage Robyn had spotted in New York. That carriage became the central element that linked the Cinderella romance to Lake Placid’s natural environment. The pumpkin-shaped carriage brought Robyn and her bridesmaids over a picturesque bridge and through a sun-dappled field to the ceremony site. “It was quite a sight,” says Byno, who had to do some fancy coordination to ensure that the ceremony plan adhered to the carriage company’s strict guidelines.
Byno mixed twigs with floral arrangements and set out birch candles and baskets on the reception tables to give Robyn and Hanif’s wedding the rustic charm they wanted. She also helped Hanif’s family find a way to incorporate their traditional wedding customs into the ceremony, by bringing in special desserts and tea for the reception. Robyn and Hanif chose Canadian entertainers for their wedding, so Byno helped sort out the border issues involved in getting them to Lake Placid to perform at the wedding.
Chalk up another happy ending to Cindy Byno, of Northwoods Events.
*CINDY’S MOTTO: “Nothing is impossible with the right mindset and the right vendors. Hire people you trust, describe your vision, and let the professionals get to work creating it for you".
*CINDY'S TIPS
1) Splurge on a wedding planner. It might seem like an extravagance, but a good wedding planner can save you ten times over in terms of your overall budget and peace of mind. Having someone in your corner whom you trust and who knows the market is invaluable.
2) Trust your professionals. Planning a wedding is like building a house: you bring your vision, and the architects bring it to life. It’s important for the couple to bond with the wedding professionals they have chosen and trust them to give them what they want.
