A Classic September Wedding at Belle Voir Manor

Nicole Cordisco brings Shelbi and Tyler’s classic and stunning Real Wedding at Belle Voir Manor. Enjoy!

1. How did you and your partner meet?

I met Tyler freshman year through a mutual acquaintance at Penn State. We crossed paths off and on throughout the next few years. During syllabus week senior year, we bumped into each other one night at The Saloon (cheers to the Monkey Boy), and Tyler asked if me and my friends wanted to dance with him and his friends. I took the gesture as flirting and agreed. After a while he offered to buy me a drink and at the end of the night, he went home with my number.

2. How did Tyler propose?

Tyler proposed to me on a weirdly warm, December Sunday during the pandemic. He suggested we go for a picnic in our favorite nearby park, Penn treaty. To make sure I looked cute for the proposal pictures (aka not be in sweatpants), he also slyly suggested we “dress up” and take a photo for a Christmas card which I thought was a great idea. After eating our Primo hoagies, he setup his phone to take our “Christmas picture” on a timer and popped the question. Then he surprised me again with some of our friends and family at the COVID friendly, International Bar in Fishtown, to celebrate with us.

3. What was your experience in planning your wedding?

Thankfully I am a very type A, organized person so I thought planning our wedding was a fun project overall (but also a little stressful). I kept everything together in a spreadsheet like keeping track of vendor payments, our budget, to-do lists, etc. Since we picked a wedding date 19 months out from when we got engaged, we took our time with interviewing and selecting our vendors, and checking things off our lists. The Knot was my main resource, as well as friends that had already gotten married and offered advice and tips. By the grace of God (or my extreme planning), we didn’t have any major hiccups throughout our planning process and we were very happy with how our day came together.

4. Tell us about your venue.

We had both our ceremony and reception at Belle Voir Manor at the Pen Ryn Estate in Bensalem, PA. We basically wanted a venue that had the beautiful grounds for photos, onsite location for ceremony, and a giant space to hold the party for the reception. Pen Ryn checked all of those boxes for us, and again we had a great wedding day.

5. What was the best memory or moment from your wedding day?

It’s really hard to choose just one, so I’m going to list two. One of our favorite memories from our wedding day was when our DJ played “Zombie Nation” and all of our guests joined in on the “WE ARE” chant. Since we met at Penn State, we knew we wanted to incorporate something PSU related into our day and were so happy when everyone also had fun chanting “WE ARE PENN STATE”. And yes I know, Penn State is a cult and we drank the kool-aid. Another one of my favorite memories was during my first look with Tyler. I was very anxious the entire day leading up until that moment but once we were together finally, I felt completely at ease and was excited from then on.

6. What advice can you give to couples planning a wedding?

Take it one step at a time! Wedding planning can be very stressful and overwhelming, but tackling tasks one at a time makes it more manageable. Keep in mind, this day is about you and your partner. Please do not compromise what the 2 of you want because of anyone else in your lives trying to influence your planning based on their own agenda. Do what makes you both happy! When it comes to the wedding day, things can go wrong that are out of your control, remember to take a deep breath and lean on your friends/family members who are there to help you and make sure your day goes as smoothly as possible. Take a mental step back throughout the day and really soak it all in, it does go by in a flash. Also, having a partner that constantly reminds you that nobody really cares about the color of the linens is helpful.

7. What was your experience like working with your vendors?

We were very pleased with all the vendors we hired for our wedding day. Like I mentioned earlier, we were able to take our time with selecting each one and everyone truly went above and beyond for us. We hired Ben Hickey to officiate our wedding because we didn’t want a friend or family member to be stressed out if we asked them to do it. Our ceremony was everything we hoped it would be. He had people laughing and crying, and it was short and sweet. Several of our guests came up to us afterwards asking how we found him (thank you Facebook bridal groups). Our florist, Hadassah (Thistle Do Florist Co), was so easy to work with, and very responsive whenever I emailed her to change something. I know flowers can get expensive very quickly, but I thought her pricing was super reasonable. My makeup artist, Jen Damminger, was also amazing. She made me look like a princess on my wedding day, and I cannot thank her enough. She was very efficient at getting everyone done on time. I was worried at first about only hiring one makeup artist, but she breezed through all 9 of us (but did not rush anyone). We were also super happy with our photography team, Nicole Cordisco, Rachel and Bill. She made sure we kept on schedule throughout the day, she even helped reglue one of my eyelashes back on right before my first look with my dad! And of course, our pictures came out beautifully.