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A Wild Wedding Weekend at Alexander Hamilton House

Innkeeper Barbara Notarius shares this hilarious story about one wedding weekend at the romantic Victorian inn, Alexander Hamilton House in Croton-on-Hudson. Rest assured, it has a happy ending!

I own an eight guest-room B&B in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. We get lots of calls from brides planning their weddings and although we only do weddings here for very small groups or elopements, we do house a lot of bridal groups for Westchester weddings being celebrated in nearby restaurants and catering halls. These weekends are always very exciting. By the end, I am often ready to collapse. I would like to share with you a little story of one such classic weekend.

The Gazebo at the Inn (not the couple in this story!)

A very wealthy divorced couple was hosting a wedding for their daughter. The ceremony was to be at the Union Church, with the ($250 a plate) reception in Tarrytown. The bride's mother’s family stayed here.

The day they arrived, we heard yelling and screaming on the back porch and opened the door to find the mother of the bride having a cat fight with her own mother. It seems that grandmother hadn't agreed with room assignments and didn't want to share a room with the seventeen-year-old cousins to the bride. When she couldn't get her daughter to budge on this, she turned to me and said, "This is your house, and you can fix this." I replied, "Short of creating an extra room in the next 30 seconds, there’s really nothing I can do, but perhaps tea and home baked cookies would make the situation look brighter." It did.

Then, the mother of the bride said, "Remember the brunch for the rest of the bridal party that we talked about on the phone? They'll all be here at 9:30 tomorrow morning to eat before we head for the church to rehearse the ceremony.” Okay, so we prepared an impromptu brunch for 20 extra guests.

In the morning as they were walking out the door to rehearse the big moment, the mother of the bride said, "The only thing that may happen in our absence is that the bridal bouquets may be delivered. Don't worry; they're all paid for." Indeed, a few minutes after they left, the doorbell rang and it was the floral designer. He wanted to know what to do with the flowers.

It was 100 degrees outside, but we had air conditioning on and it was pleasant indoors, so I told him to just lay the flowers on the kitchen counter. He laughed and said he had "$10,000 worth of Hawaiian orchid bouquets and they all need to be refrigerated." Mind you, these arrangements were huge, at least waist high. We had food in all our refrigerators with not a spare inch of space for a nosegay. So we turned the 27,000 BTU air conditioner in our innkeeper’s apartment up to chill and laid Hawaiian orchid bouquets from one end to the other.

The Sun Porch at the Inn

As the wedding group returned from the rehearsal, the hair and makeup people arrived. They wanted to get everyone done up in the sun porch because the light is perfect there, but also wanted full air conditioning, open curtains with sun streaming in, and six blow dryers running simultaneously. The fuses start to blow and I began running up and down to the basement to change them, meanwhile trying to convince the hair people that we were not a salon. That's when the photographer arrived.

I told him that if he needed to move any of the furniture in the living room, he would have to allow me to help him as all pieces are antiques and I wanted my place intact after this wedding party was long gone. He agreed, but by the time I returned from my next trip to the basement, he had moved half the furniture in the living room. Now I was angry. No more Ms Nice Gal! I told him that "perhaps you didn’t understand, but if you move one more thing, you will be taking photos in the street."

Next thing I knew, it was like a zoo, with people being draped all over the grand staircase for the group photo, children chasing the dog, everyone talking at once and the phone ringing. It was the Croton Police calling; they wanted to know if we needed assistance. We probably did, but how would they know? Is it possible that they've bugged the place? No. There were six limos lined up in front of the house and they wondered, "perhaps you need traffic control?" I said, "No, we've got everything covered."

I grabbed the list of who goes in which car and started barking out commands like Patton run amuck. In moments, the place had emptied out except for the bride and her mother. Mom was panicked that the Bentley for the bride had not shown up, but it eventually appeared and she left in the last limo.

The Bentley driver, complete with heavy Brooklyn accent, took one look at the bride who had started to sob uncontrollably and said, "Tip your head back, honey, or you'll run your makeup." He grabbed hold of the veil with one hand and the train with the other. Meantime, the bride between sobs said, "I hate my hair; I hate my makeup, and I'm gonna be late!" With this, her sobbing caused her form-fitting strapless gown to split right down the zipper. Now she was really hysterical. I sewed her back into the dress, tried to get her to stop crying, explained that the show wouldn’t start with out her, and pushed her out the door to the waiting Bentley.

Bridal Suite Breakfast Table at the Inn

Of course, the wedding was a great success.

On Sunday, the mother of the bride stopped by with a very generous tip. She said, "Everything went so smoothly here, all thanks to you." She told me that at the big hotel where everyone else was staying, she had left a bottle of Don Peringinon and a box of Godiva chocolates for each guest - but the hotel had given them to some other wedding group!

I try to keep a straight face when brides and their moms taking the tour of our inn, The Alexander Hamilton House, ask for a discount if they take "all the rooms." They don’t have any idea how much work wedding groups can be. We know we have done a good job when they leave thinking how smoothly everything went.

By Barbara Notarius, Innkeeper, Alexander Hamilton House
Photos in this article courtesy of Alexander Hamilton House

Barbara Notarius owns and operates the Alexander Hamilton House in Croton-on-Hudson with her husband Steven Lefton and daughter Cydney O’Callaghan. Cydney was trained at the Culinary Institute of America and provides the food for all bridal showers and small parties at the inn. You can see the inn at www.alexanderhamiltonhouse.com.