MichaelErb.net

When I think of a venue that exudes a classy atmosphere, I oftentimes think of the Statler Hotel Ballroom on the Cornell Campus. It’s a very nice room with an elegance all it’s own. With the special touches that Michael and Stephanie added, it made the room look even more spectacular. One notable addition was the dancefloor that had been expanded in size to accommodate a very dance oriented group of guests. I think this was one of the largest dancefloors I have seen at a wedding and certainly at the Statler.

Michael and Stephanie were a wonderful couple to work with. I met them during our introduction meeting last year at the Six Mile Creek Vineyard (the site of my wedding in 2003). Here’s a photo I snapped of the happily engaged couple.

We had numerous emails back and forth over the months leading up to the wedding and we both felt comfortable with the itinerary which included some special details. One such detail was the timing of the beginning of the Bride and Groom’s first dance. The song they danced to is Ben E King’s, “Stand By Me” and Mike and Stephanie had a specially choreographed dance to go along with the song. What a wonderful job they did on the dancefloor!

The Statler did a wonderful job as usual and it is always a pleasure to work with Nicole and her staff.

It was a great evening which everyone enjoyed and I just have to share the email that I received from Mike and Stephanie a couple days ago in which they expressed their gratitude…

Hi Michael,

Thank you so much for helping to make our reception so wonderful!  We got tons of compliments on how great our DJ was (played good music at a good volume, etc.), and we totally agree!  We also really liked your announcing… you have a great voice!  So thank you for all your work and for helping to make our evening so great.  It was a pleasure working with you.

Thanks again and take care,

Stephanie and Mike

Wow! Thank you two for allowing me to play a part on your wedding day. Hope your honeymoon in Brazil is fantastic.

Enjoy this special gallery of images from Mike and Stephanie’s wedding.

Ginny Lee Cafe at the Wagner Vineyards was the site for this amazing wedding of Daniel and Cindy. The weather was just perfect for the outside ceremony that took place right in front of the vineyards under sunny skies. It was quite warm but a nice breeze off Seneca Lake kept things from getting unbearably hot. An amazing musical trio (guitar, keyboard and violin/vocalist) provided music for the seating of the guests and the processional/recessional.

The meal and dancing took place in the Ginny Lee Cafe, next to the winery. This was a energetic group of wedding guests which made my job very enjoyable. It didn’t take long before the dance floor was packed with dancers.

Ginny Lee Cafe is such a beautiful site for a wedding and one of the reasons is it’s location on the East side of the Lake. It is the perfect setting for dramatic sunsets and Cindy and Daniel were able to take full advantage of that for some of their formal photographs.

Enjoy browsing the rest of the photos that I’ve posted and a big thanks to both families for inviting me to be part of this festive occasion.

I just saw the movie Wall-E with two of my nephews and my wife. I’ve honestly got to say that I have never seen an animated movie that worked so well on so many different levels.

The movie has an important message that is gotten across in a delightful and entertaining manner. The premise of the movie is that Earth has been “temporarily” abandoned by its inhabitants because of pollution and disregard for its resources. Earth has gotten so bad that it will no longer sustain life. Wall-E is a robot working on the abandoned Earth. His job is to collect trash, compact it and stack it. The ultimate goal is to restore the Earth to a state that will once again support life. His best buddy is a cockroach. The animation was stunning. The characters became so real and the movie became so engrossing that the “animation” became transparant in that it was as if I was watching “real live characters”. The screenplay ( I guess you still call it that even for animation) was excellent. Overall I’d have to rate this as one of the more enjoyable movies I’ve ever seen…the message was great, the movie was emotionally touching, the animation was spectacular and I was sad when it finally ended. I was so wrapped up in the movie that I just wanted it to go on and on.

The movie has numerous nods to other sci-fi movies, which are fun to pick out. Allusions to “Close Encounters”, “Star Trek”, “Star Wars” and others. Plus there are some interesting sound effects that will amuse the careful listener…such as an Apple Computer Start-up Chime.

Wall-E has a personality trait that is funny…he likes to collect items of interest before collecting and compacting the trash. He carefully places his collectables on a series of movable trays and it’s a riot to see what he’s collected.

To be honest, I had tears streaming down my face on more than one occasion during the movie. It was an animated movie for goodness sake! What’s that all about? Well, it’s about a movie that was so well crafted and seemed so real that it hit all the emotional buttons that a movie with real live actors would hit. It’s truly a family movie but has enough adult content to keep the adults as engaged as the kids. Highly recommended.

And do you -really- think that Wall-E looks “exactly” like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit?

I had a fun day yesterday. A friend of mine is hosting a Rotary Exchange Student from Spain and the young man had a desire to visit New York City. So we hopped in the car and 4.5 hours later were in Mid-town Manhattan. It was hot and humid in the big apple, but that did not deter us from visiting some of the sights… NBA Store, Times Square, Trump Tower, Battery Park, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Hard Rock Cafe, Stage Deli, Apple Store and of course the beautiful George Washington Bridge.

One unexpected surprise was the viewing of the art project. I had read about this and seen other photos of the project, but had “forgotten” about it until we were at Battery Park and noticed one of the waterfalls. What a thrill to see these. There are actually 4 of these waterfalls and we were lucky enough to see 3 out of the 4. Here are the photos of the waterfalls…
New York City Waterfalls

This was the last wedding scheduled in June 2008 for me and it will be remembered as a beautiful wedding. The location for Brian and Emily’s wedding was the Cornell Plantations. This place is like stepping into the Garden of Eden… it is spectacular in it’s splendor.
Brian and Emily had there ceremony overlooking one of the ponds within the Plantations. It was a gorgeous setting.

After the ceremony, the Bridal Party and Guests made their way, a short distance, to an enormous tent for the Reception. The Bride and Groom had their first dance to the song “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison. The Toast was given by Groom’s brother, Adam.

It was a bit steamy but that didn’t stop anyone from having a fabulous time. Enjoy a few more images of the wedding and I’d like to thank Emily and David for making me a part of their incredible wedding day!

This was one of my Sunday weddings this year, of which I have a few. I had my gear packed and ready to go Saturday night so Sunday morning was going to be a relaxed affair… or so I thought. About 9:30am I received a phone call from the father of the bride who was very concerned about the ceremony and whether or not sound amplification would be necessary and if so, what could be done at this late hour since the ceremony was only 5 hours away. I gave the situation a thorough going over in my head and concluded that with the size of the guest list (about 88) that there wasn’t really any need for additional amplification since the depth of the rows for guest seating would only be about four or five rows, given 10 seat rows and considering that there would be seating on the left and right sides of the center aisle. Crisis averted, father and mother of the bride relieved and my anxiety level was returned to normal.

What happened next is that I made the BIG mistake of turning on the TV. The weatherman was making a lengthy statement about how the conditions of the atmosphere were such that severe thunderstorms with damaging winds accompanied by hail were a very likely possibility. This was not what I was hoping to hear moments before leaving for the ceremony and reception being held outside and in a tent respectively. Some crises you can take care of while others are totally out of your control. I just had to hop in the car, leave, and let the weather do whatever it was going to do.

About 8 miles north from Sheldrake Point Vineyard, big fat raindrops began to hit my windshield thus seemingly affirming the weatherman’s dire prediction. I was greatly relieved when a few miles further along the way, the drops stopped and no further rain ensued. Crisis number two eliminated.

What followed was a beautiful ceremony on the grassy knoll overlooking Cayuga Lake and here are a few of the photos from that moment.

After the ceremony, the reception began and the weather continued to cooperate much to everyone’s relief. The bride and groom had one of most unique and fun party favors I’ve ever seen. It was an entire table filled with different types of candy, all in old style glass jars. There was a nice sign with a poem introducing the concept, along with cute little bags and silver twist ties to scoop the assorted candies into. Really cool concept and fun to boot!

Andrea and Rafael had an amazingly choreographed first dance to “Sh-Boom” by the Crew Cuts. This was followed by a couple great toasts by the Best Man and Maid of Honor and followed by a cute poem read by the Mother of the Bride. All of this leading up to amazing meal. Following the meal was another nice dance that Andrea had with her father.

My thanks to the Sharkness family for making me feel so welcome at this special event. I’ve worked for them numerous times over the years. Being able to DJ this wedding was the icing on the cake. Speaking of cake, here it is…

Here are a few more photos of Andrea and Rafael’s wedding day…

Sheldrake Point Vineyard was the location for both the ceremony and wedding reception for David and Adriana.

I’ve known David, the groom, for many years going back to when I lived in Ithaca. We lost track of each other when I moved to Syracuse (after getting married myself) almost 5 years ago. Several weeks ago, David reconsidered having someone else DJ the reception and called me, which was a wonderful surprise. We spent some time catching up with each other and began making plans for the wedding reception.

It’s a bit funny how you can plan and plan and plan for a wedding reception, carefully plotting out a perfect timeline…. revise it, adjust it, move it and then see the whole thing fall apart the day of the wedding due to unforeseen circumstances. That’s pretty much what happened. David had sent me several timeline changes as we approached the wedding day and with the latest, most up to the minute timeline in my hand, I hopped in my car and headed off to Sheldrake Point.

The weather was hot and humid with the forecast calling for thundershowers. The ceremony was to be outside on the lawns of Sheldrake Point Vineyard which overlook Cayuga Lake. It’s quite beautiful. As guests were being seated, the clouds fulfilled their mission of bringing rain, but only a little bit of rain, just enough to cause everyone to begin wondering if it was going to get worse. A decision was made to relocate the ceremony to the reception tent. Even as the guests were making their way from the lawn to the tent the rain sprinkle was diminishing. And of course, the rain eventually stopped and it didn’t rain a drop more after the move. But this wasn’t about the weather, it was about David and Adriana and in the end it was a minor inconvenience that didn’t impact the wonderful ceremony that took place in any way whatsoever, except to alter the meticulously planned timeline.

Just a side note to other prospective brides and grooms… when planning your timeline, don’t agonize over milli-second perfection of timing when the various events will occur as there will inevitably be instances where events will be delayed by a few minutes here and there. Rest assured that the professionals you have hired will be able to handle such timing adjustments with aplomb.

After the excellent meal, dancing ensued and a fine time was had by all.

Thank you David and Adriana for allowing me to be a part of your amazing wedding. Enjoy some of the photos that I took during the course of the day…

I was excited to be in my first bike race this morning. Officially called the Race4Hope, it was the second annual race to benefit cancer research and is a held in memoriam for Dick Shaffer.

Race for Hope

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

It was a beautiful day for the race; mostly clear skies and just a slight breeze, temperature probably in the mid-50’s. I’m not sure how many participants there were just yet as I have not received the official race results, but I estimate there were in excess of 125 riders. I’ll update my blog with the exact numbers once the results are released.

I was pretty happy with my ride… my time was 1:19:57 for the 23.42mi distance. That translates to an Average Speed of 17.6mph, and a 3:24/mi pace. I even had a small cheering section at the finish line…Linda was there to document the finish and here are the photos she took.

Please…no comments about my big fat butt. Thanks

This year we started seeing Baltimore Orioles in our backyard. It’s the first time we’ve seen them. They are beautifully colored with a very distinctive song. We soon learned that Orioles like to visit the hummingbird feeder to partake of the same sugar water that Hummingbirds drink. So I bought a feeder that is specifically for Baltimore Orioles. It looks similar to a Hummingbird feeder but is a bit different in how the sugar water is “presented” to the bird. Well, the Oriole just doesn’t get it yet and continues to feed on the Hummingbird feeder. I guess I don’t really care as long as the Orioles stick around. They are so cool.


As for our Hummingbirds, they are totally amazing. It is somewhat of a miracle to me that they return every year on the same day, plus or minus a day or two. Every year! This year was no exception. We try to remember to have the hummingbird feeder outside a week or so before they are “scheduled” to return. This year we put the feeder out on May 2 and within 5 minutes there was a Hummingbird feeding at it. As if he was waiting for us…dumb humans, I’m hungry. What took you so long!

The air that is. My bike ride today was a long one. I rode from my house to Skaneateles, around the Lake and back home. From Skaneateles to almost Borodino, the air was just sweet as could be because of all the Lilacs and other assorted blossoms and flowers (lots of tulips). Another perfect day of weather: the sky was blue and cloudless and the temp was just right. There was a persistent breeze that I had to head into for about a quarter of the ride, but all was good. This is one of my favorite “long” rides. For me, any ride over 30 miles is a long ride so by that standard, maybe this is better catagorized as a really long ride clocking in at just a hair over 60 miles.

Skaneateles Lake loop

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com