NEWS FLASH: New “Nu Hotel” Beats the Marriott! July 16, 2008

STOP THE PRESSES!  We’ve just learned that there is a new hotel, actually named the “Nu Hotel”, right here in Brooklyn that seems to have better rates than the Marriott.  You can click here to read a local blog’s fairly favorable review of the hotel, or you can click here to go right to their website (www.nuhotelbrooklyn.com). It’s a smaller hotel and may fill up faster, so if you’re interested, probably best to book it soon.  If anyone has any luck or trouble finding deals at either hotel, please feel free to comment on this post to help others out with their lodging search.  Thanks!

While we’re at it, this just in from the same reliable source who brought us news of the Nu Hotel:

a woman I know has a great VRBO on Fort Greene place, right south of Fulton, #99 i believe. Her name is Margot Lewis. If anyone wants  it, i can vouch for having visited it and being duly impressed– very  clean and nicely furnished. In fact, she has multiple apts in the same bldg, so you may just want to tell a given group of characters about it and have them take over the whole bldg (minus Margot’s apt)

The VRBO our source describes here can be seen and booked by clicking here.

Leave Your Kids and High Heels at Home July 16, 2008

Just a practical note encouraging our guests to leave two things behind when they come to our wedding:

1)  KIDS.  Newborns can get a pass to stay with Mommy, but if your kid is bigger than a bread basket, and bipedal, it’s probably best to find a sitter (preferably an all-night sitter).  For one, we won’t have enough food for kiddies.  As well, their bedtimes will likely come right in the middle of all the fun and shuttling them home and returning to the Queens Farm will be an unthinkable odyssey.  We just don’t want parents to have to leave early and run the risk of not making it back.

2)  HIGH HEELS.  The wedding location is a working farm, need I say more?  The barn and tent will have actual “floors”, but everywhere else, it’s pastureland.  Wedges may be your best bet.

Thanks for understanding!

The Magic Bus July 15, 2008

Hopefully you’ve received your invitation to the wedding by now.  If you have yet to drop your RSVP card in the mail, please take a second to consider checking the box(es) to reserve a seat(s) on the charter bus to/from the Queens Farm Museum, or both.  The bus is there to make your journey fun and easy, and to eliminate the risk of drunk driving.  You can depart from the Queens Farm by personal car, car service, or LIRR train, but the bus keeps it oh so simple and the bride and groom will be on board!  The outgoing bus will leave from a location in Brooklyn (TBD, but nearby the Atlantic Avenue subway station at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues) and will return to Flatbush Farm, where you can join us for a little nightcap or head home by taxi or subway.  If you reserve a seat, it will cost $10 one way ($20/roundtrip), payable in cash when you get on the bus.  We need to get a head count so that we can figure out how many souls we need to transport, and whether we may need to charter an extra bus.  If, for any reason, you have already RSVP’ed without checking either bus box, and want to change your mind, just email us at tomaudia2008@gmail.com before August 1st, and we’ll get you on the list.

Lodging for Out-of-Towners July 2, 2008

For those of you making the trip to our wedding, we sincerely want to make the trip as easy on you and your wallets as possible.  That said, finding local friends with guest rooms or comfortable couches will obviously be the most affordable option.  If such bargain accommodations can’t be found, here are the best, most inexpensive, lodging options we have found after exhaustive research.

 

HOTELS:  First, hotels in New York aren’t cheap.  And, second, Brooklyn hotels are few and far between.  The best bet we’ve found so far is the Nu Hotel on Smith Street, which is cheap and in a great location.  If the Nu Hotel is booked up for any reason, there’s always The New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge if you are desperate.

 

VRBO’s:  One cheap way to stay, especially for groups, seems to be through the Vacation Rental By Owner (VRBO) website (www.vrbo.com) that shows some promising apartment rentals in Brooklyn.  Note that the most convenient neighborhoods in Brooklyn are going to be Ft. Greene, Park Slope, and Prospect Heights, and then Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Brooklyn Heights are also fairly manageable.

 

For Manhattan lodging, which is certainly doable, you are on your own and in for longer commutes.  If you do choose to stay in Manhattan, best to stay towards downtown and close to trains to Brooklyn. You can see an NYC subway map by clicking here, or you can look at a little Google map I’ve worked up that shows some of the wedding weekend locations.

 

If you have any problems finding lodging, or if you find some particularly good lodging possibility that we’ve missed, please email us at tomaudia2008@gmail.com.  Thanks and good hunting!