This Snowstorm Jonas article is sponsored by The Park Savoy Estate.
Most brides dream of having a white wedding. But for Lauren Cavagnaro, the wedding of her dreams had white-out conditions — courtesy of Snowstorm Jonas. The result, nearly 30 inches of snow at The Park Savoy, A top NJ wedding venue. She’d planned to tie the knot January 23 with fiancé Tom Rodes.
“We thought there would be snow, but not as much as there was,” says Cavagnaro. And meteorologists agreed, adjusting their predictions throughout the day as snow continued to fall.
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The couple couldn’t get married on a later date, as Rodes is a New York City police officer with limited vacation time. “He’s unable to take off any other week,” says Cavagnaro. Add to that the guests who flew in from out of town (like the mother-of-the-bride, in from Denver), and it became clear that postponing the wedding wasn’t an option.
So on the big day, Cavagnaro and her guests holed up at the Westin Governor Morris in Morristown (a mere four miles from the Park Savoy’s Florham Park location), dodging weather-related curveballs: One hundred and twenty of the expected 300 guests weren’t able to attend, due to the weather. Rodes’s cousin, a recent cosmetology school graduate, stepped in to do hair when the bridal party couldn’t make it to the salon. But still, the wedding was on — until Gov. Chris Christie enacted a travel ban, barring all non-emergency vehicles from the roads.
“At that time, we knew that the shuttles were not going to make it from the hotel to the Savoy,” Julian Reyes, Park Savoy’s Operations Manager, told Best of NJ.
After the shuttles that were expected to take the guests from the Westin to the Savoy were canceled, a plan sprung into action — quickly. “My father-in-law, my brother, my uncles, they had their ‘war room,’ where they were on conference calls with the Park Savoy and the hotel,” said Cavagnaro.
The plan? Move the entire wedding from the Park Savoy to the Westin … in about three hours.
Everyone pooled their resources, Reyes explained, with staff volunteering the use of their own trucks and SUVs to transport the food, favors, flowers and more to the Westin. “I even brought the wedding cake in my truck,” he said.
By this point, Newark was reporting 21.8 inches of snow — and it was still coming down. Executive Chef George Atieh almost didn’t make it to the Westin, when his car got stuck en route to the hotel. But the staff did make it to the Westin, where they loaded everything in by hand, “wearing my suit and my snowboots,” Reyes recounted. And everything includes all the food they could take — from eggplant rollatini and filet mignon to a pasta station and full raw bar.
The staff coordinated with Susan Richardson, Operations Manager from the Westin, and in three hours, Cavagnaro was walking down the aisle.
“It was such a surreal feeling. I was telling my friends, I feel like this is a dream or it could be in a movie. It felt like it wasn’t real,” said Cavagnaro. “They made me have a perfect wedding, as if I was having it at the Park Savoy, and I’m very grateful for that.”
The snowed-in guests celebrated into the night, and the Park Savoy’s staff stayed over at the Westin due to concerns about the roads after Snowstorm Jonas.
“The Park Savoy couldn’t have been more great,” said Cavagnaro, who went on to praise both the staff and the Westin’s Richardson for their work. “They were so accommodating. They did the best that they could do to get whatever they can to the hotel. Pretty much, my wedding was made in about two hours at the Westin.”
“Park Savoy’s whole mentality is to always make sure that the bride and groom are totally happy, and we go out of our way to make them happy,” said The Park Savoy’s co-owner Joe Maurillo. “We’re different. We move mountains.”
Or in this case, a 300-person wedding.
And as for the happy couple, they’re headed to Napa Valley in a few months for their honeymoon — where they’re sure to enjoy some well-deserved sunshine — and Cavagnaro offers this advice for brides-to-be:
“If I could tell anybody who is getting married, all you need is good people and a deejay, and have a good time. Because nothing else really matters.”
Main (Hero) Image Courtesy Lauren Cavagnaro
