Initial Transportation Notes

I'm sure we'll have much more on this subject in the coming months, but we wanted to tell you about a couple things we've been working on, transportation-wise.

1. We are planning on providing a shuttle for everyone to travel from the hotels to the wedding site and back at the end of the night, so that people who so choose will not have to worry about driving. We're looking at a single coach bus that will make a few stops: one will definitely be at the Blue Bay Inn and we'll figure out the others as people book rooms at the hotels. Looping past all of the hotels would take a long time, so we're going to try to strategically choose the stops to serve as many people as possible while making the loop as short as possible. The shuttle will probably make two trips both for the pick-up and drop-off, so anyone can choose an early or late arrival/departure. Look for information about this on the RSVP card (when we send out the invitations).

2. For all of you who are based in New York City, you could think about taking the Seastreak ferry, which has a couple stops very close to the wedding site (we'll try to time a shuttle bus stop at the ferry terminal to bring you the rest of the way to the wedding). The problem is that it does not provide late-night return trips, so we're looking at the possibility of hiring a boat to ferry you all home at the end of the night - thus eliminating a hotel stay for you after the wedding. It would be a single trip at the end of the evening and would make a single stop somewhere in Manhattan (hopefully near a subway). I'm told the trip takes 30-45 minutes. We currently have no idea how much this would cost, so it may be prohibitively expensive, but we're hoping to find out more details soon. When we do have more information, we'll be better able to sketch out a plan for those who are interested.

Accommodation Update

It's now only 3.5 months until the wedding, so we hope all of you have already made reservations or are planning on making them soon. Remember that August is a very busy time of year on the Jersey Shore and you may have trouble finding accommodations if you wait too long. We've blocked off rooms at various hotels (see our previous post) to ensure rooms for you all, but remember that those rooms will go back to the general public 30-60 days before the wedding - make sure you take them before the end of June.

We described most of the accommodation options in our first post on this subject, so use that as a more detailed reference. Most of the rooms at the Blue Bay Inn are already taken, so you should move quickly if you'd like to stay there. As for the Holiday Inn, only yesterday did I realize that they didn't have our block in their records. Oops. That problem has now been fixed (please email me if you call them and they still don't know what you're talking about when you mention the Isani-Martin Wedding), and I'm sorry to anyone who called them previously. In addition to the places we've already mentioned, we forgot to tell you about the Molly Pitcher Inn:

Molly Pitcher Inn
88 Riverside Avenue, Red Bank, NJ
800.221.1372
http://www.mollypitcher-oysterpoint.com/mollypitcher/
This is a very nice hotel on the banks of the Navesink River - we even considered this as a site for the wedding. Though they don't offer room blocks or reduced rates for weddings not hosted in their hotel, the prices seem totally reasonable for the area ($180-$200 per night) and there is no two-night minimum. Red Bank has one of those cute downtown areas that are great for a leisurely stroll in a summer afternoon, and it's walking distance from the hotel. The Molly Pitcher Inn is slightly inland (though not as far as the Best Western in Hazlet); it would take maybe a 15 minute drive to get to the ocean, with another 10 minutes to get to Sandy Hook. NO 2-night minimum.

Directions to the wedding site.
Directions to the rehearsal dinner.
Directions to the brunch.