New York City Trip – Part 2

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If you haven’t checked out my first re-cap post from my birthday trip to New York, you can find all of the details of the first day here. So, after a much needed night’s sleep, we started our Saturday morning by grabbing some breakfast at a diner on the Upper East Side. We had planned to try and go to Alice’s Tea Cup, but when we arrived, the wait was too long for our grumbling stomachs, so we found a cute little place around the corner to grab some omelets. After breakfast, we decided to walk back towards Time Square via Madison Ave and Fifth Ave. Since the original site of FAO Schwarz is closing in just a few, short days, we decided to stop in one last time. I felt like a little kid again…wanting all of the stuffed animals and Playmobil sets. I even found my dream car…. haha…

     Shirt: Anthropologie – last year (want, want) | Jeans: Kut from the Kloth | Watch: Marc by Marc Jacobs |Shoes (not pictured): New Balance

After re-living my childhood, we continued our journey down Fifth Ave and made our way to Grand Central Station. My Mom had never been there before, so we went to look at the iconic landmark. I still love to see the painting on the ceiling – the blue and gold…it never gets old. 😛 As we were walking back towards the hotel, we stopped in the New York Public Library. Unfortunately, the reading room was closed, but we did enjoy sitting in Bryant Park and enjoying the absolutely gorgeous weather. Later that evening, we went to dinner and I got one of my favorite margaritas of all time (I know, a margarita outside of Texas….) – a Green Tea margarita. The green tea helped to cut the harshness of the tequila – delicious….can I go back to NYC to have another? But seriously….after our lovely dinner, we headed to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch (check out this post for all of the details…)

Dress: Anthropologie | Bracelet: gift (lust, must) | Ring: David Yurman

So, now onto my favorite day of the trip (every other day was great, but this Sunday was FANTASTIC!!!) We woke up in the morning and grabbed some Starbucks from the hotel before heading to mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I was really hoping the Cardinal Dolan would be saying mass, but he must have been on vacation too… 😀

On our way over to mass from the hotel, we passed by Radio City Music Hall and saw all of the preparations for the TONY Awards occurring. After mass, I wanted to stop by again (it was only 2 blocks away) and take some photos of the preparation and try and get a feel for what was going to be occurring later that evening. Lucky enough, they had just finished setting up the red carpet and they had extra strips of carpet, which I am assuming were excess width and length that they hadn’t anticipated for. And it was so sweet, the men who were setting up the carpet were cutting hearts out of the scraps and giving it to the spectators. I was fortunate to get a piece of the carpet and I am going to frame it to remember my trip!!

Top and Skirt: Eloquii | Purse: Rebecca Minkoff | Necklace: J. Crew (similar)

Later in the afternoon, we had birthday tea at the Plaza Hotel. It is kind of a tradition of my mom and I. Over the past few years, we have had tea at some of the most iconic places and I love spending the time relaxing and catching up….and this time was no different. It was such a great tea – the food was great, the tea was delicious, but the company was by far the best part of it!! While we were there, about eight little girls came in for Eloise tea for one of the girl’s birthdays. They were so excited….it was adorable!! Being at the Plaza and having tea was one of the most memorable parts of the trip!!!

After we stuff ourselves, we quickly hiked it back to the hotel to get ready to go to the TONY Awards….yep, that’s right….for my birthday, I got to check off one of my top items on my bucket list!! The theater has been a passion of mine ever since my parents gave me a VHS version of CATS in elementary school….ever since then, I have seen numerous shows and love spending my weekend afternoons at the theater!! I had the opportunity to go see a few shows when I was in NYC for work back in March, but nothing compares to how excited I was to see some of my favorite stars all in one place celebrating the joy of the theater!!

We made it to Radio City Music Hall almost three hours prior to the live show starting. I loved being able to take lots of pictures and being surrounded by other theater-loving individuals! We grabbed drinks to celebrate the night – I got a whisky/ginger…you can take the girl out of the south… I stood in the lobby in awe of where we were and all of the people I was surrounded by. We didn’t see any of the large Broadway stars, but we rubbed elbows with some of the chorus members, producers, directors and some writers. Little did we know, that they started filming some of the awards that were shown when they re-enter from commercials an hour before the live show – those were a lot of fun because the winners had more time to give their speeches and it seemed more relaxed! What an experience though….seeing the live performances and getting to see what happens while the show is “on commercial break” was SO AMAZING!!  Kristin Chenoweth and Alan Cummings hosted the TONYs and I thought they did a fantastic job! They were hilarious without being offensive and I loved all of their costumes and little performances. And how great was Josh Groban and the choir of the ensemble behind him during the in memoriam portion of the show – so magical!! It is hard to put in to words how much I enjoyed that night – it truly is one of the experiences that I will never forget!!

For the show, we had to be in black-tie attire. I love dresses, but don’t really own anything that would foot the bill, so I used Rent the Runway to snag a dress…I found this beautiful magenta, one-shoulder dress from Donna Morgan. My personal requirements for finding a TONY dress included:  1) it had to be comfortable to sit in for a long time, 2) it had to be colorful – I wanted something bold for the TONYs and 3) it needed to be fuss-free – I love strapless gowns, but hate pulling them up all the time, so I wanted something that I could just let be and enjoy my night! This dress was perfect from the moment I pulled it out of the RTR box. The color was fantastic and it fit like a glove! And, the condition of the dress was superb!! I have been subscribing to the Rent the Runway Unlimited for a couple of months and it sure has paid off, especially because I tried on a few dresses before landing on this one!! The Unlimited subscription allows you to queue items that you love and choose 3 items that are in stock to send to your house. I have had everything from dresses to purses and jewelry. It has been great to have a new outfit for some large events – I haven’t worn the same thing to a wedding in a few months. I highly recommend this service if you have a lot of upcoming events (weddings, black tie, galas, etc.), because if you use it more than twice a month – I think it pays for itself. I have used it to help me dress for wedding season, but I think I am going to suspend my service for a few months until I need it for the holidays (trying to save money where I can).

I am so excited for this weekend and I don’t have to travel next week (yay!)!! I hope you have a fantastic last weekend of June (wait, how did this happen?)!! 😀