New York Wedding Day airs this weekend with Sean and Christinas wedding . New York Daily News did a great article on Pair of Army captains gets a ‘Wedding Day’ to remember. I worked as the wedding photographer on this show aswell.
BY Nicole Carter DAILY NEWS

Christina and Shawn’s families came together to create a dream wedding for them – with a little help from the TNT series ‘Wedding Day.’
Shawn and Christina Fitzgerald had the perfect wedding — and they didn’t have to plan one detail.
The Poughkeepsie couple left that to celebrity wedding planner Diann Valentine and event and food guru Alan Dunn, hosts of a new series on TNT called “Wedding Day”; Shawn and Christina’s episode runs Saturday.

The new reality show surprises one deserving couple every week and in a matter of days helps them overcome obstacles — whether it’s money or illness or timing — that have been preventing the Big Day from happening.

“For Shawn and Christina, we had four days to pull it off,” says Valentine. “It was a challenge for us, working around their military commitments.”

Both captains in the U.S. Army, the two had been engaged for nearly five years but had spent as much time apart as they did together.
“We were able to come home and do about a week’s worth of planning at a time, but it simply wasn’t enough. To visit reception sites, interview photographers, pick invitations all takes a lot more time than we had anticipated,” says Shawn, 26, currently on duty in Iraq. “We had set a date for Sept. 17, 2010, but even that date would have been hard to keep.”
The show notified the couple via satellite last winter that they’d be flying home for a week-long vacation in New York City — thanks to a nomination from their families. Meanwhile, back in Poughkeepsie, the experts got busy creating the dream wedding.
The couple didn’t spend a dime, thanks to the show and local donations.
“It was more about the experience than the big beautiful wedding for Shawn and Christina. But we gave them that too,” says Dunn.
The pair met in 2003 in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., on their first Army assignment. They were friends at first, going to the gym, shopping and cooking together, but soon realized they were in love in a nearly impossible situation for a relationship.
“There have been numerous times in our relationship where ‘us’ comes second,” says Shawn, who has spent as many as 22 months apart from Christina. “Our Army commitments kept us overseas in Korea, Germany and Iraq.”
Luckily, traveling has become one of the couple’s favorite things.
“They had been all over the world on duty, and they really wanted to share their experiences with their families,” said Valentine. “We went with a 1930s world travelers theme, nostalgic and classic.”
Anthony’s Pier 9 in New Windsor, the event space where the reception was held, was decorated with old trunks, leather lounge furniture, and video screens with photos of places the couple have visited.
The donations rolled in for these selfless soldiers: a $2,500 Monique Lhuillier off-the-shoulder gown for the bride.
A $10,000 donation to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund from Nationwide Insurance in the couple’s name. Flower arrangements from local florists. And the time and expertise of two big-bucks wed-ding planners.
But the most meaningful contributors came with the smallest price tag: their families. The design team enlisted the help of both sides to keep it personal and budget-friendly.
“The families created postcards, just silly photographs of them dressed up in ’30s garb with sweet messages, which they will send the couple once they returned to Iraq,” says Dunn.
The newlyweds returned to duty just a few days after the wedding.
The couple’s fathers also built a wooden gate, adorned with photos of a young Christina and Shawn that would serve as the entryway of the aisle at St. Mary’s Church — the same church where the bride’s parents wed 28 years ago.
Another project for the families: passports.
“We had them create little passports with Shawn and Christina’s photos inside, with a description of their love story,” says Valentine. “It’s a perfect, inexpensive and personal keepsake for the guests.”
At the end of the day, Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald were nearly blown away.
“I knew this was no typical wedding,” says Shawn, who expects to be home in October, a few months after Christina. “I felt like the luckiest man in the world.”

Wedding Day TNT New York