Ah, a royal wedding is coming up – so much buzz in the air! Any high profile wedding brings on the wedding buzz, but a Royal Wedding is unlike any other – it encapulsates the dream of so many little girls – the common girl, becoming a Princess, a fairytale coming to life.  How will this Princess choose?  Does she get to choose her dress, her flowers, her wedding details?  Or is it all decided for her?

A lot of tradition goes into a Royal Bouquet.  A sprig of Royal Myrtle is usually included in the bouquet, cut from a bush at Queen Victoria’s home – this bush was originally planted from a sprig of Myrtle from Queen Victoria’s wedding to Prince Albert in 1840.

Lady Diana’s bouquet featured gardenias, Stephanotis and orchids, as well as the royal myrtle, veronica and ivy and was 3.5 feet long!  It was said to weigh about five pounds – can you imagine? It was created by florist David Longman, whose father had created Queen Elizabeth’s wedding bouquet.

Sarah Ferguson, who became the Duchess of York when she married Prince Andrew, carried a crescent shaped bouquet of very light yellow roses, gardenias, lilies-of-the-valley, cream lillies and the traditional sprig of myrtle.

Sophie Rhys, who married Prince Edward in 1999,  carried a bouquet of ivory roses (Vendela?) , calla lilies,  lily of the valley and freesia.

For Prince WIlliam’s Wedding?  Another cascade….

What did Kate choose?  Well, we’ll find out friday morning!  My bets are on the royal myrtle, some very subtle color, and the inclusion of lillies and gardenias.  And she has decided to leave her bouquet on the grave of an unknown soldier, as has been the tradition as of late, versus tossing it.

We are excited to show off our new blog format next week on May 1st, but of course, could not resists a few timely blog posts this week with all this buzz about this weeks Royal Wedding.  We will take a look at bouquets, dresses, colors, decor…Enjoy!

We couldn’t let Valentines Day here at Bella Signature Design pass us by without giving some love…in this case, a free spot at our WPPI Photoshoot in Vegas coming up in one week!  Thanks to creativeLive for helping!  We went to our favorite random picker, random.org, and the winner is……#4!

And that makes our winner Jessica Chavez!  Congratulations! Please contact us via email to claim your ticket!

To all those who have not gotten your tickets,  we have three left as of this morning!

I love this photo captured at one of our weddings at the Fairmont Olympic  this last summer – the light coming through the Phaleanopsis Orchids is amazing. Marsio Photo out of Indonesia captured some wonderful shots! Still waiting to see all of the photos from the wedding – what an incredible wedding this was – Indah’s three gowns alone were stunning!  Definitely one of my favorites of the year – the centerpieces were SO much fun to create!

At Bella Signature Design we LOVE creativeLIVE – it was such a pleasure to work with cL’s team on the Jasmine Star workshop last August, and of course with Laura Marchbanks, the stunning bride who got married that day as part of the creativeLIVE / Jasmine Star lovefest! We are brimming with excitement here at BElla over our fabulous plans and designs for the WPPI Photoshoot that Laura will be a part of, and decided to up the ante by giving creativeLIVE a spot to giveaway!

So, how do you enter, you say?

All youhave to do is enter a comment here on our Bella blog, amd amswer two questions:

1. Why you want to work with Bella Signature design at WPPI 2011

2. What you want to see next out of creativeLIVE

Super simple!

Winner will be announced on Valentines Day – from our heart to yours!

I’m not afraid to admit that I love beauty – beautiful flowers, beautiful photography, and yes, beautiful people.  And combining all three, and directing and styling them? Yum.  The desert landscape in Vegas needs no introduction, the rich hues and incredible texture will be a STUNNING backdrop.  But the focus of the lens will be the models and the gorgeous details that we are creating, so we thought we should introduce them!

Renae is a stunning editorial model that is frequently featured in bridal & commercial work. Renae will have a couture vibe for our shoot.

Laura, a wedding photographer herself (You may know her from her Creative Live wedding with Jasmine Star), is a beautiful model with a classic look – we are going to shake things up a bit and style her as a hip & edgy bride.

Christopher Confero, flying in from Alabama no less, has modeled in various publications  and will be our sexy groom.

Scheming and designing for props, florals and set have begun – love my job!

We are so excited to announce an amazing photoshoot at WPPI!  You saw Laura and Daniela in Creative Live’s Wedding with Jasmine Star, now is YOUR chance to photograph Model/bride Laura Marchbanks (who just happens to be a wedding photographer as well!) styled by celebrity event designer Daniela Ferdico Faget of Bella Signature Design.  Daniela will be styling both Laura and editorial model Renae Hatch, as well as designing lush bouquets for you to practice your detail shots with.  Each session will be an hour and a half long, and is limited to 15 photographers each.  Additional option to have Daniela submit photos to Junebug Weddings and Two Bright Lights is also available.

Our sessions are scheduled so you will get back in time to see Elizabeth Messina and Jasmine Star speak!

Time & Date:  February 21, 2011 1st Session: 10:30am-noon

2nd session 12:30-2:00 pm

Cost: Early Bird $139  (closes February 1)      Standard $155

Tickets go on sale Thursday, January 12th! Click HERE or got to : http://wppishoot.eventbrite.com/

We are excited to announce the winner of our  wedding design Giveaway!  We were moved by Angela Morgan’s story, and can’t wait to sign a butterfly wedding for her and her fiancee Craig!

More to come!



Yep.  It’s true.  One lucky couple is going to get it.  Free wedding design that is. From us here at Bella Signature Design.  Yay! (feel free to do the happy dance – in fact, video submissions HIGHLY encouraged!).  Here’s the scoop!

One lucky couple is going to get completely free event design services from Bella Signature Design.  No strings attached, not even invisible fishing line.  It’s our way to give something to those who can’t afford to have a designer swoop in and make everything work together just perfectly and tied up with a pretty bow.  (I hate bows though – beware.)  We’ve had a wonderful year, and we just simply want to give something back to you  (we give plenty to charity too  – this one is just for you!)

What you get:  Design services, to include:

• color palette selection/finetuning
• design of overall concept for event
• design and recipes for ceremony & reception floral
• design of basic lighting scheme
• lay-out of space to create good flow, CAD lay-out
• list of needed rentals
• linen options
• china/flatware/stemware options
• basic sketch

No, we are not giving away flowers, linens or china.  But once we’ve designed it all for you, you will have a pretty little design book you can take to your favorite vendors (will give you a list of our favorites)!  How cool is that?  This is how all our Bella weddings start out!  To see some of our designs, look at our Bella website or do a search on this blog for our sketch to reality posts.

How to enter:  Send your submissions in to info at bellasignature dot com  – email, pictures, or even a cool video we can post.  Tell us why YOU need to win!  Tell us about your wedding, yourself, and why you want us to design your wedding.  That’s it.

RULES:  We reserve the right to not post anything that is icky. We will provide our services in person in the greater Seattle area or over email/Skype for other US or international cities).

Readers can write in their votes!!! We’ll vote too.  We’ll assume that you are voting for yourself unless you tell us otherwise.  Have fun!

This is not redeemable for cash, any products such as flowers or linens, or our first born child.  Just a stunning, artfully designed wedding,

Winner will be picked  January 10th, 2011.  Wedding must take place in 2011.

Ready, set, go!

Our bouquet of various succulents, grasses, snowberries, leucodendron, bersillia, calla lillies & gardenia

all images in this post courtesy of Sarah Rhoads Photography

THIS was SUCH a great wedding.  From the moment I met Kate (the incredibly talented designer/owner of Croak and Hum) and Nick (bassist for Death Cab for Cutie), I was excited and inspired!  First, they were SO fun to work with  – Very stylish, very creative, and totally trusting of my random, three-am in the morning ideas – like creating a living wall of succulents for their ceremony.  We had a few meetings where I could see Nick nod his head trying to visualize, but not quite knowing how it would turn out – thank you Nick and Kate, for trusting in me!

Their super stylish wedding was so full of amazing, personal details – Kate is an incredible graphic designer, so she created yummy paper goodies from invitations with tickets and press badges (as a nod to Nick’s band) to menus, escort cards and even adorable flags for the succulent favors we created for her.

From hearing Zoey Deschanel and Ben Gibbard (lead for Death Cab) sing at the ceremony, to watching Nick and Kate dance under the romantic lights – every part of their wedding was romantic and full of joy, in a stylish, modern way. If my aim is anything at the weddings I help design, is for them to be not only beautiful and stylish, but PERSONAL and full of love and joy.  Kate and Nick achieved that with ease and grace, infusing their loves and their personalities into every little detail.

I loved working with all the succulents and mosses – we had a blast!  The living walls were a great experience – I’m known for creating at least one piece of floral art for weddings, and this one was just so  unique!  Thank you, Nick and Kate, we had a such great time working with you on your wonderful day!

Here is Style Me Pretty’s feature…

How Stylish and stunning is Kate?   Swoon.

Above, one of the fun Bridesmaids bouquets with succulents,
Crespedia, bersilia, airplants, ranunculus…

Nick’s Boutonierre – I wanted to give him something masculine, stylish & modern!

Nick wearing his Bout, and one of the fabulous tablecards designed by Kate, who is an AMAZING graphic designer.

Fabulous coasters by Croak and Hum -
great play on words, no?

Another bridesmaids bouquet, I
loved these textures and colors together!

Great place settings!  Kate picked these beautiful gold & glass chargers and gold flatware .
I love how the pink napkin underneath worked with the gold for the charger to match the menu – perfection!

Succulent Centerpieces on a bed of moss, illuminated by simple votives.
Shows that even a simple design can be stunningly beautiful.

I love this black and white of Kate and Nick!!

My favorite photo of Kate on her wedding day.

Which brings me to the photography – Sarah Rhoads was AMAZING.  The details, the emotion, the artistry.  We’ve seen a lot of photography over the last ten years, and we are SMITTEN! Thanks Sarah, for sharing your art!  And her photobooth with the lush gray ruffled background – too die for!