This summer I had the extreme pleasure of designing and helping plan my cousins wedding.  Now, I’m usually not  a huge proponent of mixing work and family, but I couldn’t help but jump in and help Jessica create her dream wedding.  I come from a VERY small family – there are less then 10 people that I am related to on this half of the world!!  I’ve known Jessica since the day she was born, and (now) fondly remember those nights when I would babysit and she would cry for hours on end…suddenly, she’s all grown up and getting married – and she tells me the design and flowers (besides the getting married part) are one of the most important parts for her.  NO PRESSURE.  Not to mention that she wants a very gardeny (yes, I made that word up) romantic wedding, and my designs tend towards the lush and modern.  Despite my aunt’s look of worry, I tell them that yes, I can indeed do romantic and gardeny.  Oh, and of course, I LOVE to use bold color – and Jessica wants what I termed a “tea-stained look.”  I assure them that I can indeed, design to the bride and her wishes and we designed away, ending up with a fabulously collaborative mix of my designs and the bride’s DIY touches.

The beautiful bride and her romantic “tea stained” bouquet of garden roses, sweet peas, jasmine, gardenia and Metalina roses.  Oh, that sweet flower girl?? That’s my daughter, Isabella.  I’ve never ever  my kids on my blog or website  – that whole family/work separation.  But, since Style Me Pretty has posted These stunning shots by the amazing Stephanie Cristalli, I figured it was time!

The pin on the ribbon was the bride’s and mine grandmother’s….very, very special.  I hand-pleated the dupionni silk ribbon to complement the pleating on the bottom of Jessica’s  delicious Melissa Sweet Gown.

The ceremony…

The four ADORABLE ringbearer’s – although I’m biased – the little blondie is my son, Mateo. I know, his tie is crooked and he didn’t want his pocket square (gasp!) One of the drawbacks of being the florist/designer/planner, wedding attendee, mother of the ring bearer  – still cute though.

The centerpieces – yum!

Hanging escort cards, designed by the bride

Love this shot – it was so nice to work with Stephanie again!!

What pure joy to have been such an integral part of Jessica’s wedding!

So, there you go, readers – Over the last few years I’ve shown you my work, my passion, and now my family, and even my children…Hard for me to be so personal, and show so much of myself.  However, the more open I am, the more you can see what drives me to create and  how passionate  I am about creating a wedding that truly reflects who you are.  It just gets better everyday!

A while back the lovely Sally of Seattle Bride Magazine called me and asked me to design a 2 page spread for the magazine’s Unveiled section.  ooo, what fun!  I created about 5 color palettes and sent those, along with various concepts, off to Sally to review.  The winner was the Pear Green and Cement color palette – modern & edgy – right up my alley!

As the article notes, I found  this amazing fabric and fell in love with the colors and patterns – and as  gathered vendors to help produce the designs, I sent them pictures of the fabric so they too, could use the same inspiration!  Since I didn’t find any napkins that inspired me as much as the fabric itself, I decided to make my own, and balance it between two square plates, and my favortie chargers in the world, slate tiles from home depot.  (LOVE this loo, but beware, they are HEAVY! – I once used 200 of these for a wedding – wow, did  get a workout!)

The necklace was a GREAT find at Bainbridge Island’s boutique Ginger.  I literally could buy EVERYTHING in this store – from the amazing hand-made jewelry to the stunning plates and sculpture – I adore their style.  I of course, fell so in love with the necklace in this article, that I went back and bought it – it IS my signature color after all!

Sonal from Chocolaz Cakes blew me away!  She took my piece of fabric and created this insanely amazing cake!  I had such fun making the floral cake stand, but seriously, this cake was even more amazing up-close, with it’s 3 dimensional blooms.  WOW.

When I first told Tara Bliven of Ephemera Press that I wanted to put a piece of steel under a letterpressed invitation, I think she thought I was a wee bit kooky.  I love how her beautiful art came together with this piece of steel, which was actually quite light and could easily be delivered in a box.  She ended up loving it too!

the LIGHT:  I think this was my favorite piece of this entire design.  I had found this yummy gray duppioni, and just really wanted to pair it with flowers and light – so I draped the fixture in the duppioni, and attached green cymbidium orchids and gray bersilia berries in a pattern form the fabric.  Wouldn’t this be fun over a headtable or dessert display?

Thanks, Sally, and the Seattle Bride team, for having faith in me and letting me play!

It has been a few weeks since I posted.  At times, that creative spirit goes into overdrive and I could lock myself into the studio and create 24/7.  Lately, it’s been a mixture of creating new and exciting proposals for clients, actual designs for magazine editors, and a few designs for non-profit events.  In the past few months, I’ve created some of my best work ever for my clients, pushing myself to take it up a notch each time, to create designs that are personal, stunning, and meaningful.  I’ve finally achieved a long-time goal and got to create a tabletop for Grace Ormonde herself, which was very fulfilling – that will be it’s own separate post!  I’ve been surrounded by colorful swatches of linens, exposed to new and exciting flowers, learned from some amazing people.  I’m ready to create away this season, and am feeling absolutely exhilarated.  My clients get me, AND my art.  Each client, each experience, pushes me and inspires me as a designer, not only to constantly create something new, but to make it meaningful for my client and their experience.  It’s that passion to create something meaningful, something beautiful that inspires me.  And having found some new inspiration lately myself, I hope to use my passion and exhiliration to go even further with it every day.  Thank you for allowing me to create beauty in your lives.

Ah, lovely Christy and Blair over at the fabulous What Junebug loves asked me for one of weddings where we had sketches and photos, and to share the story behind the wedding – and I couldn’t resist sharing one of my favvorite weddings from this last summer!

Here is the sketch:

come see what they posted here!

and view some of the great photo compilations Christy did of Lifemosaic’s fabulous shots! (reception shots on Junebug’s blog)

We’ve had a HUGE response to our sketch to reality blog post about Leah and Adam, with lots of requests for more!

SO, here is a wedding we did last year, that was so colorful, lush and warm – it’s one of my favorite weddings from last year!  This ceremony ended up being very much like the sketch!

Here is the original sketch:

wedding rendering

and here is the wedding ceremony:

This Hindu Ceremony and following reception was so full of color, warmth, and joy.  I loved collaborating with Madhuri and Karthik, and enjoyed the challenge of bringing both of their styles into their wedding: Madhuri is quite traditional, and Karthik prefers the more contemporary feel!  We decided to keep the ceremony more traditional, so we utilized traditional Hindu wedding colors of red, gold and white.  Yummy gold chair covers from Wildflower Linens graced the chairs, turning each banquet chair into luscious perch!

On a side note, we also think about budget as we design – for example, Madhuri wanted the reception colors based on the color of her reception Sari (she had three different outfits that day!), so the  reception color palette of deep blue, tangerine and raspberry  had to somehow overlap with the ceremony colors.  Had we chosen the red or white for the ceremony chaircovers, we would have had to have a second chaircover for the reception, but choosing the gold hue made it easy to utilize them for both.   Working the gold into the reception was easy by bringing beautiful gold beaded overlays for the tables, that perfectly accented the chaircovers and set a great neutral backdrop to the blue favors, blue and orange lighting, and the very contemporary tangerine and raspberry flowers.   Although we often get to work with some pretty fantastic “platinum weddings” type budgets, we stay aware of not wasting any of that money and giving our clients the most for their investment.

For the ceremony design, having decided on the chaircover color then led to the aisle runner color, the color of the Mandap fabric, etc.  Sometimes we create a color palette, the basic elements, and then work backwards, to come up with a design that not only looks beautiful, but makes sense and creates the right composition:  Madhuri was wearing red for the first part of the two hour ceremony, and then changing into a white Lengha after she was officially married, for the second part of the ceremony.  We had to make sure she stood out from the Mandap instead of blending in, so the gold fabric on the Mandap itself was partially chosen for that reason, and since we have a backdrop of red silk in the back of the room, we hung sheer gold panels on the back of the Mandap to really maker her red, and then white, Sari pop!  Yes, these are all things I think about as a designer – how will the photos look, what’s the overall composition, including fabric, flowers, backdrop and what the bride and groom are wearing  – these are all very important in the successful outcome of the overall look, the look and feel of the photograph, and the guest’s experience.

A look at  the reception, with the gold chaircovers, beaded linens, blue lighting and orange lighting.  Photo by Jane Lee photography

If you like these “Sketch to Reality” posts, please let us know by posting comments here on the blog!