Spooky Inspirations!

I love this time of year, not only because it is my birthday, but when I lived in the UK, it was a magical time of year for me and the girls.

Witches and ghosts, nights getting darker, the clocks changing, kicking through leaves on wonderful autumnal walks and the beginning of the lead up to Christmas. 

October is all about celebrating the harvest, thanksgiving for the Americans and the winter setting in.  A truly lovely time to reflect on the year, get ready for the festive season and start to think about decorating the house.

I have done some deep cleaning of my house this past week and goodness did it need it after our busy wedding season, but now we are planning on a pumpkin carving day tomorrow with my daughters and enjoying a trick and treat filled weekend with lots of spooky dinners and activities!!

I love these photos above of inspirations for decorating the house, it is so easy to buy horrible tacky plastic things, but to use leaves, pumpkins (by the way available here from Supersol!) and little details such as black candles, coloured table linens, lots of oranges and blacks makes a stylish Halloween theme in any house. 

OK I confess I have pumpkin fairy lights over my mirror in the dining area plus my wonderful Whittards of Chelsea ceramic pumpkin and ghost candle holders as well, but we will be beautifully decorated for our spooky weekend by tomorrrow evening!!

If anyone is planning a spooky themed night we do have black table linens, black chair covers and lots of orange sashes!  A fair amount is going out this weekend for spooky dinner parties but if you are looking for something different contact us!

Happy haunting to you all and hope you have a lovely weekend!

Images courtesy of Country Living, a wonderful website for inspirations :)

Simply Elegant Wedding in Mijas

It is wonderful to design, organise and create our weddings and always hugely exciting when we see the photos of the actual day and all the planning and details come to life.

Here we are at one of our favourite venues, Villa Bancales in Mijas, a truly elegant and stunning setting for smaller wedding parties.

Bonnnie contacted us last year as she started to plan her wedding.  Carla

 helped Bonnie to organise and finalise all her wedding details was booked for our on the day coordination to make sure everything ran smoothly.

Bonnie was a charming client and did make me giggle as once everything was in place we did not hear from her at all, I actually had to email her to make sure she was still there at one point!

We decorated the gardens and pool with lanterns and candles, created some beautiful rose bridal bouquets for Bonnie and her two little bridesmaids, provided fans for the guests and dressed the tables with simple and elegant square vases filled with roses.

A beautiful day was had by all as they enjoyed a moving ceremony conducted by Natasha, followed by cocktails and delicious catering by Fiestasol and dancing into the small hours with fabulous music by Rob the DJ.

Thanks to Jeremy, who makes my day when he sends over photos, for these lovely images of a perfect wedding here in the hot summer sunshine.

An Idyllic Wedding in Ronda

I met Andrew earlier this year when he was organising and designing his fabulous wedding to Rafa in June of this year.  I desperately wanted to be at his wedding but had already been booked for one of my busiest weekends here in Marbella, my hands were tied and there was no foreseeable way I could get to Ronda for the day, albeit I did many times look at my diary and try to reshuffle the weekend, it was not happening.

However we met, planned, chatted, had lots of inspirations and I dragged Andrew to my candle warehouse and he dragged me to the most fabulous tapas bar I have ever been to and we drank lots of champagne and created the dream day albeit I had bought my sister along and goodness knows we could not get a word in edgeways!!  Another story but my sister is definitely worth her weight in gold for a rent a friend :)

Andrew, is for me, an awesomely inspiring man, with a huge zest for life that is completely contagious and there are times when you meet certain people that they bring an enthusiam into you life and make you see things with different eyes, Andrew did just that for me and it has been a pleasure to meet him and subsequently work with him.

Andrew and Rafa had a wonderful wedding day shared with their closest family and friends with their beautiful Andalucian slightly bohemian style wedding.  The Hand of Fatima was used as a theme and lots of shabby chic styling with fabulous long tables styled with country style arrangements and coloured glass and candles, my favourite style:)  I am addicted to coloured glass and always have been!

Andrew has a fabulous blog about living here in Andalucia and tells it as it is.  He is a man of impeccable taste with style and food and he even goes out cycling with hangovers, which is something I would never even consider!  Andrew's blog is well worth a visit for anyone who is considering visiting or travelling around Southern Spain.

 His wonderful diary of life here and his travels are detailed on this fabulous blog,
 the Andalucia Diary 

Our congratulations to Andrew and Rafa and hope to see you both soon!:)

A striking Hot Pink and Lime Theme at Finca Cortesin

In the height of the summer here in Spain we decorated the beautiful wedding of Susan and Sean. Starting with top hats and tails at the Encarnacion Church in Marbella, followed by a fabulous reception at the Finca Cortesin.   A huge well done to the lads who managed to keep their hats and jackets on in the spanish July heat!!

Susan wanted a brightly coloured scheme using hot pinks and limes and was quite determined to have as many flowers as she possibly could for her wedding!

We created a beautifully vibrant bridal bouquet with bright yellow cala lilies and hot pink roses and the adorable bridemaids had bright pink gerbera bouquetstied with long lime green satin ribbons, all the buttonholes and corsages were made up with sunflower yellow gerberas.

The tables were dressed with very tall flower arrangements filled with lemons and limes sitting in pink water and topped with some fabulous colourful and tropical floral displays and we decorated the chairs with lime sashes and hot pink gerberas which certainly added that party atmosphere to the already beautifully decorated reception.

Mini cava bottles tied with hot pink and lime ribbons, adorned the tables as favours and we designed the table stationery to compliment the colour scheme tying large tags with the table seating plans to jugs of sangria at the cocktail.

Our other details for Susan and Sean's wedding day also included fuschia fans at the church and our famous romantic lanterns and candles for the evening surrounding the pool and the reception area

This was a fabulous wedding and one of our favourites this year but herein lies a lesson to be learnt that never travel to your wedding day here in Spain in July in a non air conditioned car, thanks to Kathryn, Susan's make up and hair stayed put, but in plus 40 degrees without air con and a 30 minute journey to the church I am sure Susan was cursing Sean for bringing one of his vintage cars down to Spain!!!! 

This wedding was organised by the lovely Joan and our thanks to Jeremy yet again for these fabulous photos of our flowers and decorations. 

A Beautiful Wedding at the Don Carlos Hotel

Joanne and her lovely family were one of our first clients to book us for 2010.

 They had left plenty of time to book all their suppliers and were very organised which was wonderful for us as we were able to plan and get ready in plenty of time.  I had gold butterflies in stock for Joanne's wedding in March of this year :)

It was a fabulous day at the Don Carlos hotel beach club organised by Joanne at Marbella Marriages. 

We created an ivory and gold butterfly theme providing a ceremony area in the beautiful gardens of the Don Carlos with an arch, aisle runner and dresesed the aisle with a swag and gold butterflies. 

Much needed fans were provided decorated in ivory ribbons and gold butterflies for the guests. 

We created a gorgeous ivory rose bridal bouquet complete with some rather decadent feathers to add that vintage look and a few little butterflies.  Confetti cones filled with ivory petals were provided, although a slight hiccup happened and our gold petals for the tables were grabbed in a panic for some reason and thrown as well at the ceremony!  These were retrieved afterwards and used on the tables :)

Joanne's theme was a champagne and gold so we dressed the chairs in the beach club with champagne sashes.  The Don Carlos do work with a talented florist and they provide table centrepieces included in the wedding package which are always very good. 

We just added to this by providing table mirrors and tealights, decorated the centrepieces provided with gold butterflies, scattered the tables with gold petals (thank goodness) and used gold butterflies to decorate the glassware and gold butterfly placecards and table seating plan.  We dressed the pool area with lots of candles and lantern bags to add that romantic touch to the evening as it became dark.

Our thanks to Jeremy for these wonderful photos of this beautiful wedding, it was a lovely day and of course completed with the wedding A team out in force, Ian got the party going with a swing and Kathryn did the fabulous make up and hair.

An elegant wedding cake was made by Rosemary complete with gold butterflies.

We loved the surprise the parents organised for Joanne and Alistair, they had flown in a favorite singer for them, Cole Page, who charmed and delighted the guests with his fabulous repetoire and even had them all standing on their chairs!

Our Trash The Dress Wedding!

I fell in love with this couple as soon as I met them!  They had that twinkle in their eyes, were fun and I just knew their wedding was going to be different from the fact that everyone was wearing flip flops, including our lovely bride (I was impressed with this and was sold!),  to the magical sky lanterns later in the night. 

Daniele and Mike from California wanted to have a small and intimate family wedding here in Spain.  They had already done some research and booked the villa and the fabulous Cornel Catering Team for their wedding and wanted someone to tie up the loose ends and for us to be there on the day, plus of course decorate and style their wedding, Mike is a designer so they knew exactly what they wanted which is always easier.

With a hot pink and touch of lime theme in place, Carla was on hand to recommend and book all their other suppliers and to coordinate the wedding so that it was all ready for their arrival.  We were all looking forward to this day in July when they would fly over from the States to celebrate their marriage here in Spain.

In order to design the hot pink and touch of lime look, we created some fabulous bridal flowers, using dolce vita and hot pink roses for Daniele's bouquet and hot pink gerberas for the bridesmaids. 

We dressed the chairs with fuchsia sashes, provided an arch and much needed parasols and paddle fans for the ceremony.  Using our pale green and white table linens added a more relaxed, romantic feel to the tables with white Moroccan style candles and scattered pink bouganvilla completed a very simple but elegant and pretty style. 

Pink, silver and white lanterns were hung in the gazebo area above the tables and we decorated the pool area with lots of candles and lanterns and some white and pink lanterns in the archways by the pool.

What a day it was, it was a beautifully hot Mediterranean afternoon and evening, lots of lovely cocktails being made up courtesy of their obviously well trained guests!, wonderful hair and make up, fabulous food from Cornel and a great crowd, least of all the lovely cupcakes and American baseball groom's cake made with a combined effort of Mark at Cake Marbella and our lovely Fi.

I do have a confession to Mike and Daniele I scoffed one of the lovely cupcakes :)!  I can never resist Mark's Red Velvet :)

Here are some fabulous photos taken by their friend April, a professional photographer in the States who had some awesome cameras with her.

The day ended with a Trash the Dress!   Most of the wedding party ended up jumping into the pool :)  Fabulous day guys and thank you for sharing these wonderful photos with us :)  Amazingly the dress survived albeit Daniele had already written it off!!!