Amazing Reviva Winter Wedding offer at Los Monteros extended

We are thrilled to announce our Reviva Winter Wedding offer in conjunction with the prestigious Los Monteros Hotel has had a huge amount of interest and we are now taking reservations for 2011.

Due to the popularity of this amazing offer, we are delighted to be able to extend this offer.

It will run from the 1st January 2011 until the 30th May 2011 (excluding Easter)

It will then continue from the 16th October 2011 to the 15th December 2011.

For more information please read our offer here

http://theweddingdecorator.blogspot.com/2010/11/our-exclusive-winter-wedding-offer-with.html

or email us for more information on info@reviva-weddings.com

Elegant Lemon and Crystals at Villa Padierna

We loved this wedding, it was stunning and the guests outfits were amazing, every attention to detail was not left unturned from the stylish fascinators and hats to the gorgeous die for shoes and handbags, it was divine.

This wedding, for us, was quite a late booking that came in through Moira at Perfect Spanish Weddings. We had not met Moira before but she contacted us as her client wanted to use us which was extremely flattering. We were available as it was a date in October thank goodness as I would have hated to have turned down this amazing wedding.

The wedding was a church ceremony held at the Santo Cristo de Calvario in Marbella, which is quite a retro style seventies church and has a wonderful bilingual priest.

We created a gorgeous lemon rose teardrop bridal bouquet and the bridesmaids had ivory rose handties with crystal details, the buttonholes were made with lemon roses and white orchids. We decorated the church with crystal organza pew ends, lay down an aisle runner supplied by the client and provided two large pedestal arrangements for the altar.

The reception was at the fabulous Villa Padierna hotel and the theme was a lemon and crystal colour scheme as Martina's dress was covered in AB Swarvoski crystals, it was stunning and very elegant.

Martina wanted tall candelabras for her wedding and it was a large wedding of 20 tables so we had some ivory iron candelabras made up for us by a charming iron maker in the poligono in Marbella. I will be back there as he has some wonderful props and furniture so my mind was full of ideas!

The cocktail area was decorated with white and lemon balloons created by my wonderful balloon lady who I will be working with a lot more next year as she has some fabulous decorations, a creative mind and a style I like.

We covered the chairs at the hotel with our loose style white satin chair covers and decorated these with crystal lemon sashes, decorated the tables with the tall candelabras completely adorned with floral arrangements and candles and scattered the tables with crystals and tealights. The head table was decorated with a beautiful long arrangement of flowers, candles and swags made with ivy and crystal lemon bows.

I have to at this point thank my team this day, Anoulka and Izzi, who both worked incredibly hard as we were one person down.

We started the night before as it was a large wedding of 200 people and we worked into the night to get the chairs dressed. We then came back the next day with Loraine and Maureen to finish off the tables and create the arrangements on site. The final effect was incredible, I kept looking back when we had finally finished and the wedding by then was well underway, to take in the transformation we had done on this room. It was one of those moments where I thought wow!!

Moira was charming, we got on like a house on fire and are working together a lot next year which I am hugely excited about. Our thanks to Moira, to Helen and Joey for letting us decorate their daughter's wedding, and to Jenni for providing us with these gorgeous photos.

To all our 2010 brides

We have had the most fabulous year creating many beautiful weddings and we have featured many of them on this blog.

It is always a joy to receive the photos from our weddings from the photographers or the couples we design and decorate the weddings for.

There are many weddings we have designed and created this year where sadly we do not have any photos to feature, from the top of my head now I have Nicole, Tracy, another Nicole, Laura, Ciara times two, Marie, Natalie, Michelle, Regina, Sarah times two, Suzanne the list really is quite endless which makes me feel rather sad.

All these were gorgeous weddings that unfortunately we have not been able to share with you. Many of the brides have contacted us since to rave about their weddings and yet we have not seen the photos.

If you are one of our 2010 brides which have not been featured it is not because we did not love your wedding it is because we have not seen it since, so we would love to see photos of your day, details of the flowers and decorations we created and what made it special for you, your bouquets we made up, table centrepieces, etc. Our blog is being turned into a book shortly so if you wish to be featured in this then please do send us you photos to blog as soon as you can.

Reviva Planning and Coordination

As Reviva Weddings grow, we are delighted to be involved in more and more weddings, although we do carefully plan the logistics of the dates, the work required on each event and moving around Andalucia.

Here was a classic example of one of our rather busy days at the end of last August.

Me and my decoration team were in Seville and Carla was in Frigliana holding Julia and Jamie's hands and overseeing their fabulous wedding day.

We were decorating and overseeing a wedding and over two hours drive away Carla was booked as the wedding coordinator for Julia and Jamie's beautiful wedding in Frigiliana with a reception at the Cortijo Bravo in Velez Malaga.

I am now known as the fairy godmother of the Costa Del Sol which I love, but I do think Carla really deserves this title, along with many other planners I work with to be honest.

I like to think of Carla and I as the fairies in Sleeping Beauty (I have a 4 year old daughter !)

I change everything to pink and make it twinkle and then Carla comes along and changes it to blue, organises it and puts it down on paper!! Carla is the most organised and efficient person I have ever met and I am very honored to have her on my team, she is amazing.

Her attention to detail is unmatched and I have never met anyone like her, I do feel like one of her students when she tells me off!!

Carla also teaches hospitality and event management so you can see her standards are high.

I was at a lecture this week teaching the students about event design and decoration and she even told me off then for over running on time and talking too much :)

Carla was booked to organise the details of Julia and Jamie's wedding held at the pretty church in Frigliana, arrange the paperwork and work with Julia and Jamie to coordinate their day and oversee it so that everything ran smoothly.

Julia and Jamie had given Carla their list so far and we finalised it for them and checked all the details were in place and then Carla was present on the day. I love this set of photos as you will see Carla in her black dress, with Julia and Jamie at the beginning and then the last photo she is outside watching over the reception.

Whilst we did not become involved in the flowers or decorations for Julia and Jamie, we are delighted to see these fabulous photos from Jeremy and will find out the florist who worked with them for their day in order to recommend them to our brides who wish to work with a florist in this area, I thought the photos of the bouquets were stunning.

A Winter Beach Wedding in Marbella

Spain, in particular Marbella, is a wonderful blend of cultures from all over the world that have chosen to settle in this very Cosmopolitan part of Europe.

Our bride and groom here were no exception, Marina and Juan both speak completely fluent English, probably better than me, completely fluent Spanish and yet Marina is Russian and Juan is Argentinian (OK they speak Spanish but I was impressed with Marina!)

Marina and Juan met whilst working in Madrid, and contacted us to help them organise the final details for their dream wedding here in Marbella.

They had already booked most of the details, the venue, the entertainment, photography, etc and just wanted flowers, decorations, a cake and a minister.

I have to admit that I was flat out when Marina first contacted me working 24/7 as we do here in the wedding season. Marina almost threw the towel in with me :) but I managed to win her back, thank goodness as the light at the end of the tunnel was emerging, and we finished off the details for the wedding, created the bridal flowers and some fabulous groups of large candles dotted around the beach bar to set off a beautiful evening. Carla organised the spanish speaking minister and a fabulous dulce de leche wedding cake.

How beautiful it was, how lucky were we all with the weather, it was a perfect November Mediterranean evening and the wedding ceremony was set on the beach at Poco Loco as the sun set, it was stunning and a beautiful ceremony conducted by our new charming spanish speaking minister. The winter sunsets here in Marbella are stunning and this was no exception. The temperature this day was 24 degrees. It is a lottery though as today it has chucked it down for over 17 hours and now we have clear skies :)

Marina and Juan having tied the knot officially in Gibraltar the day before the blessing on the beach, had the most romantic setting and ceremony under a fabulous sunset. Fairy lights and candles then twinkled as the ceremony finished and a fabulous party and dancing was had by all. We recently blogged our wonderful testimonial from Marina and Juan

http://theweddingdecorator.blogspot.com/2010/11/lovely-testimonial-received-this.html

Thank you Marina for bearing with me! Watch this space as Marina might be joining us as our Russian wedding coordinator, we hope so and 2011 is looking very exciting, it is lovely to meet brides who then become good friends!

Having received the photos this weekend I am was rather alarmed at the empty dress hanging up after the ceremony! But I have since heard it was the day before!! This could be a step up from our trash the dress wedding!

Images courtesy of Mar at Las Madrinas

Stylish Wedding Websites from Jo Jo

We love Wedding Jo Jo, you have to check out this site to see their gorgeous wedding websites and even more exciting is that they all include a blog :)! 

Being an avid fan of blogging, I think keeping a diary of events leading up to your wedding day is a fabulous idea, as well of course updating all your guests without having to contact them all individually. 

Wish lists, sharing photos, travel and hotel suggestions and guestbooks are all included on Jo Jo's websites as well as the blog :)  Perfect especially for couples planning to marry abroad to keep all their guests up to date with the latest news.

Jo Jo have a free site called the Taster, which is brilliant, however if you wish to upgrade to the full slice it is only $14.99 a month, which is about 11 euros.

You must check out their site it is so easy to use.

Wedding Jo Jo has offered a really great deal for our Reviva readers, simply enter the code elizabeth and your first month is free.  Hurry though this offer does not last forever.

I love this as my little daughter's name is Elizabeth :)!

Click here to find out more

Lilacs and Sage Green Wedding at Hacienda San Jose

As we draw to the end of our fabulous year, I have the pleasure of sharing one of our favourite weddings here in October with so many delightful details and the A team rolled into one day!

How lucky we were with the weather it was one of Spain's gloriously sunny autumn days with the temperature still in the 20's and a cloudless sky.   Alma and John had put a lot of thought into their wedding and have children so this played an integral role in how the wedding was going to be designed and decorated and to include the family.

A beautiful ceremony was conducted  by Andrew Hunter incorporating the sand ceremony for the whole family and we also provided some silver arras coins, a spanish tradition, symbolising sharing wealth.

We will create a post about sand ceremonies and different ideas shortly to give our readers more information on how these can be incorporated into your day.

The delightful voices of Tres Divos serendaded the guests during the ceremony and cocktail as Alma and John stood under a decorated arch shaded with our Bali Umbrellas, I so love these, they do look fabulous in photos.

Alma had chosen a relaxed style for her wedding decor, using sage greens and lilacs.  Alma and her daughter's bouquets were created with ivory roses with a touch of delicate foliage in sage with a hint of purple.  We dressed the tables with our floaty pale green and white covers and the chairs with our olive sashes.  The table centrepieces were delightful white shabby chic buckets, tied with lilac grosgrain ribbons and filled with a beautiful combination of sage and lilac flowers, sadly we do not seem to have photos of these but we also created some vintage style silver glassware simply filled with sage and purple hydrangea heads which were used to decorate the cocktail area and the sweetheart table.

A clever idea Alma had was to use their surname as the table seating plan, so each initial was a table, from this we created ribbons with the initial at the top and the guests names attached to the ribbon, these were hung in the cocktail area.  We used silver frames to place the table initial in.

As this was a family orientated day, we had a childrens area with the bouncy castle and decorated the children's table with lots of colourful chair sashes, balloons and of course party bags and goodies to keep them amused!  The food and catering was provided by the fabulous Fiestasol with Heather overseeing the wedding day.

There is a lovely bar and chill out area at this venue, with so many props already to hand, we found some terracotta jugs, filled these with local flowers from the garden and my girls set up a really cute display on the bar with blue glassware they found, I love this detail and it was completely random!

As the sunset came the venue looked stunning, the gardens were lit with our lanterns and candles and a romantic serene setting enveloped the evening's festivities.

I don't like being photographed but I am caught in action here!  Perhaps I should start a spot the me competition!!

Our thanks to Jeremy and Jenni from Jeremy Standley for sharing these beautiful photos with us.