Gin Palaces for Weddings

I have always enjoyed watching the world of fashion and forseeing what is next as this is part of my role as a designer and stylist.

My wedding business has a strong emphasis on style and creativity, as this is my professional background, and I do like to make sure we create trends and are leaders, not followers within our industry.

 I am also very fortunate that I am able to keep up-to-date with the very latest trends coming out of London, the forefront City of contemporary design.

This is mainly due to the fact that I have a wonderfully stylish sister that lives and works in London in Publishing.   As a Director of a Publishing House she commissions beautifully styled and photographed books about the latest food, drinks and interiors.

 So you can imagine I often pick her brains over a nice beach lunch when she is here in Marbella and how lucky am I !

So after a bit of brain storming on her last trip here, for a particular wedding, I was asking what the latest trends were in London that we could apply them to our weddings for 2014 and also to my Alice in Wonderland themed wedding we created and designed recently.

One thing we both loved was the latest arrival of the Gin Bars or Gin Palaces.

We have all done the Lemonade Bars now with our cute glass dispensers and paper straws and of course the Mojito Bars with our pots of mint and crushed ice, so what is next, well it is time to become more sophisticated and embrace the Gin Palaces!

There is a wonderful array of gin based cocktails out there from the classic Gin and Tonic to a Blush Punch, The Bramble, The Bronx, Gin Fizz and The Negroni.

I have been looking on Pinterest and generally researching this idea to bring into our weddings next year, let´s ditch the rustic vintage lemonade for a more glamorous affair as this recession finally leaves us!

Sophisticated and stylish Gin Palaces I predict will now storm wedding world!

I, for one, cannot wait to do some testing over the winter and have found this fabulous company in London who have many gin based cocktail recipes called the Travelling Gin Company.  All I have to do now is work out how to style this trendy new idea for 2014 weddings and like gin !

I have many more ideas and trends up my sleeves that I will share with you over the winter months so do follow us on Facebook or our blog to keep up to date with our latest 2014 wedding trends.

An Intimate Elopement to Marbella from Singapore

There is something so idyllic about an elopment and I am sure there are many times as couples plan their weddings and it is becoming stressful working out the guest list, when they wonder why they did not just hot foot it away on their own to a beautiful location.

This is exactly what Darren and Christine decided to do and chose Spain as their destination.

 With it´s rich culture, fabulous cities and a passionate lifestyle combined with great tapas and gorgeous weather, it was the perfect choice for a fun and romantic elopement far flung from Singapore.

What fun this beautiful young couple had and we were delighted that they chose us to help them organise their fairy tale wedding day here in our beautiful country, Spain.

I watched them on Facebook as they documented their travels through Spain from Barcelona down to Madrid, onto Seville and finally down to Marbella.  

I felt the nerves and anticipation as they got ready for their most romantic ceremony at the beautiful Encarnacion Church here in Marbella which has been fabulously documented by Francisco Bononato Rosso.

It was such a romantic occasion, this very much in love couple taking their vows and creating a once in a lifetime occasion that they will always remember in a stunning church, in a different country, declaring their love for each other.

Carla organised their trip here to Marbella and their church ceremony along with booking the fabulous, luxury Villa Tiberio restaurant for a very romantic post wedding initimate dinner.

I of course fell in love with Christine´s shoes, designed the florals to compliment the shoes and frantically went shopping for hand painted fans to match!   We created a floral centrepiece for their evening table which matched Christine´s bouquet as a surprise.

Our warmest congratulations to Darren and Christine and thank you for allowing us to be a part of such a special, intimate day and to Francisco Bononato Rosso for sharing these beautiful images with us.

Alice in Wonderland Wedding - A Few Details!

It is not often you are given two weeks notice to put together a wedding :)

We all knew Nigel and Olivia from Chez Vous were getting married and Reviva Weddings were pencilled in to oversee the day.  

But with all of us working in the events and wedding industry, our work and weddings ran away with us over the summer as normal and lo and behold with two weeks notice we managed to pull off a most fantastic wedding for one of the most hard working persons I know apart from me!  

Nigel, from Chez Vous Events, had approached me earlier this year to help him coordinate and style his wedding.  He wanted us to oversee his day to make sure it all went smoothly and to style everything, adding in the details and fun elements and wave my magic wand over his special day. 

I was very honored that Nigel had chosen me to help him with his wedding.

I really wish I had had the luxury of spending more time on this fabulous theme as when I finally saw the venue, two weeks before the big day, it just screamed magical fairy garden, Alice in Wonderland theme.

So we quickly set to work to achieve as much as possible in such a short space of time but of course I knew we would do it and come up trumps!

Much frantic ordering was done over the internet however sadly some things did not show up in time or indeed are still not here.  

I did order some themed tags from a site called Folksy from a girl called Rowena who runs Crafty Pagan Designs, but they never arrived and I have not had a reply from my emails asking where the order is or if I can have a refund, how disappointing is that?

But many fabulous suppliers came up trumps, including the wonderful designer Angela from Red Star Designs on Etsy.  Angela created a really cool Alice in Wonderland menu for me based on my brief and some lovely Drink Me stickers which we placed on small milk bottles and mason jars for the guests welcome drinks upon arrival at the venue along with paper straws.

Luckily for us arty crafty girls here at Reviva, especially my daughter Isabel, who is the real talent behind our styling team, the rest of the decorations were created in-house.

It did involve an all nighter to complete everything the night leading up to the day as we were busy with weddings all week before and after!  

Isabel handpainted and wrote the fabulous signs with directions and quotes which we placed around the venue, along with some giant paper flowers.

We created table names with white roses supplied with pots of red paint and brushes for the guests to paint the roses red.  It was funny the next day to see what the guests had created!

All the tags for the placecards were beautifully hand written by Isabel and attached to some really cute vintage keys, courtesy of Jess, and these were displayed with the menus on each place setting.

I arranged for Nigel to create a large entrance door to the reception and we styled this with different height logs, clocks, moss, a giant key, a mini door and more signs.

We went shopping and found some beautiful pink and gold vintage style teapots and teacups from the designer collection Carolyn Donnelly Ecletic at Dunnes. 

They were perfect for this theme and Nigel and Olivia´s florist filled them with flowers to use as display props on the buffet tables.

The gardens were turned into a Fairy Wonderland using upturned logs decorated with moss and tealights along with our mini silver candelabras adding a magical touch as guests wandered through the maze of this quite extraordinary venue.

Loraine created some lovely woodland twig displays to decorate the buffet tables using moss, plants and flowers along with mini vintage clocks and more silver candelabras and teapots.  

The star of the show had to be the cake by Sweet Things By Fi.  I quickly drafted in Fi to make the cake as I knew it would be amazing and she would be excited with this brief. 

Fi of course came up trumps and the wedding cake was absolutely delightful.  It was beautifully decorated with stop watches, mice and vintage style teacups.

The other star of the show, and we will have more photos soon, was my fairy berries, which amazingly were ordered from Washington on the Tuesday and were here on the Thursday. A big hats off to this supplier as it was going to be a risk to get them here on time but I was determined!  I think in the mist of memory a bit hats off to to DHL as well!

We will showcase more of Nigel and Olivia´s wedding soon, I am rather looking forward to seeing Nigel´s wedding car which apparently was a giant hotdog on wheels?!

I would like to send my hugest thanks to Joseba Sandoval and his beautiful wife, Mar, who bravely came along to photograph us setting up this wedding.  

We were running at this point on pure adrenalin, having been up all night, and they were patiently following us around and around the venue trying to take photos of our details.  

I have worked with Joseba now a few times and I am sure he thinks I am completely mad!

My hats off to Joseba and Mar, they are a gorgeous couple and amazing photographers and had they not patiently followed us around for the afternoon we would not be able to share these images with you.

If you would like to see Joseba´s beautiful weddings please do hop over to his website.

We will post more of this wedding soon, these are just a few of the details we created for the day that we thought we would be fun to share with you :) 

Glitter and Sparkle Glamour at Villa Padierna, Marbella

One of my friends recently asked me if I dream of glitter but the answer to this is I don´t sleep enough to dream, let alone of glitter, so I throw it around in real life instead :)

Who does not love a touch of sparkle and finally, after much posting about this lovely subject, we managed to add in some glitter and sparkle into our styling of the gorgeous wedding of Sarah and Ruben at the Villa Padierna Hotel.

I can´t tell you how excited we were creating signs and table seating plans with glitter, gorgeous table numbers in pretty white vintage style frames (with glitter!) dipping confetti cones in glitter and making tiny gold and pink glitter hearts, we were in heaven!

Sarah had organised her wedding herself, which is a feat from a different country, but needed help to put the finishing touches to her wedding day from setting up a welcome vintage style white table to offer her guests personalised fans, parasols and confetti, to styling her delicious dessert table and dressing the reception tables.

We created lots of lovely details for Sarah and Ruben´s beautiful day and are delighted to share these fabulous photos from Sarah´s wedding photographer for the day, Joseba Sandoval.  Aren´t they all just gorgeous :)  To see more of Sarah and Ruben´s wedding day do hop over to Joseba´s blog.

We loved working with Sweet Things By Fi on the dessert table.  We drooled over the cake and all the lovely sweet goodies Fi created including macarons, cakes pops and meringue kisses.  I had been warned not to even try to steal anything but did manage to sneak some of my bonbons :)  

We provided the sweets to match the desserts including the rather nice vanilla and strawberry bonbons, which were very yummy! along with glass bowls of pastel jelly beans, mallows, chocolate hearts and white swirl lollipops.

Credits to us for some fabulous styling!, on the day wedding stationery and coordination, Sweet Things by Fi for some very yummy cakes (promise I did not steal anything!), Virginia Florists who created the beautiful flowers and Joseba Sandoval from Romantic Weddings for such beautiful images.

Our congratulations to Sarah and Ruben x