A lovely testimonial received this morning

We are always thrilled to hear from our weddings afterwards and here is a lovely email received this morning from Marina and Juan who celebrated their wedding here on the beach and were hugely lucky with such fabulous weather here in November.

"Morning ladies!

We´re just back from our honeymoon and getting through heaps of lovely messages from everyone, all full of compliments on everything about out wedding weekend, including amazing flower arrangements and bouquets, the decoration, the venue, the cake etc!!

So we wanted to send you a HUGE thank-you for helping us put it all together, everything was fantastically organised, so much attention to detail and the lovely generous "extras", like the wedding cake that was 3-tier instead of 2-tier, which was a really lovely surprise and, of course, your very kindly and lovingly prepared gift of our gorgeous flowers for our Gibraltar ceremony.

We´ll have the official photos soon and will send you a pic or two to your shop :-)

Thanks a mil again for exceeding our expectations and going "beyond the call of duty", you´re all a fantastic team!!

Marina & Juan xx"

Thank you Marina and Juan and we are looking forward to seeing the official photos :)!

Restaurant Cervantes Orange Square Marbella

It is not often I go to other restaurants outside of my favourites, but I was persuaded to try this restaurant by my sister, a food and cookery editor, who visited this restaurant this summer and has raved about it eversince and has nagged me to try it when I was not so busy working here in the summer.

My sister was so enthusiastic about the food and assured me it was perfect for me as it was delightfully prepared food in smaller portions as I hate being presented with huge platefuls of food. 

It also brings back memories of when we were children and our parents often took us into Marbella to eat out in the townhouse style restaurants of Marbella, including the Meson Pasaje, the Old Creperia, which is now Cervantes, and another wonderful restaurant that sadly is no longer there but it was like sitting in someone's dining room, in fact we probably were and being served the most delicious spinach a la creme by a Harry Worth lookalike !

So busy summer over and time to try these fabulous restaurants out, I booked a table and went with Loraine, a huge food and wine connoiseur, and the owner of the Arte Cafe and Earthscent.  We booked a table on the terrace and luckily on this November evening it was beautifully warm and mild and the view over Orange Square was just how I remembered it and magical.

 The menu choice was wonderful and it all sounded delicious, Loraine was stumped for choice which apparently is rare!  Loraine eats out most nights and is a real foodie, she had also been recommended this restaurant as well from another one of our clients,  so she was very excited and is still talking about the marvellous meal we had even now, so that says something!

What can I say, the food was to die for, it was beautifully presented, fabulous flavour combinations and just perfect.  The chef, who apparently is only 25 years old, is a genius.  I was in heaven at this restaurant.  I had a quail and chestnut salad to start, Loraine and I both had the lamb followed by some amazing bread puddings with passion fruit icecream for me and a parmesan icecream for Loraine.

This restaurant has only been open 5 months and is so worth a visit if you are a foodie, masterchef style diner.  For me it is already now on my list of special restaurants to visit and my sister and I are planning to go at Christmas.  It has an open fire as well so perfect for winter dining, with a lovely shabby chic feel to it, just hoping they have lots of candles there throughout the winter and the fire raging!

I get asked all the time for restaurants I recommend and this is certainly one of them, the owner, Phillipe, is charming and dropped off some leaflets to our shop the next day offering our clients a free glass of french champagne to anyone that wishes to visit this fabulous restaurant, so if you are looking for a real food heaven restaurant to visit this is definitely on our list, the quality of food and the service was outstanding.

Next time you are in Orange Square in Marbella, dont' fall into one of the tourist restaurants that charge you the earth for nothing spectacular, take the time to book a table at Cervantes and have a fabulous meal at the same prices prepared by the most extraordinary chef.

Their telephone number for bookings is 952 776 759

A Peacock Themed Wedding

We have had a very exciting 2010 and an are looking forward to an even more exciting 2011 as we become increasingly busier.  We are being booked up with at an alarming pace and have many wonderful weddings to plan, create and look forward to.

We are now busy here working on next year's wedding designs, details and planning many fabulous days for our brides. 

 

Our wedding planning and coordination service has also become increasingly busy for brides looking for that stylish element to their weddings combined with Carla's super organised skills.  Our clients this year are raving about Carla and the effort she puts into our weddings.  She is a star and works tirelessly, I am sure I have seen someone before like Carla and am thinking it is probably a James Bond film where she clicks her heels! 

I have to admit I have had a creative brain block this past few weeks, I am convinced my brain just shuts down on wedding overload, but finally today, after much fretting, the creative streak came back!!  It happens to me occasionally and I always panic but am beginning to understand that this seems to be a natural process in order to clear my mind and concentrate on the next projects I have.

As I start to work on our designs I will post them in the hope they will inspire your own wedding design or event.

Here we are creating a peacock theme for a wedding at the Finca de la Concepcion next year in June.  I am toying between the dark gothic look and the slightly more garden design for this wedding as it is set in the most amazing gardens.

I think a combination and balance of both will work well, not too dark and not too fluffy.

There are 7 bridesmaids so imagining them in varying colours of the peacock feather, purple, emerald greens and teal colours with a paler bouquet and then the bride in ivory with a darker bouquet. Men in dark navy suits with some fabulous ties.  We have even found peacock ties :)

I would welcome any comments or feedback as we showcase our wedding designs, I do think feathers are going to play a big part in weddings for 2011 as the vintage style takes on an 80's twist and gets bigger and bolder.

A Stunning Winter Beach Wedding in Marbella

A few of my not so good photos from a beautiful wedding we organised and decorated here in Marbella on Saturday with the most wonderful ceremony conducted at sunset on the beach in Marbella.

Following the official wedding on Gibraltar, our lovely bride from Madrid had booked the beach restaurant for her reception and then contacted us to put the rest into place.

We organised a lovely Spanish minister of ceremonies, a fabulous dulce leche wedding cake and of course the decorations, flowers and a helping hand. 

It was an interesting ceremony as the bride is Russian and the groom is Argentinian, so the service was conducted in Spanish and then a Russian tradition of eating salt and bread was performed by the mother using a beautifully embroidered linen cloth featuring love birds. 

I was fascinated and then the parents threw coins and jewels at their feet.

The weather here was amazing, it was 26 degrees, no winds and a stunning sunset to be enjoyed by not only our wedding party but many onlookers on the beach watching the proceedings.  How lucky they were as it is a lottery here in the winter but we do get some amazingly beautiful winter sunny days.

More photos have been promised which I hope are better than mine!

Our Exclusive Winter Wedding Offer with Los Monteros Hotel

With the welcomed reopening of one of the finest 5 star hotels in the world here in Marbella, Los Monteros Hotel remains a stunning venue, one of our absolute favourites and is now brimming with excitement as the staff recently started working again with renewed vigour and spirit to put this fabulous hotel back on the map, where it should be.

Reviva Weddings are delighted to be working in association with Los Monteros Hotel to offer our clients an fabulous exclusive winter wedding package created especially for us to offer our clients.

Our Reviva Winter Wedding offer at Los Monteros Hotel starts on the 1st January 2011 and runs until the 30th May 2011, it will then run from the 16th October to the 15th December 2011.

Our offer includes

Reception Drinks and Canapes (3 per person)

Menu

Fish Consomme with Sun dried tomato ravioli

or

Green salad with asparagus, pistachios and figs vinaigrette

***

Pan fried sea-bass with celery mousse and tarragon sauce

or

White veal steak with foie-gras and pine nuts with vanilla from Tahiti sauce

***

Praline Charlotte with rum sauce

Drinks: Gran Feudo White and Red Wine, national beer, soft drinks, juices and mineral water

Glass of cava and Coffee

2 Hours Open Bar (Standard brands)

Printed Menus

Bridal Suite with a special surprise and a second room free of charge

Price per person: 100€ (including VAT)

If you are planning a winter wedding here in Marbella, please do contact us for more information about this offer by emailing info@reviva-weddings.com

If you are thinking of planning a wedding here, Reviva Weddings have negotiated many offers and discounts with some fabulous venues here in Southern Spain, so please do contact us for more information as to how we can help you create your dream day.

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.