Fabulous Florals at Tikitano

As we reflect on our year we are still receiving some gorgeous photos of our weddings we designed and the wedding of Kirsty and Danny at Tikitano in June brings back so many lovely memories.

Kirsty was a huge flower fan and wanted her wedding completely adorned with flowers, her bouquet was my favourite this year, it was gorgeous.

You cannot go wrong with Tikitano as a beach venue, it is stunning and located right on the beach in a fabulous situation. Scarlett the manager is the hostess with the mostess and manages her weddings there beautifully with complete enthusiasm organising everything from ceremonies to fireworks.

We worked closely with Kirsty in the lead up to her wedding creating all the delightful details that she wanted from white folding chairs for the ceremony dressed with tiny floral buckets to beautifully decorated and decadent silver candelabras.

No detail was left out, all the napkins were finished off with herbs, diamante details, ribbons and hand written name tags, the cake was to die for and we created the table seating plan on a white antique mirror supplied by Kirsty.

It was a beautiful day and perfectly organised by Scarlett including fire jugglers and a late night mini snack bar.

Our congratulations to Kirsty and Danny and to their delightful children, including Maisie who I think was the star of the show and is a budding wedding planner!

Our thanks to Jules at Shoot the Bride for sharing these gorgeous photos with us.

A Sophisticated Wedding at La Cabane, Los Monteros, Marbella

The stunning setting at La Cabane Beach Club in Los Monteros hotel is one of our favourite venues here in Marbella, it never fails to have that wow factor.

We were delighted when Lauren contacted us to help her plan, design and create her wedding for early September.

Lauren wanted a midsummer garden theme but kept very elegant and fresh, without any rustic influences, she is a huge fan of less is more and wanted everything beautifully dressed from the chairs to the tables.

As Lauren lives here in Marbella, we started at the beginning, creating Save the Dates, followed by mailing out the invitations, designed and crafted by Anoulka.

We kept the wedding design simple and elegant using white and silver styling with a touch of blues, sage greens and a dash of crystal.

The chairs were dressed in our loose style white satin covers finished off with silver satin sashes. We included some beach elements into the day including a charming sand ceremony and the stunning wedding cake with silver shells and starfish designed by Fi.

Lauren´s bridal flowers were kept to whites with a touch of crystal and we used stunning silver candelabras for the tables dressed with blue hydrangeas, white roses and orchids.

Adding in our famous twinkle with pool candles, lanterns and fairy lights, the final effect was stunning and complimented the beach club perfectly.

Our thanks to all our wonderful suppliers that helped us create such a perfect day, including Andreas Holms for these stunning photographs, to Fi, the wonderful cake designer, to Carla for organising such a fabulous wedding and to us for our lovely decorations!

Some lovely emails

Image courtesy of Jeremy Standley Photography

I often receive some lovely emails about my blog which is always very heartwarming to hear that so many people out there are inspired by my work.

For me of course it is not work, it is a passion.

I have always loved styling and creating settings whether it be my sister´s 21st birthday party (many years ago!) a film launch party, a wedding or indeed a home or a showhome.

I have to admit though the whole romance of weddings took over and I am fortunate enough that this is my business and I enjoy every moment creating, researching and designing weddings.

We are known for particular creative ways in which we style weddings, which has become a bit of a benchmark.

Often I receive comments about weddings we have styled and weddings where we have not been present and always the feedback is that something special was missing as we were not there, which I find very flattering, the fairy godmother was not waving her magic is often quoted!

But nothing stays the same, that would be boring! and we are very excited about some of our new projects we are currently working on for 2012.

Here is a lovely email we received today from across the waters :)

Hello Laura,

I stumbled across your blog in the wee hours this morning.
I am a new wedding planner in Pennsylania (US). I spend a lot of time on the internet looking for the next best thing to write about in my blog.
I just have to tell you that I have never seen more beautiful unique weddings than the ones from your site.
Your weddings are sophisticated, simple, and personal.

Perhaps I like it so much because that is my style.
I think that the cornerstone of a beautiful wedding is picking a venue that has a lot of character. I see that a lot in your weddings. I only wish you were in Italy. I hope to add destination weddings in Italy soon (I spent a lot of time in Italy and hence the name of my business, Brava Weddings).

Thanks so much. I will be reading all your archives and look forward to your next post!

Your newest big fan, Lisa Vernon www.bravaweddings.com

We have helped clients design their weddings in Italy, France and the US, by working with them to organise and create cohesive inspiration boards and pull all their ideas into a manageable decor programme. If you would like wedding styling assistance or indeed wish us to travel to style your wedding day please do get in touch.

We are on Twitter and Facebook if you wish to follow our latest weddings, inspirations and updates.

A Destination Flamenco Styled Wedding in Spain

Currently we are working on some gorgeous weddings for next year in Marbella, Sevilla, Jerez and Ronda.

We are really enjoying our flamenco styling using ivories, burnt oranges, blues and purples, colours that are featuring a lot in our designs.

We have travelled Andalucia extensively and now work with some fabulous venues that have not been showcased as wedding venues yet in Spain, from 10th century Moorish farmhouses, beautiful private villas and fabulous monasteries.

As we broaden our horizons, we offer something truly Spanish and unique, not only in Andalucia but in Barcelona, Madrid and the Balearic Islands.

Below is a photo of some invitations that Anoulka has just designed for one of our brides next year. Despite many hours of tea dying lace the end result was definitely worthwhile!

These images are copywrited by Anoulka, so whilst we hope this gives you inspiration please do bear in mind that these are not to be copied.

Above are images from a wedding styled by Lisa Vorce in Northern Spain and we love the rustic appeal of this wedding from the lavender to the baby kumquats, along with the terracotta pots which of course is very reminiscent of Spain and also reflects some of the ideas we are using for next year´s weddings with an eco friendly theme.

I am a great avocate of eco friendly wedding decorations and if I can plant it, it is biodegradable or if it has come from sustainable source then for me this is perfect.

We will be promoting this ethic much more for our weddings and making them as eco friendly as possible.

Albeit most of our weddings use up their carbon footprints for probably about 10 years to fly everyone over here the least we can do is make is sustainable when they get here!

A Whitewashed Autumn Wedding

Image from City Sage

Inspiration Board from Postcards and Pretties

With autumn and winter almost upon us, which is hard to believe in 25 degrees, I love these inspirations for autumn weddings and using the white washed palettes as opposed to the classic orange and red hues that we see so much of this time of year.

There is always something dramatic about an all white wedding and it can be combined with the softer colour palettes such as platinums, pale khakis and wheat colours.

The rustic charm is offset using beautiful white linens and tableware with polished cutlery,
a selection of mismatched glassware and interesting containers filled with simple white flowers.

I have noticed one of our trends for next year is to use many natural products for our tablescapes so we will be sharing our eco friendly finds and ideas with you.

For some fabulous inspirations you must head over to Postcards and Pretties and I will continue to sit here dreaming of cosy throws and hot cups of tea!

Can you overdecorate a wedding?

Taste and style are commodoties that people desire and certainly when it comes to decorating your wedding day this is important, so are some weddings overdecorated?

We recently had this experience with one of our clients which we would like to share.

Our client had booked her stunning wedding, set in beautiful grounds with a fabulous pool, very Moorish styling, a gorgeous marquee and yet she wanted the marquee dressed with white tissue paper pom poms?

We have seen the craze of tissue pom poms and they are lovely for a baby shower and look fabulous in our local cake shop but for a super stylish wedding, sorry no!

I had to get bossy and take charge at this point and steer our client to much more tasteful styling of her wedding which thank goodness she agreed with instantly which of course is why she hired us.

She ended up with a beautifully styled evening using lots of candles, white chill out areas and it was all very tastefully decorated.

I was so relieved she had accepted my advice as I did have a sleepless night wondering how best to approach this subject!

I am sure our clients were relieved too, as the decorations I suggested were not appropriate to her wedding style were almost another 1000 euros which I immediately wiped off their quote, but I could not bear the thought of cheap wedding decorations in such a stylish setting!

I am not knocking this pom pom craze, last year at one of our weddings we used them but it suited the venue as it was a funky, fun wedding with lots of bright colours so we were able to use them and it worked.

However, we have seen a few weddings posted this year and it looks more like a children´s playground with an In the Night Garden feel to it. I think the pom poms are now on their way out unless they are super stylish silver or gold ones but not the cheap tissue paper ones unless you wish to use them for a baby shower or a cake shop decoration.

Less is more is what I tell all my clients, concentrate on the lovely details, the personal touches, thanking your guests for coming, the stationery, how things are set out on the day from the cocktail sticks to the tablescapes.

Make your wedding personal and stamp your style on it, don´t try to overdress your venue.

Unless you have a super large budget keep it elegant and simple otherwise you will spoil what could be a very beautiful wedding into a cheap decoration showground, if you don´t like it don´t use it.

You should have seen my face earlier this year when I was presented with different bags of foil confetti for each table, I had gold top hats for one table, purple hearts for another, silver stars the list was endless, I nearly died!

Don´t do it unless you really have to! If it is not stylish or tasteful then leave it out.

Creating a wedding here in Spain is all about being outside, Mamma Mia twinkling lights always spring to mind for me and keep it simple and elegant as you are in such beautiful surroudings.

A Stunning Wedding in Sotogrande

This is one of my favourite weddings this year for a few reasons.
The main one is that Danielle and Ed´s family are wonderful and we thoroughly enjoyed working with them, the second is that Danielle works for a large event company in London hence we were under scrutiny! thirdly we had a fabulous venue to work with and I do love a challenge, lastly but not least this was a very emotional wedding.

We came recommended to Danielle´s parents who then made an appointment to come and see us at our studio and hired us on the spot to help them plan and organise their daughter´s wedding.

As Danielle´s parents live here they had already booked the church in Sotogrande and the beautiful venue, a monastery in Sotogrande, but needed someone to take over the organising including liaising with the caterers and suppliers, filling in the gaps, finalising all the other suppliers required, organising the budget sheets, styling and decoration of the wedding and someone to take charge and oversee the wedding planning details and be there on the day.

Battles were fought however as we were working with a venue that tried to insist on using certain suppliers, but we won, drafted in our team and were finally we were set for the big day.

It was fantastic, we organised a hummer to pick Danielle up and deliver her to the beautiful church in Sotogrande. Danielle looked stunning as she arrived at the church in a beautiful Jenny Packham dress that glittered as she moved. We all did that big gosh sigh moment when she stepped out the car and I am still in love with her shoes!

The church was simply decorated with ivy heart pew ends and we created some large floral displays at the altar. We even hung around to redecorate the church for the next wedding as all Danielle´s ivy hearts were then taken down to use as decoration in the marquee.

The reception at the monastery was stunning with a huge marquee and the fantastic 5 star catering by LePanto caterers was remarkable.

The monastery is such a beautiful venue that not much is needed to be honest to give it a wow factor but with all these venues lighting is important.

We organised extra lighting, lots of wow factor candles and large Moroccan style lanterns around the pool, created a fabulous chill out area in the dance area using white chill out furniture with a blue, green and silver theme as decoration.

The marquee area was kept clean and fresh, it was a large wedding party and too much clutter would have been overwhelming, so we kept it simple, decorating the tables with white and green floral arrangements and lots of tealights which we complimented with a fresh lime on each place setting sporting the guest place name on a little white flag stuck into each lime, the smell was glorious as we were setting out the tables!

The highlight for me was Danielle was inheriting the surname of Gay so all the tables were named after gay icons, fabulous!

My other very special moment, for all of us, which deserved a standing applause and many tears in the church, was the fact that Danielle´s lovely father had been ill in hospital and despite the odds made it out in time for the wedding. It was a very magical day for everyone involved.

A fantastically beautiful wedding and here is our testimonial from Danielle and Ed.

Our thanks to Anna Gadza for these wonderful photos and our congratulations to Danielle and Ed and a big thank you for allowing us to organise, style and share such a fantastic day with you both x