A bit about us!

We are now bustling through, in the middle of our popular wedding season and I don´t think we have ever had such a busy month before, with many beautiful weddings being created, decorated, planned and coordinated here at the moment. Wings are flapping frantically, magic wands are being waved and ribbons are flying around as we create beautiful and magical days for our clients here!

We are having a lovely time and are thrilled to be receiving so many testimonials, cards, and emails from our clients, it currently feels slightly like Harry Potter! There are a lot of letters coming through the post box and magic in the air!

Here are a few thanks yous and testimonials we have received just this week from Puente Romano Hotel, the Butterfly Ball, and some of our recent weddings.

First was a beautiful card from Ingrid who got married yesterday at the Ritz Carlton Villa Padierna.

"I just wanted to say a big thank you, throughout the organising and run up to the wedding you have been amazing, you are brilliant at your job and I know you will never be short of business. All the best in your future again appreciate all your hard work and help"

Carla received this lovely testimonial from Antonia and Fady whose wedding we ´took over´ at the end of May, so they could relax on the day.

"We are so glad we had Carla as our wedding planner, she is utterly reliable and dependable, always responding quickly and thoroughly to our requests. Carla also has plenty of contacts so finding a great band or photographer is trouble free. Most importantly she is really lovely and flexible making organising our wedding hassle free, personal and as pleasant as possible. Even if you can manage without a wedding planner to help you organise your wedding, I´d really recommend having someone like Carla there on the day itself. She takes the hassle out of being the host, from dealing with suppliers, timings, to dealing with the inevitable unexpected issues, it just meant we could enjoy our wedding and not worry about a thing.

The Butterfly Ball that we decorated and sponsored on Saturday sent us this lovely email this week.

The flowers were beautiful thank you and the biscuits were divine and the giant cupcake was delightful and won by the 6"9 boxer Tyson Fury who planned to carry it all the way back to the UK to give to his wife and daughter! He was over the moon and a big thank you!

Fi was an absolute star and supported me to provide all these delightful goodies for the Butterfly Ball with a giant cupcake decorated with butterflies and 250 beautifully decorated butterfly cookies for our goody bags, I am indebited to her, the most talented and gifted cake maker and decorator here on the coast!

Finally last but not least is an email I received this morning from the Marbella Club for the Suite del Mar opening party

Thanks Laura it was a beautiful party and looked amazing

Fi was with two clients of ours this week and also sent us this email to us about two separate clients we have booked for September

Lastly I was speaking to Mairead and Sarah, both of them sang your praises and said they would be lost without you and sang your praises

Finally and I have to share this with you is my beautiful little daughter, Twinks aka Elizabeth at her school show the Feria del Verano last night, I did have to leave a wedding with Anoulka in charge to shoot off to see her La Bamba dance and it was such a lovely evening apart from her wedgie!

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We are now embarking on our busiest week of June with some fabulous weddings we have worked very hard on with a very dramatic spanish theme, a gorgeous vintage style theme with peaches, ice blues and silvers, a silver shell theme at Los Monteros and the list is endless so pop back to see our lovely weddings being uploaded as we receive the photos.

Summer is Coming and so are our Weddings!

We have had a gloriously sunny day here today which makes me think of summer and we are very excited about our up and coming weddings.

We did have our first wedding last weekend and have since had a lovely email from our bride, who BTW did a fabulous dance up the aisle!

Here is what Heather Jean sent us before she left for her honeymoon which I understand is going to last at least a year and she is planning lots of lovely weekends away!

Dear Laura

Thank you for everything, our decorations looked amazing, you and your girls did a fantastic job and please also thank Loraine for our beautiful, stunning wedding flowers, I am still looking at them as I type this and they are drying out ready for the album.

Big Hugs Heather Jean and Christian

With summer around the corner in mind, check out this gorgeous photo shoot on Style me Pretty by Heather Ham using the very popular and summery colour combo of hot pinks and turquoises with of course all the wonderful details that I so rave about and toil over ;)

It is well worth heading over to see the entire shoot which comprised of a photo booth, drinks station, cake table and entrance table, in fact I do wonder at times where the endless list at weddings will stop, luckily we seem to have one but can never resist a candy or cocktail bar, it is a decorating heaven for me!

Also talking of photo booths, we are of course trying to drag Spain into the 21st century of weddings and doing rather well to be honest but you must watch this space as we shortly announce a very exciting new product here on the Coast, which is of course a photo booth with props :)

I cannot wait to get in it with my false moustache ;)! It is cool, easily set up, fabulous photos and photographer so cannot go wrong, I cannot wait!

In fact I can feel a prop shop coming on! Photo booth sign to start with followed closely by strange feather boas, silly hats and dare to think what else will follow!

We will post more news about this shortly!

New Jenny Packham 2011 Collection

We just fell onto Wedding Chicks to find the latest Spring and Summer Jenny Packham collection for 2011.

This feminine collection is based on my prediction of ballet, swans and feathers becoming big for 2011 and 2012 weddings. Think of the Swan Lake and you have the new trend for weddings (Leona I told you so!)

I love this floatiness of these dresses, ideal for hot destination weddings, with all the gorgeous detailing and the hair accessory is just divine.

I have worked with Loraine now for nearly two years on our weddings, Loraine is the most creative florist with such a style, but is (and she will vouch for this) not a sales person or any good at marketing.

I nearly fell off my chair when we were chatting one day and she casually mentioned she had created the flowers for Jenny Packham's wedding here in Spain?!

If we had done this whilst she was with me I would have been singing this from the rooftops!

Loraine created a white orchid theme for Jenny Packhams wedding, unfortunately we do not have photos as it is a photographer that does not send them to us which is such a shame as we would love to share these with you.

Stylist Stalking :)

Inspiration Board by Selina Lake

One of my favourite stylists is Selina Lake, I was first introduced to her work via my sister, who works for Ryland Peters and Small. My sister brings me the most beautiful books when she visits, for me to study and do lots of oohs and ahhs :) One of my favourite recent books was one styled by Selina called Bazaar style.

My coveted books are studied from page to page for me personally to use as decoration ideas for my own home and of course inspirations for our weddings.

I love this inspiration board, it is filled with divine colours, I know my two older daughters love this style as their bedrooms are decorated in these colours. LIttle Twinks is still lurid pink and princesses at the moment but we are working on her!

Again we are moving away from the very pale washed out tones of the vintage that has been so popular and moving to slightly bolder sorbet colours to brighten everything up slightly just in time for the Spring weddings.

I am just dying to know where that last photo of the pastel coloured fairground ride came from, in fact I am desperate to do a fairground themed wedding after seeing the fabulously glorious one on Preston Bailey's website, you must go and check this amazing wedding out, it is jaw dropping!

I was toying with feria ideas last week for events and weddings here :) A seed was sown which is always dangerous!

New Google for Weddings

How cool is this, I have just seen it on Facebook, Google have launched a new free wedding tool in time for Valentines Day, Simplifying Wedding Planning.

The creative designs throughout this fabulous new tool were created in collaboration with the reknowned wedding and event planner, Michelle Rago, one of my inspirational creative people I watch for trends and styles I love along with Preston!

You can create a website, use all the Google planning tools to collaborate with your wedding guests on schedules, guests lists, addresses and travel arrangements plus much more.

Access and edit your planning documents from anywhere and create online albums.

Well worth heading over to Google to check out this fantastic idea, a must for any bride to be and I think I will be playing around with this as well today to see what it can offer our brides and clients, that is yet another Sunday taken care of!

An Ice Blue and Coral Mood Board

Again the coral tones for a wedding this time combined with an ice blue, we did create this board for one of our lovely clients getting married here in June, but we are also considering this colour combo for our photo shoot with the gorgeous white peonies, creating these fabulous tassle garlands that will be the rage this year for garden settings and loving the slightly rustic feel to this style.

Images courtesty of Martha Stewart and Reviva

If you like this colour combination and wish us to recreate this for our fabulous photo shoot, let us know!

A Mango Mood Board

I had a great dilemma with Mango last year, it is a difficult colour to translate and even harder to find the perfect shade, some are very pink and others are more peachy in tones.

It is a hugely popular colour still for weddings this year and combined with black, silver, white, teal blue or even a hot magenta it is a stunning colour to work with.

Another idea for our Spring photo shoot, so please cast your vote on your favourite colours you wish to see us use.

Again a thank you to Wolf and Whistle for some of the images within this inspiration board.

A Sorbet Colour Palette

A stunning combination of colours for 2011 wedding colours is the kaleidoscope of soft sorbet colours, champagne, cornflower, lemon, watermelon, raspberry and peppermint, all divine romantic colours and all good enough to eat :)

Think of hot Mediterreanean summers with these cooling pastel colours and the endless possibilities of creating icecream and cocktail bars or even serving iced yoghurts such as Snogs, which apparently Kate Middleton has requested for her wedding.

This mood board was created as we are currently planning a spring photo shoot here with some of the most talented, artistic suppliers involved, so lots excitement and a fair amount of brain storming to be done over the next month for our favorite colour combos.

Please do leave us comments as we post our colour inspiration boards to vote for your favourite one, we would love to know the most popular colour scheme our readers would like to see us feature for our Spring photo shoot here in the charming countryside of Andalucia.

I would like to thank Wolf and Willow for many of these gorgeous images on this board, I have spent hours on their blog tonight being truly inspired :)

Destination Guest Book Ideas

I am seeing some hugely creative ideas on the internet for guest book ideas, from vintage typewriters set up on tables, so let's hope all your guests will type out a personal message and hopefully despite their drunken haze be able to hang this from a beautifully decorated wishing tree or be able to assemble scrabble pieces in a cohesive form :)

I of course love all these ideas as they are hugely creative, but let's be honest, they are not practical from a European wedding point of view.

Let's face it most of your guests by the time they are presented with a guestbook to sign would have downed the best part of a bottle of champagne or sangria and will not have any co-ordination to test their keyboard skills on an old typewriter or delicately hang perfectly formed cards on a tree.

A destination wedding as well also poses the problem of getting everything home. It is all very well to make up a park bench and have your guests write on it and put it in your garden, but if you are getting married in Spain or Italy it is going to cost you a fortune to get this creative artifact to your homeland.

Having been working on this idea with some of our brides for our weddings this year, by far the better options are to have a photo or video booth, this can be set up for you here in Spain by our wonderful Becky Sharpe, she created an amazing video booth last year for a wedding here.

Or to have a wishing well such as a birdcage where guests can post their messages into this (hopefully!) and you can take them home and mount them into your wedding guest book, a normal shop bought guest book just set out or another lovely idea I have suggested this year for our brides is to go onto a site such as Blurb and create your own personalised guestbook.

This is a fabulous idea, and if you take a look at the Blurb site, for example, you can create and design you own book.

Upload photos of you and H2B, some fabulous photos of the country and venue you are marrying in, in our case Andalucia, perhaps photos of your guests as well could be fun and leave blank pages for them to leave their messages.

You can also add in questions for them to answer such as, where do you see us in 25 years time, any tips for a happy marriage, etc and see what messages and replies you get!

I love this idea as it is creating something truly unique for your wedding day and such fun to look at afterwards, you could even follow this book up with another one about your honeymoon and the first year of married life, a sequel!

This is also an easy option to get everything home and to be practical, as much as us creative divas love to think we will create a fabulous scrapbook after the wedding, there are many of us that will become bogged down with work and back to a 'normal' life and this will take a back seat and may never get done.

By creating this personalised book with photos and fun questions plus the guests comments it is already done and dusted will save more time and effort when the honeymoon period is over and normality returrns.

You will have a wonderfully personalised guest book on your coffee table without any effort on your part apart from having created it in your wedding excitement and another lovely part of building up to the day!

I have certainly got some of my brides thinking about this idea which is very simple and not expensive and yet fun to do so I hope I have given you some inspiration too for your wedding day by creating your own personalised guest book idea.

Fabulous Inspirations for 2011 weddings!

OMG I have just stumbled upon this fabulous Zenadia Design, that is so worth a visit as it has everything I imagined possible for the 2011 wedding trends and sums the style of 2011 weddings up perfectly.

The blues are everywhere making a huge comeback from the elegant navy to the ice blues, combined with the corals and peaches and still using the vintage washed out ivories.

For me personally it is the first inspiration board I absolutely love, although I am torn :)

It was the navy inspirations I was looking for tonight and I was surprised how many colours work well with navy from the lime greens, oranges to the pale nude pinks, bright pinks and yellows.

We will be posting more navy ideas for weddings shortly as we are working with many beautiful weddings using this colour but all the shades of blues and greys are popular this year, however not turquoise though seems to have had it's day for now, but more sharper or subtle blues are the way forward with a warm coral or peach.

I also have a feeling watching the fashion world that the oriental theme will be back but with bolder colours which I think reflects on the third inspiration board we have posted on here tonight with the slight tropical theme. I will be also researching this trend and posting more about this as well.

I do hope this helps our brides and our readers to get creative, I love it when I stumble upon sites like this, they are worth their weight in gold and we thank them for sharing their ideas with us and I am grateful they continue to inspire me.

Pale Metallic Mood Boards

Whilst I was over at Wedding Nouveau this morning I found these two beautiful mood boards in pale metallics, one silver and one golds which I thought would be lovely to share with you.

The pale metallics are very much still the vogue for weddings, teamed up with duck egg blues, champagne and light corals. Truly elegant and stylish combinations and the top mood board has the fairy light tree photo that I purchased recently!

We love Garlands!

One of the key elements to any event dressing or design is to work overhead, (above 6ft in my old terms of learning the display basics :)

Any decorations that are above eye level immediately capture the attention of your guests and create a convivial atmosphere whether it be party, spooky or festive.

If you want to add impact to decorating an event or a room there are a few key elements and this is one of the most effective to date, as well as lighting an event.

What I love at the moment is the creativity that is appearing with garlands and decorations, taking it away from the rather tacky foil 70's decorations we all knew and possibly loved, with the Retro 70's fashion back in style this could be now forgiven and almost classed as tasteful, although not in my book :)

However I do love these new ideas emerging from the tissue pom poms and then the hanging garlands strewn around venues to create a lovely party atmosphere from paper hearts to buttons on a string, the theme for this idea is endless and I think really it kicked off in 2009 with the fashionable bunting idea and has progressed from there.

Definitely a trend worth creating from photos strung up on strings of your loved one and your courtship, to paper hearts, tassels really the possibility is endless and one garland would make such a difference to your event, personalise it and make it more fun.

Reviva Weddings are now offering paper heart garlands from as little as 5 euros for 2 x 3 metre lengths in their shop and can make bespoke garlands and pom poms to fit in with your wedding theme, we also advocate the use of your photos to string on a washing line at your wedding to create that truly personal touch to your wedding and have the cutest clothes pegs and washing lines ready!

I have stolen these fabulous photos from Elizabeth Anne designs one of my inspiration blogs I visit constantly, for more inspirations head over to take a look.

A wonderful idea for kids parties too that could easily be made up with favorite characters, in my case princesses!

In fact many moons ago when I decorated my sister's 21st birthday party (yes I was doing it then!) I created pink baskets of dolly mixtures as well suspended from the ceiling for the guests to help themselves, all I recall from this party was pulling out the staples from my parents ceiling the next day with a delightful hangover before they arrived back from Spain, they were none the wiser!

Winter Star Wedding

I love this inspiration board found on Brenda's Wedding Blog using stars as a winter wedding theme. Such a beautiful idea and very pretty, it would be a nice idea to have table names after different stars and even have a star named for your wedding day.

I thought golds would take over again this year and love the photo with the wedding dress, but I do think we will still see a lot of silver again for 2011, blended with duck egg blues, ivories, corals are still very much in and sage greens.

Tropical Colours at the Suite del Mar Puente Romano Hotel

As winter arrives in Spain and we have started our December holidays here, I am tucked up on top of my radiator, so it is lovely to receive photos of our weddings of hot sunny tropical days!! I do love to see our weddings but sometimes do not get the photos, Liz kindly sent me hers this weekend and also said it was strange viewing them whilst she was surrounded by snow in the UK!

It is always a good starting point when you are planning a destination wedding to consider the colours of that country, normally bright tropical flowers are in abundance here in Spain, with hot pinks, oranges, reds, purples and yellows and it always works well in the hot sunshine to reflect these colours in your wedding.

Liz definitely wanted a bright coloured wedding, using predominently pinks and yellows and was happy to leave the details to us but a definite decoration Liz loved was the tissue pom poms and wanted a fun vibrant wedding day.

We created some gorgeous bouquets for Liz and her bridesmaids and the boys had hot pink rose buttonholes. For the church we provided fans dressed in hot pink and lemon ribbons with personalised tags.

The reception was held at the fabulous beach setting in the Suite Del Mar at Puente Romano hotel, which has undergone lots of refurbishments including glass windows and doors installed ready for the winter season, it looks amazing, one of our favorite venues here in Marbella.

We decorated the Suite del Mar with a mixture of pink and yellow lanterns and pom poms, the effect was lovely and certainly added a party element into the day. On the tables we created beautiful brightly coloured floral arrangements in glassware filled with lemons and limes and surrounded with pink and lemon tealights, it looked stunning.

Pom poms are definitely the way forward next year, and Reviva Weddings now offer them as part of our decoration range, we will blog wedding trends over the winter as well but this is one we will see a lot of next year.

It was wonderful to hear from Liz and David and here is their testimonial.

Dear Laura

I wanted to drop you a note to say thank you to you and your team for our wedding back in September.

We were really pleased with the flowers and the Decoration at the Suite Del Mar.

I know that it was a pretty rough brief that I gave you due to my lack of knowledge about flowers but I was really impressed by the outcome and it was exactly how I envisaged it.

The bright colours and ceiling decoration definitely gave us the party feel we were looking for.

Speaking to my brother who went to see the venue in the morning and was a bit shocked by the amount of water due to the rain the day before, I imagine you all worked really hard in getting it looking as great as it was.

Thanks for all your hard work and it looked amazing.

These photos were supplied to us by Liz and the photographer was www.pacomontagut.com

Wedding Colours for 2011

Looking at the trends that are still emerging this year and will continue into 2011, there are two colour combinations that are really standing out. 

Firstly we have the lavender and sage colour combo and then a vibrant hot pink and lemon, both very different and both equally divine.

We have found some lavender inspiration from The Wedding Chicks and Country Living for you and we are loving this rustic feel using old clay pots, raffia and string, little pots of lavender dotted around and the linen table covers. 

Whilst the lavender colour scheme works well with vintage silver, which has been hugely popular this year, gold is making a comeback for 2011, so watch this space as we find our gold inspirations to share with you!