Sparkly Winter Wedding, Villa El Cid, Marbella

When Elaine and Kevin first contacted us it was to help them style and decorate their wedding day, the rest was pretty much booked from the church ceremony to the cocktail and reception at the villa they had hired for the week and Elaine had been picking my brains during her wedding planning to get some help and direction when she was booking suppliers.

Elaine had some gorgeous ideas for decorating her dream day using purples and deep grape colours mixed with some softer pinks, silvers, lots of sparkle, fairy lights and twinkle, I was in heaven as we worked on the details together and very excited when Elaine finally hired us as knew this would be a beautiful wedding.

Elaine then hit what I call a wedding planning wall.

As we had got on well chatting decoration she then hired us to finish off her planning and oversee the actual wedding day.

We took over her wedding arrangements, which was easy as we already knew all their suppliers, and made sure that every element of her day was covered and finalised so she could relax and enjoy the day.

It started as a typical November day, slightly cloudy, some showers threatening and everyone looking up to the skies all day and checking their weather apps!  We had a touch of rain in the morning but soon the skies cleared and the rest of the day was beautiful.

Elaine and Kevin got themselves ready in different parts of El Cid villa and it was lovely to see them so excited and nervous at the same time.  

The ceremony was quite early for Spanish standards, at 1pm at the Encarnacion Church in the Orange Square, so after a busy morning everyone set off to Marbella for the wedding.

I left my capable team at the villa waving their wands to create Elaine and Kevin's dream day, Pedro Navarro's team were working their magic in the conservatory hanging up white drapes, decorating the tables with some gorgeous florals and hanging beautiful glass bulbs with tealights.  

Everything was being overseen by Rocio making sure each detail was finalised from the addition of our silver charger plates, the chairs decorated with deep grape sashes and secured with diamante brooches, menus set on each place setting and finished off with our grape napkins decorated with diamante napkin rings.

Gusto catering were whipping up a culinary storm in the kitchens ready for when the guests arrived back to the villa starting with a cocktail and canapes and then a fabulous 3 course meal finished off with expresso martinis and a dessert station.

I was overseeing the church ceremony and have to admit I had to walk out during one song as tears welled up, I was thinking of the recent loss of my father, it was an emotional day and a beautiful ceremony.

Afterwards everyone popped into the bar opposite the church for a drink and Elaine and Kevin had some fabulous photos taken around Marbella with Jeremy Standley.

Once back at the villa, the guests were treated to a fantastic reception during the afternoon and evening followed by dancing well into the night with the Midnight Mechanics.

We finalised all Elaine's arrangements after the wedding to make sure her paperwork was registered and she left Spain with her marriage certificate.

Our thanks to Jeremy Standley for sharing such fabulous photos with us and our congratulations to Elaine and Kevin.

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!

A Fabulous Wintery Wedding Cake Find

A quick inspiration post as I gather ideas for our patient 2012 brides!
I found this image today of a grey lace crochet cake design by Sweet and Saucy. I love this idea to incorporate with a spanish themed wedding.

I also love the austere colours, grey is my favorite winter colour and combined with the dark wood cake stand is evocative of the dark wood we see here a lot in the traditional spanish bars and homes.

It really works for me and I can imagine designing a complete wedding to match this cake with a winter wonderland theme, using dark woods, crocheted table accessories, pine cones and a bit of sparkle combined with rustic charm, log cabins spring to mind as well and roaring fires! The list is endless as I am always captivated with Winter Wonderland Scenes!

Remember with one inspiration a whole event can be created.
Anyone any good at crochet!

A Turquoise and Red Winter Wedding Setting

The joy of being properly back online is glorious and I have been like an addict desperately soaking up some creativity, I really was quite surprised at how miserable I was without being able to constantly search creative ideas and brains for inspirations and found myself desperately painting walls, photo frames and generally organising my house!

This for me sums up all the details that make a truly special day and the wedding theme so special. Again the wonderful Elizabeth Anne Designs, who I visit as often as I can as this is one person who is so in tune with me and my ideas from interiors and lifestyles to weddings.

I love this attention to the details from the cute pom poms, the table numbers in frames, the details for the napkins which are beautifully tied and presented, very simple flower arrangements in glass bottles on the tables and fabulous table linens to pull the whole scheme together. Simple ideas and yet so beautifully put together with such time and effort spent on each item.

Love the pom pom garlands as well which is something we just posted about and I do expect to see many more of these beautifully cute garlands this year at our weddings, I have already learnt the art of pom pom making this winter having decorated Liz and David's wedding at the Suite del Mar in September and am delighted with our results so far!

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.

Winter Wedding Inspiration Board

Top left to right Earrings Centrepiece Bouquet Winter Cape

Middle left to right Falling Snow Table Decorations Snow Bride Falling Snow

Bottom left to right Image Bouquet Bouquet Snow Queen

I am sitting here on this very dark morning with a raging storm and torrential rain overhead, so I have engrossed myself in creating a lovely wintery wedding board instead of looking out at a very gloomy day!

So here I am with my steaming coffee, all my Christmas lights twinkling and creating beautiful images for everyone to enjoy as we approach the big day :)

Which does remind me, I have an awful lot of wrapping to do today for a certain little person in my house!

To see the credits for the above inspiration board click on the descriptions

A Winter Wonderland Inspiration

I love this winter wonderland board I found on the White Petal Blog.

The Winter Wonderland theme is endless for adding a creative touch to your party or wedding, using snowy branches, pine cones and frosted silvery decorations presents such a special quality.

For me, this Winter Wonderland also comes with a peace and silence as I remember looking out my window as a child at night watching snowflakes fall and the overwhelming excitement of watching a world being transformed into a wonderfully magical Narnia.

When I worked in the UK and the US we created some amazing events and displays incorporating this scheme, which we used to start designing in June :)

From building magical Santa's grottos to creating fabulous toy displays in windows, transforming advertising agencies into Winter Wonderlands for parties, the list was endless :) It was also amazing to work with so much glitter and fake snow which used to take months to disappear and to see our clients faces when they thought they were going back to the office for a boring party!!!

Here in Spain the majority of our work is the summer season, our clients travel to Spain for balmy Mediterranean nights, which is difficult to remember now we are shivering here at night in 10 degrees!!! So sadly for me we do not get many festive decorations to do here in Marbella. Most of the venues here do their 'own thing', which are nice but not WOW, I have yet to be wowed in Marbella at Christmas!!! Apart from my own home of course :)

There is a fabulous tip on the A Bun Can Dance Blog, of which I am an avid reader, about creating frosting on branches and decorations, a simple but wonderful idea of dipping decorations into eggwhites and then caster sugar, I am trying this out this weekend! I fear though that with the ants and bugs we have here I might regret this homemade frosting but got to be worth a go to get festive!!!

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!

Beautiful Winter Wedding

I adore this time of year with so many decorations and found this fabulous winter wedding on Elizabeth Anne Designs, to see more details and the hugely talented list of suppliers involved in creating this wedding visit the blog.

The centrepieces were created with white cabbage florets, snowflake mums, white roses, gold pine cones and twigs. There are so many fabulous details from the Christmas ornament guest book to the snow white winter wedding cake.