My Christmas Present to myself

Yesterday I raved about these gorgeously festive and magical photos http://theweddingdecorator.blogspot.com/2010/12/festive-inspirations.html

This morning I bought them as my christmas present to myself, I cannot wait to receive them :)!

A Rustic Autumn Wedding at Finca de la Concepcion, Marbella

As October arrived, again the weather was beautiful for this enchanting wedding with a combination of a beautiful autumnal rustic theme, the A team and held at one of our favourite venues La Finca de la Concepcion here in Marbella.

Lorna had already chosen her flowers with Holland Flowers but needed a wedding stylist to help her with all the extra delightful touches and details, which of course is where we came in. I think at this point is to highlight that we are wedding and event stylists of which flowers play a large part of our decoration service but we are unique in that we provide all the extra delightful details to make the day extra special and personal to our weddings and events.

This was very important for Lorna that she had all the elements put together and someone on the day to make sure that everything was put in place and generally overseen by a creative eye with attention to detail.

We created wooden rustic table numbers to blend in with the woodland theme, designed and printed the stationery and menu cards, supplied wooden personalised fans and an elegantly placed box of cigars, tied the napkins with raffia and matching place cards, decorated the children's area with colourful balloons and cute personalised party bags and provided the magical sky lanterns for the finale to the evening's events.

I did giggle at this wedding though as my creative team and I started squeaking with delight when Holland flowers bought in these fantastic rustic centrepieces, we were a bit like the mice in Bagpuss, if any of you remember this programme! They were gorgeous, and we loved them :) It was an exciting moment which I think rather alarmed the poor chap that was delivering them!

The A team were out in force, which is always lovely as we all work together so well and are like a family! This charming wedding was overseen by Heather who also provided the catering for the evening, Kathryn Parr with her stunning bridal hair and make up.

I wish I had been around to see the evening unfold as the entertainment was provided by the hugely talented trio, Tres Divos singing waiters, followed by Ian Preston, a master of toasting, hosting and fabulous DJ, the host with the mostess perhaps :)

An of course my continuous thank you to Jeremy and Jennie for more gorgeous photos!

Using local Spanish flowers for weddings

This is a post I have been meaning to do for quite some time, eversince I read an article in one of the top UK wedding magazines, You and Your Wedding, about a beautiful wedding at the Hacienda San Rafael here in Seville, the article was called Hacienda Highlights and featured the wedding of Sara and Luke.

I am going back a while as this editorial was featured in July/August 2009.

The part of the article that horrifies me shows a photo of the bride's bouquet, which is quite pretty, with the wording as follows "my mother in law picked the flowers from the gardens at the venue".

I am then racking my brains as to what Mediterranean flowers could have been picked that a) would have survived and b) would have made a pretty bridal bouquet, I could not think of any, so when I examined the photograph again I realised it was a bridal bouquet made out of Oleander, which is one of the most poisonous flowers in the world......?!

Oleander grows everywhere here in the Mediterranean and needs little looking after, you will see it all along the motorways and it is indeed pretty but lethal, every part of this flower and plant is toxic from the leaves to the flowers. There is even a book called White Oleander about a wife that tries to kill her husband by wiping oleander on the door handles of the house, causing a slow death!

I was gobsmacked and emailed You and Your Wedding to ask them to warn future brides of the hazard of using this particular flower but disappointingly I have not even had a response from them, which I think is rather remiss to be honest of the magazine to publish articles about this sort of thing and then not correct features that perhaps are either misleading or downright dangerous.

This leads me onto these fabulous photos found on Snippet and Ink of a beautifully styled wedding but again using pink bougainvillea for a wedding bouquet is misleading.

Bougainvillea will start to wilt within about 5 minutes of picking it, unless it is plunged immediately into lots of water and stays there, so to use this for a wedding bouquet is a complete waste of time unless you want a sad pink droopy bouquet!

It is fine to use for table centrepieces as it will be sat in water, and it is pretty to use to scatter on tables, as even though it immediately wilts it still can look ok as table scatter or napkin decoration, but for a bridal bouquet, forget it, it also has very nasty thorns so by the time you have picked it, removed all the nasty thorns so you can hold it you will be left with a droopy mess :)

Whilst I adore these inspirational magazines and ideas, I do wish at times they would be slightly more practical and not send out the wrong or even dangerous messages.

I would be very surprised if the bride or the mother in law in the Hacienda highlights feature weren't unwell using this flower for decoration. It is one I will not even have in my own garden with my children and pets around.

Festive Inspirations

I have to admit I prefer the balmy Mediterranean evenings here in Spain but as winter is now upon us and today was to be honest a pretty gloomy long day, I do take comfort in Christmas and winter inspirations with all the glitter and twinkling lights and enjoying the time I have to start to take stock, inspire myself and down time to get ready for the following whirlwind summer season.

I will be posting my favorite festive ideas and watching blogs around the world to inspire you as we decorate our homes for this wonderfully festive season.

I believe it is times like this that you can dig deep to enrich your knowledge, understand what it is that truly spurs you on and take stock of where you are and where you want to be.

These photos above by Irene Suchocki are divine, the beauty of pretty lights and simplicity at it's best which I adore, the idea of what you can create around you to make you happy is really very simple things, perhaps I am easily pleased, but it is images like this that make me realise I live in a heaven on earth :)

These images are available on Etsy to purchase

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

Amazing Reviva Winter Wedding offer at Los Monteros extended

We are thrilled to announce our Reviva Winter Wedding offer in conjunction with the prestigious Los Monteros Hotel has had a huge amount of interest and we are now taking reservations for 2011.

Due to the popularity of this amazing offer, we are delighted to be able to extend this offer.

It will run from the 1st January 2011 until the 30th May 2011 (excluding Easter)

It will then continue from the 16th October 2011 to the 15th December 2011.

For more information please read our offer here

http://theweddingdecorator.blogspot.com/2010/11/our-exclusive-winter-wedding-offer-with.html

or email us for more information on info@reviva-weddings.com

Elegant Lemon and Crystals at Villa Padierna

We loved this wedding, it was stunning and the guests outfits were amazing, every attention to detail was not left unturned from the stylish fascinators and hats to the gorgeous die for shoes and handbags, it was divine.

This wedding, for us, was quite a late booking that came in through Moira at Perfect Spanish Weddings. We had not met Moira before but she contacted us as her client wanted to use us which was extremely flattering. We were available as it was a date in October thank goodness as I would have hated to have turned down this amazing wedding.

The wedding was a church ceremony held at the Santo Cristo de Calvario in Marbella, which is quite a retro style seventies church and has a wonderful bilingual priest.

We created a gorgeous lemon rose teardrop bridal bouquet and the bridesmaids had ivory rose handties with crystal details, the buttonholes were made with lemon roses and white orchids. We decorated the church with crystal organza pew ends, lay down an aisle runner supplied by the client and provided two large pedestal arrangements for the altar.

The reception was at the fabulous Villa Padierna hotel and the theme was a lemon and crystal colour scheme as Martina's dress was covered in AB Swarvoski crystals, it was stunning and very elegant.

Martina wanted tall candelabras for her wedding and it was a large wedding of 20 tables so we had some ivory iron candelabras made up for us by a charming iron maker in the poligono in Marbella. I will be back there as he has some wonderful props and furniture so my mind was full of ideas!

The cocktail area was decorated with white and lemon balloons created by my wonderful balloon lady who I will be working with a lot more next year as she has some fabulous decorations, a creative mind and a style I like.

We covered the chairs at the hotel with our loose style white satin chair covers and decorated these with crystal lemon sashes, decorated the tables with the tall candelabras completely adorned with floral arrangements and candles and scattered the tables with crystals and tealights. The head table was decorated with a beautiful long arrangement of flowers, candles and swags made with ivy and crystal lemon bows.

I have to at this point thank my team this day, Anoulka and Izzi, who both worked incredibly hard as we were one person down.

We started the night before as it was a large wedding of 200 people and we worked into the night to get the chairs dressed. We then came back the next day with Loraine and Maureen to finish off the tables and create the arrangements on site. The final effect was incredible, I kept looking back when we had finally finished and the wedding by then was well underway, to take in the transformation we had done on this room. It was one of those moments where I thought wow!!

Moira was charming, we got on like a house on fire and are working together a lot next year which I am hugely excited about. Our thanks to Moira, to Helen and Joey for letting us decorate their daughter's wedding, and to Jenni for providing us with these gorgeous photos.