Back to the Barn

A few years ago, we worked on the amazing wedding of Kaleigh and Iain that took place at the family farm about 90 km from Toronto. The jaw-dropping ceremony took place at 4:30 in the afternoon, just as the fading light was streaming in through the slats in the side of the barn. Magic. So when Kaleigh's sister got married recently, we knew we had to do something different, given that a lot of the same friends and family would be in attendance. This time, the marriage itself took place at a quaint Anglican Church in a nearby village. Afterwards, guests came back to the farm where the barn played a totally different role: as host of an intimate, 4-course feast cooked up by North 44.

Celebrating the end-of summer was our goal, both in the decor and in the menu. Hundreds of battery-operated pillar candles lined the walls inside the barn (and lest you think I'm joking, I assure you, there were hundreds -- many were actually lit the day before as they were put in place; some as high as 16 feet up in the air). We couldn't risk having real candles anywhere near all that wood...

I snapped this photo of the North 44 chefs in our host's vegetable patch, picking the tomatoes that would be featured in the first course. Sometimes having the iPhone in my pocket comes in really handy...

And here are the fruits of their labours -- these tomatoes were like candy, they were so sweet and ripe. North 44 Executive Chef Sash Simpson was ecstatic with the bounty he got to create with. There really is no better a time of year for tomatoes, is there?

I thought this photo of the makeshift kitchen, tucked into the drive shed next to the barn, was fun to share... there is so much charm and history on the property that even the kitchen was cool. Take note of the overhead lamp shade -- yes, it's a metal bucket!

Finally, the view from outside while dinner was going on inside. It was actually quite chilly at this point in the evening and I begged Storey Wilkins to go outside to snap this photo. So nippy, in fact, that some guests voiced their displeasure that the big barn door was open, so Storey had to work very quickly!

I love this photo showing the light radiating from within the barn and am thrilled that it was a completely different effect from the last time we held a celebration within it's storied walls...

99 Bottles of Veuve on the Dock

At our wedding this past weekend in Muskoka, 170 guests consumed 126 bottles of Veuve Clicquot... that has to be some kind of record, doesn't it? Fantastique!

La Vita e Bella

Last year, we had the pleasure of coordinating the wedding for our Sunniest Bride Ever (who also happened to have one of the best "how did you meet each other?" stories we've heard): She and her fiancé literally bumped into each other on a street corner. As in, bam! When he asked why she was so happy, given that he'd almost flattened her, she replied "because life is beautiful and I'm always this way!"

So when it came time to start planning this wedding for Miss Sunshine to our dashing, charming and worldly Italian groom, it was no surprise when she chose a night in Tuscany as her inspiration. The Boiler House restaurant was filled with simple blue glazed terracotta pots filled with simple, cheery sunflowers. (Truth be told, since some of the courses were to be served family-style, there was no room on the narrow tables for anything more elaborate -- but the effect was simple and joyous). We brought in the chairs to complete the look and -voilà- bellissimo!

Pantry Press printed the menus on yummy, sunflower-yellow vintage paper from the 70's they had bought from a supplier years before and had had lying around the shop... I guess the colour hadn't exactly been in high demand before this bride walked in...

Elaine from The Vintage Gardener down in the Distillery District did all the floral work and managed to capture the feeling our bride was going for perfectly.

By this point in the post, it probably won't surprise you to learn that our bride's favourite drink is a Shirley Temple. What surprised us, though, was how popular the drink was with guests! Perhaps it's one of those happy-childhood-memory things that immediately takes you back to drinking 'cocktails' with your parents at Fancy Restaurants... I don't know. Regardless, we ran out several times and the bartenders scrambled to keep up with the Shirley Temple demands! Just when I think I've seen it all...

Photo credits: Storey Wilkins Photography. Brava!

Prest-O, Change-O

At every event we help organize, we always try to make our designs do double-duty -- we can't help it; at the end of the day, we're practical girls! With this very purple wedding we did last year, we envisioned an escort card table that would turn into a late night dessert station as the evening progressed.

Lidia Tacconelli and I designed thick, lucite 'boxes' that spanned almost the entire width of a 30" table and then set to filling them with delicate, white dendrobium orchids. In the end, it took almost 6000 of them to achieve the look we had imagined.

Later in the evening, we colour-blocked the fruit to correspond with it's matching tart... and we asked the chefs at The Granite Club to scoop the fruit into bite-sized balls that could easily fit onto the skewers we provided on the side...

Guests loved that they could wander around easily with the skewers instead of cumbersome plates and the tarts were a big hit too. You can read more about this wedding in WedLuxe Magazine or by clicking here to see the online version.

Thank you to Storey Wilkins for always shooting our details so beautifully.

In Search of the Perfect Manhattan

This particular post may cause some readers to think they're on the wrong site, because today I got... dare I say it... downright domestic. The impetus? Trying to recreate the perfect Perfect Manhattan cocktail I had when I was last in, you guessed it, Manhattan.

The background: my sister and I started to drink them on a lark one night, as homage to our late mother. The manhattan had been her cocktail of choice, so when my sister ordered them for us, I was a little bit terrified: I had never enjoyed them when our mum had let us sip hers when we were growing up. As in, not ever.

My sister laughed at me choking down the first taste and gave me the sage advice that it takes until the fourth (yes, fourth) sip to begin enjoying them. Not only was she right, it has become my signature cocktail too; I have since done my best to try almost every version known to man. I now know that I prefer a Perfect Manhattan (equal parts sweet and dry vermouth) and I like it made with bourbon, not rye.

But then I went to New York. And one night at the Gramercy Park Hotel changed everything.

The answer: Brandied Cherries. From France, no less. Of course they were.

And yes, birds sang, the earth moved and angels appeared -- they were THAT much better than the regular, super sweet maraschino variety.

So, I'm not really sure what possessed me to get all Martha today -- it could be the fact that cherries are in season at the moment. Red, ripe and beautiful. It could be that I've never sourced the right ones since that fateful night in New York. But the other day, I became someone that my friends wouldn't recognize: I went online and Googled how to make them myself. Cut to today: Freshly washed cherries, a recently purchased cherry pitter (who knew?) and a whole lot of enthusiasm.

In case you don't know what a cherry pitter looks like, I took a photo, along with the mandatory rubber gloves. (While every website had a variation on the basic recipe, the one thing everyone could agree on was the necessity of rubber gloves!) Too bad mine were about 3 sizes too big... it made the job that much slower. Plus I chose to keep the stems on (more of an aesthetic thing than for any other reason), so it took even longer to get the job done.

The result: A glorious bowl of de-pitted (is that a word?) cherries, soaking in 2 cups of fine French brandy. And the little bowl next to it, proudly showing the fruits of my labour. Pun intended. The cherries will soak overnight and then tomorrow I will tackle the next steps: making a simple syrup and then bottling them. Who knows? This might be the start of a brilliant new side business... I'll keep you posted when I finally get to try one in my first Perfect Perfect Manhattan. Supposedly around 6 weeks from now...

The Talented Mr. Greenberg

I thought it was high time to devote a post to my friend the photographer Michael Greenberg of Phototerra Studios. When the family for this particular wedding and I were in Montreal interviewing photographers, I came out of the meeting with Michael and said to my clients, "We would and should be honoured to work with that man." Sure enough, the photographic results that came from that very special September weekend in Mont Tremblant, Quebec are a testament to the beauty of the surroundings, the love within an incredible family and, most of all, Michael's rare talent.

Since that wedding, I've had the pleasure to get to know him a little more. A former doctor and classical pianist (with a brief stint in the Israeli army thrown in for good measure), he brings a pretty interesting life experience to every photo he takes. Above all, he is one of the most humble and unassuming talents I've ever met. In fact, he's probably blushing right now, if he's reading this for the first time...

It's been really interesting to watch the world catch on to his gift too; you can read some of the accolades and articles being written about him on the Phototerra blog. He travels regularly between Montreal and Toronto, where they also have a studio, as well as jetting off to far parts of the globe to capture weddings and 'stuff' that he documents on his own personal journey.

Some long-time readers of this blog will recognize this setting from a previous post I did. I still get the shivers when I think back to this time. You can click here for a shortcut to the story.

I'll end this post with one of my favourite photos Michael took from the entire weekend. On the Friday night, we held a cocktail reception at the top of the mountain. We served pink champagne at the base, then guests climbed on the gondola and were whisked to the top, where a smorgasbord of Quebec cheeses and charcuterie awaited. This picture is of the emergency stop for the gondola -- I, of course, love what is implied in this photo... the truth is that the gondola operators were not responsible for the glassware left on top!

Canon Theatre Transformation

When the lovely, talented and funny Bruce Patterson of Cloud Nine Creative suggested doing a time lapse for a wedding we did together back in March, I got so excited. We do a lot of 'transforming' of spaces at SpectacularSpectacular and I have always wanted to film the process, because our clients tend to turn up when it's all ready to go and have no idea what has gone into making the magic happen. Plus (I have to admit) having a time lapse is a really cool memento for us too.

When Bruce sent me the finished product, it was even better than I ever could have imagined. Click below, make it full screen and enjoy! You can also read about this wedding in the new issue of WedLuxe Magazine, available on newsstands now.

Canon Theatre Timelapse V2 from Cloud Nine Creative on Vimeo.

Tulip Fever

So, you may wonder why the title has 'tulip' in it, but the photos don't? That's because, as any person in the event industry will tell you, working with mother nature can be a very stressful thing...

We were given the task of designing a party for a highly sophisticated, highly attuned and self-proclaimed Design Snob. 800 tulips had been ordered (for a sit down dinner for 28 -- yes, it was a bit excessive, even for us!) in two shades of red, to try and tie the bluey-red of the feature wall and the orangey-red of the Philippe Starck chairs together. When I got the call from florist Marijke Engel the day before telling me the tulips had arrived in PINK and ORANGE, we had a brief moment of panic and then had to change tacks quickly.

Knowing that pink and orange would never do for our Tom Ford-loving birthday boy, Marijke had to scramble to get any flowers at all on such short notice. She had the great idea of using the simple, elegant phaleonopsis orchid, en masse, to save the day. With the regal flowers in quickly-borrowed containers, black croc candles going down the length of the tables and the odd red chair randomly thrown in to the mix, the combination ended up looking sensational -- and not one guest knew that the party had had a totally different 'look,' less than 24-hours before. Crisis diverted, but not without a new grey hair or two.

Über-chef Arpi Magyar from Couture Cuisine was given free-reign to design an unusual and amazing menu. Given that it was such a small group, we served -gasp- Berkshire pork as the main course! It was a topic of much discussion throughout the night, with people wondering why more people don't offer it, more often. The meal was a work of art and complemented the tulip-free environment to perfection.



Thank you to Jackson at Ikonica for recording such a special night so beautifully with your photos.