Bold and Beautiful at the RCM

It's always so gratifying to see months and months of planning and dreaming come to life... and even more exciting when it becomes immortalized in print! We were thrilled to see the wedding of Lauren and Jim at the Royal Conservatory of Music appear in the current issue of WedLuxe Magazine, featuring every bold and brave decision our colour-loving clients made. Seriously... how many brides do you think choose red chairs for their weddings?!! We were a match made in heaven. Scroll down to see some of these glorious details...

Event designer and florist Lidia Tacconelli went to town with this riot of colour. When Lauren presented us with her ombre concept, Lidia took it and ran... Check out the gradual changing of colour of the flowers moving down the shelves on the left of this photo. She did the same with the flowers going up the aisle in the church too.

I love the layering you can see in this photo: the vintage, moiré silk ribbon on top of a custom taffeta coral runner, which in turn, lay on a soft pink (yes, it's pink) lace runner. Notice the four different candle holders in the foreground too and then the custom lucite trough holding the flowers.

The place card table had gradating rings of carnations... I think Lidia said there were close to 900 of them, fitting together to have the place cards sitting atop. In the detail shot, you can see one of the illustrations that Jeff Jackson did for us. 

A hundred years ago, when I was a student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Jeff was a GOD in the world of illustration... when Lauren told me he is married to her cousin, I knew we had to take full and shameful advantage of that relationship! He illustrated the anemones that we used in the invitations, menus, place cards, as well as the table numbers, the "Lauren + Jim' crest and the best piece of all: the map showing all the important places pertaining to this wedding and their lives... including the dog park where Jim had proposed months before. You can see more of Jeff's work here.

Finally, we finished off the night (and the ombre look) with the cake. You will see that Bobbette & Belle even gradated the colours of the filling between layers. It was a mouthwatering combination buttercream AND cream cheese icing. People went bananas... now I can't have them put anything else in to their cakes!!

The happy couple... A very special thanks must go to Lauren, her mom and sister for being so open, receptive and enthusiastic about everything we suggested. It was a true collaboration and I loved every moment of working together. And special, special thanks to Anthony Manieri from 5ive15ifteen Photo Company for preserving the memories so beautifully for as all with  the gorgeous photographs.

Pick up a copy of WedLuxe on newsstands now or click here to read the online version of Lauren and Jim's story.

Daniela and Marco in WedLuxe Magazine

We are especially proud to have the wedding of Daniela and Marco appear in the pages of WedLuxe Magazine because this particular couple came to us when they fell in love with another wedding we'd organized in that very same magazine! T.H. Jackson Huang of Ikonica, Lidia Tacconelli from Fiori Floral Designs and Julie and Christian from Pantry Press were part of the same team on that original wedding... it was such fun to work with these amazing professionals on something that was rooted in the same colour scheme, but executed in a totally different and modern way.

This time around, the venue was the sophomoric Royal Conservatory of Music. The light, the windows and architecture all work together for guests to experience a place like no other in Toronto.

A small glimpse at the menu that Pantry Press designed, based on Chef Arpi Magyar's culinary offerings. Each menu also worked as a place card, with each guest's name featured at the top.

We custom-designed creamy white lucite containers to hold the floral and candle components for this event. We tried to get the colouring as close as possible to the white Victoria chairs from Contemporary Furniture Rentals!

Finally, a beautiful photo of our fantastically fun couple. Thank you for one of the most entertaining and laughter-filled planning experiences we have ever had. We look forward to years of friendship between us ahead. And, yes, Marco, everyone thought you looked Ridiculously Good Looking on your wedding day...

Daniela and Marco: Some Fun Details

Now that you've seen some of the beautiful room shots, we thought you might enjoy seeing some of the details that didn't make it into the magazine... Because this wedding reception was being held at the Royal Conservatory of Music, we thought we should embrace some of the elements that could be found within the hallowed halls of what is arguably Canada's finest music school.

During cocktail hour, all the hors d'oeuvre were passed by waiters on cymbals. This particular photo shows Couture Cuisine's mouth-watering crispy fried shrimp with a kadaifi crust. Oh my...

This photo cracks me up: it was taken long before the guests arrived... Kristin Campbell, the Facilities Rental Manager snapped this photo of the cymbals going through the dishwasher at the RCM on her iPhone!

Escort cards were slotted in between the strings of three beautiful, ornate harps. The harps were handily situated at the top of the stairs, so they were the first thing the guests saw as they entered the Atrium where the dinner took place.

Finally, a detail that was a small, inside joke for our bride and groom. Pantry Press did up these cheeky signs to go on the back of Daniela and Marco's chairs. The original artwork from the letterpressed invitations was carried through the entire day; from the escort cards, to the menus and beyond...
Ikonica's T.H. Jackson Huang was the natural choice to photograph this wedding. Not only is he a gifted photographer, he spent years of his youth studying and practicing violin at the Royal Conservatory! Thank you, to Jackson and his team for capturing this magical day so beautifully.

Perfectly Pressed

I've been lucky to work with some pretty special vendors over the course of my career and thought it was high time to dedicate a post to two of my favourite people of all: stationers Julie Gibb and Christian Morrison, the husband and wife team that own Pantry Press, purveyors of fine letterpress. For invitations and subsequent menus, programs, place cards etc., you would be hard pressed (pun very much intended) to find anyone better out there. There are many, many examples I could show of their beautiful, handmade work but thought I would highlight some of the pieces they created for Kirsten & Jamie's wedding last March at the Canon Theatre.

Julie created this lovely program for the ceremony: it's a little hard to tell here, but the letterpressed cover with the title, "I Do," was then covered in a layer of glassine that wrapped around the cover, like a book jacket. Julie then took every single program (all 250 of them!) and ran it through her sewing machine so that the spine bound the pages together with a beautiful gold thread.

This is one of my favourite shots that photographer Storey Wilkins captured that day, taken while Kirsten and her bridesmaids were getting ready in the not-so-glamourous basement of the theatre. The ladies had their very own Green Room and each of the bridesmaids had her own makeup station, surrounded by bright lights. It may not have been fancy, but it certainly was authentic down there! This photo was part of the feature on this wedding in the current issue of WedLuxe Magazine.

When guests first arrived at the beautiful Yonge Street entrance of the theatre, the first thing they received were their escort cards. I love the authenticity Julie and Christian were able to achieve, right down to the perfect perforations on the sides. We had real theatre ushers handing these out, from boxes marked A-I, J-R, S-Z! The backs were also printed with the date and place of the wedding.

One of the first things I arranged when we decided to move forward with this unusual wedding venue was to arrange a tour for all the vendors who would be involved so they could see exactly what we were going to do. Julie and Christian turned up armed with a camera and took lots and lots of detail shots, all around the theatre, which ended up on various parts of the stationery created for that day. The inspiration for the menu came from the jaw-droppingly beautiful golden dome in the ceiling of the theatre itself.

And finally the funniest element they created for the day: I had the idea to call Chef Arpi Magyar's late-night take on the Egg McMuffin "The Kirsten McFirsten," (based on the bride's 'married' name of Kirsten Firsten) then Julie and Christian ran with it, going so far as to add: "I'm Lovin' Him... I'm Lovin' Her" to the design. McFabulous!

Julie and Christian are some of the kindest, most thoughtful people you could ever be fortunate to work with. Julie handles the design aspect of the business (though her husband is also a graphic designer -- he would want me to mention that!) and Christian tends to the letterpress; painstakingly running every piece through the press, one element at a time. It certainly isn't a very fast or modern way to make a living, but the artistry and love that they bring to every product they produce is a throwback to a slower, more gracious era. Every time I pick up one of their wonderfully tactile, letterpressed invitations, I am grateful that they are keeping this time-honoured craft alive. Lastly, potential clients, take note: Christian makes a mean latte too!

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.