Spring Has Sprung!

Ahhh... the Prima Vera of Spring! There's nothing quite like it, is there? A season of renewal, hope and happy thoughts of warmer days ahead. We did a rehearsal dinner this past week at Jamie Kennedy at the Gardiner Museum that felt so fresh and spring-y, I just had to post about it; even if all I have at this point are my less-than-perfect iPhone photos.

I've always wanted to do a party with ferns -- yes, all and only ferns -- and was so happy when our client enthusiastically agreed. Lidia Tacconelli of FIORI did up long, woven metal baskets, filled with 3 different kinds of ferns and interspersed a few mushrooms within to surprise guests as they sat and ate their yummy meal. The result was unexpected, fun and whimiscal... just like the bride herself.

This is a closeup of the cheery wallpaper Lidia sourced to run up and down the tables. It added a real pop to the overall effect, plus it introduced several shades of green for us to incorporate throughout the design.

This photo is fun because you can see virtually every shade of green that we played with: the front and back of the place cards, the menus tucked into the napkins, the wallpaper, the planters of ferns, the votives and, finally, the linens underneath. We always design parties so that the different layers of the experience get revealed to guests at different points of the evening. And we always add many interesting things to look at in case the person seated next to you turns out to be a dud!

Chef Kennedy even incorporated my fern theme into the menu by putting fiddleheads into the salad course!  A small detail that probably few noticed, but thrilled me to no end. I love to have little touches like that interspersed through our parties.

The overall effect was so happy and joyous; everything a party in springtime should represent. Plus it was the perfect kickoff to a busy weekend of All-Things-Wedding... if this was the rehearsal dinner, can you imagine how great the wedding itself was?

Grand Cru, Too

Here are some decor shots from the same Grand Cru party, courtesy of photographer Kelly Fischstein. Event designer Bill Fulghum created a sexy, sophisticated environment worthy of the world-class food and wine that would be served to the 32 lucky guests.

Advanced Tent provided a sleek black tent, which Bill softened with shimmery taupe drape at both ends and specially-focused lighting. The 3 chandeliers from Contemporary Furniture Rentals were especially significant -- the wooden arms are held together with metal ribs, re-purposed from antique wine barrels.

Lastly, a better view of the lovely flowers in seasonal colours, provided by Emblem. Roses, peonies, dahlias and cymbiduim orchids all worked together to provide the pop needed in an all-black tent.

My favourite comment of the night came from our host, who exclaimed (about 10 times): "I can't believe this used to be my backyard!" Talk about a transformation...

Pretty in Pink: Part 2

Here's a photo of the whole table -- it was so long it was almost impossible to get the whole thing in a single frame! You can get a sense of the length of it if I tell you the Pink Rice Krispies Square-Cake (which you can see at the top of the shot) was only half-way down...

A close up of the hand-made marshmallow kisses. They were ooey, gooey, soft and chewy (and had the most delicious, peppermint-y taste). The kids went nuts for these.



Pink Kettle Corn in gorgeous white lacquer trays that Exclusive Affair Rentals bought just for the occasion...

Little Mini Donuts were made in the Daniel et Daniel kitchen and tasted even better than they looked...

I can still barely look at this photo! It was taken literally 30 seconds after the Sweet Table opened. All those hours of work and planning were destroyed in a nanosecond after the kids descended on it. Instant chaos + destruction = heartbreak! The worst part? I don't even think the kids noticed how freaking awesome it was -- they were too busy grabbing as much as they could!!! Le sigh...

Miss Missoni

Talk about a timely party! When we came up with a "Missoni Theme" for a birthday luncheon my client was throwing, it was long before we heard that the famous Italian fashion house had teamed up with Target to do a line of housewares and fashion! But. We are nothing if not festive girls (client included) and five days before the party, my client asked her daughter-in-law to head to Buffalo to pick up some things for our shin-dig... and you might say she got a little carried away! And thank goodness for that, because it TOTALLY added to the overall experience for the guests...

We did custom (digitally printed) place mats for each of the invitées, all based on famous Missoni fabrics. We had fun mixing it up with 5 different patterns and then contrasting menus. The daughter-in-law also picked up platters, mugs, tiered cake trays and even cosmetic bags & scarves, which we used for favours.

We went all out with the Italian fashionista theme, serving prosecco in colourful champagne flutes from Chair-man Mills while shmaltzy Italian music played in the background. Think 'O Solo Mio,' 'Volare,' 'That's Amore' and the like...

The dessert was probably my favourite thing that day: Tina Nyguen over at Noble Culinary made me a Missoni Bombe to serve to all the ladies (who don't eat much to begin with)... Veritable Missoni stripes of Mango, Blueberry, Blackcurrant, Lemon and Strawberry sorbet! Each layer had to be made and then left to sit and freeze in the mold before the next layer could be added. Bellissima!

Finally a shot of the whole table, complete with the customized place mats and flower arrangements in the mugs from Target! There were three different patterns on the mugs, so Lidia Tacconelli of FIORI did three colour versions to complement them. The original plan was to give the mugs away but then my client decided she liked them so much that she couldn't bear to part with them!

The View From Here

Well you can tell when our busy season hits -- the blog posts come to a screeching halt. It's a good thing to be busy, but I always feel a tinge of guilt when I'm ignoring She Said Spectacular! To that end, I'm going to try a new series entitled, "The View from Here," filled with short glimpses and quick snippets of the parties we do in (almost) real time, snapped with entirely unprofessional, iPhone photos.

"The View from Here" is the perfect description for the first entry in the series... these were taken last weekend at Malaparte at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; otherwise known as the new, permanent home of the Toronto International Film Festival. Perched high above the street is the most stunning terrace where the guests feel like they are partying in the sky. These pictures were taken mid-afternoon, but once the sun began to set and the lights in the surrounding buildings started twinkling on, the effect was truly magical.

The occasion was an engagement party for 225 guests -- people gasped as they came up the stairs and saw the view. (As a professional aside, there are 64 steps leading up above... let's just say the poor Malaparte serving staff got a very good workout that night)...

Not to mention the poor installation guys from Contemporary Furniture Rentals; ALL this furniture was schelpped up those same 64 stairs and then back down again at 2:00am... I think it'll be quite a while before they forgive me for this one!

I love how the happy sunflowers pop against the grey skyline in the background. Once we get the professional photos from the photographer we will share them -- it was such a glorious evening up in the clouds; I can't wait to see the pictures myself.

Med School Reunion, 2.0

As with any great party, it's the details that make all the difference. We thought we'd share some with you here:

This was the booklet we designed to sit at each place. It worked 3-fold: the front (pictured here) showed the "logo" we designed for the reunion, the back listed out the menu for the evening and the inside can be seen in the next photo...

We scanned the yearbook photos from 10 years ago and got each attendee to write in where they were practicing now, what their specialty was and what their favourite med school memory was. We thought this would be a fun memento for people to take home with them to read up on their fellow classmates in the likely event they weren't able to connect with each and every one of them that night.

Here's a shot of the parting gifts: a bottle of "vitamins" for each attendee and a group photo taken earlier in the night. Each photo was in a custom-designed folder, made to look like one in a doctor's office, with a tab at the top with the class name.

Here's a close up of the bottle of "vitamins," a.k.a. chocolate truffles, courtesy of our chocolateer friends at Eitelbach. We had the class rep write out the latin prescription for "take one truffle, three times a day." We then added, "take 3 and call me in 5 years;" their next scheduled class reunion!

And finally, a detail that few probably found as funny as we did: antique medical illustrations on every stall in the bathrooms. A foot here, an aorta there... we thought this would take the former students RIGHT back to their days in the classroom!
A very hearty thank you to Nicole White from Tynan Studio for the photos.

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.

A Very Fashionable Bash

We recently had the honour of helping to throw a very big birthday party for a truly special lady whose love of fashion comes second only to her love of family. We took this obsession with All Things Fashion and carried it through the evening...

The first hint of things to come was the invite. Caren Thomas of Bus Stop Design and I came up with the idea of a paper doll of our birthday girl and hired an illustrator, not only to draw the Guest of Honour, but to come up with outfits and combinations she would actually wear. Chanel, Pucci, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Sonia Rykiel can all be found in the spot-on renderings.

The celebration was held at the Four Seasons Hotel and when Bill Fulghum (who designed the party as well as the florals) came back from Europe and said everything was purple that season, we knew what our main colour had to be. Peter Somers from Contemporary Furniture Rentals had sofas covered in purple upholstery just for the occasion and we all got a little carried away. I even bought ridiculously uncomfortable (but oh-so-chic) purple stilettos. Needless to say, it was a very purple night!

We staged a fashion show with clothing exclusively from Holt Renfrew. The lovely Erika Larva and Pauline Brown from Monarch Events Group produced the show and the hilarious Paul Venoit was our MC. The clothing was magnificent -- there were 8 segments to the show and Pauline spent a full week at Holt's pulling the clothes that were showcased. We had to hire round-the-clock security to guard the wares after the party until they could be returned to the store the next day. The furs, the purses, the accessories, the clothes were every girl's (or shopaholic's) fantasy. Sigh.

I had two favourite moments that evening: The first was at the beginning of the fashion show when Tom, the Doorman from Holt's, came out with two male models, laden with dozens and dozens of the store's eponymous hot pink shopping bags. He then proceeded to greet each model as she came on stage and take a shopping bag from her -- just as he does to every customer who enters the store. The crowd cracked up! My second favourite moment came when our birthday girl first spotted her own granddaughter (one of three who were part of the show) when she first appeared amongst the professional models. She squeeled out loud, rushed the stage and announced to the crowd that that was her granddaughter. It was a classic moment -- just one of many at a party that was so much fun to plan and so, so memorable for all that were there to celebrate the joy of family, friends and yes, fashion!
Photo credits: Leigh Tynan, Tynan Studio

Celebrating Sixty in Miami

Last October we planned a 50th wedding anniversary party here in Toronto (you can read the post in the 2009 section below) -- I thought being married to the same person for 50 years seemed like an amazing feat. Well, we managed to top that with a 60th anniversary bash we threw last month in not-so-balmy Miami. Even more remarkably, there was another couple in the crowd who were celebrating 64 years of marriage!

Alas, we were there to celebrate this milestone for a truly extraordinary couple, blessed with good health, the most wonderful family and, above all, a marriage still filled with spark and passion. My "bride" wanted a mass of orange orchids -- and ultimately we were able to give her what she wanted. There were close to 3500 mokara orchids scattered around the octagonally-shaped room and the bar. It was sensational.

Once I get photos from the professional photographer, I will post those, but in the meantime, enjoy these ones, courtesy of my trusty iPhone. The linens, banquettes, chairs and borne came from Nuage Designs and the wonderful Linda Goldman of Blake Roses did the flowers. I'm sure she doesn't want to see another orange orchid for awhile...