Runway Bride

We had the best time planning this fashion-themed wedding shower for our 'Runway Bride' last year. The bride's mother, sister and Lidia Tacconelli and I schemed, planned and executed the most decadent party -- a fashion- themed brunch on a cold and grey Sunday last November at Malaparte.

Given that our bride loves all-things-fashion, we divided the guests up into 4 long tables, each with their very own designer look...

First up: Chanel with the classic 'tweed' runner (printed digitally, of course, by our friends over at Emerson Design), adorned with the pouffiest, whitest hydrangeas I've seen in a long time.

Next: Missoni. It's hard to tell from this angle, but Lidia arranged the carnations in the famous zig-zag pattern all down the troughs as well.

Dolce & Gabbana had their signature leopard print and red, red roses...

And finally, the Marc Jacobs table, in honour of our bride's favourite perfume: Daisy. To keep the look consistent, every table had the same core elements: black ghost chairs from Contemporary Furniture Rentals, black linens from Around the Table and black lucite troughs from FIORI.

When guests arrived, they were treated to passed 'breakfast' hors d'oeuvre: this photo shows the  yummy, mini-french toast on skewers, complete with real maple syrup in the bottom of the cups.

And look at these little lovelies: Mini lobster and quail-egg benedicts. The chefs at Malaparte got pretty creative with some wonderful breakfast finger foods. And everything tasted even better than it looked.

When the guests sat down, each place had a 'Vogue' magazine that doubled as a place card holder (the mailing label on the bottom right corner had each guest's name printed out) and opened up to reveal the menu that was to be served, all designed like a magazine layout.

Each course was created with the four designers in mind: Marc Jacobs? New York Pretzels & Lox... Dolce & Gabbana? Truffled Gnocchi... Chanel? Crèpes, bien sûr! And finally, our Missoni-themed dessert: Sweet melon and burrata.

We set up a lounge area, complete with Pucci pillows where we laid out the take away gifts: beautiful coffee table books and movies, all with fashion titles.

Finally, as with any wedding shower in a good, Italian family, many of the guests brought home-baked goodies. We had to keep making the table bigger and bigger as people arrived with more and more treats. It got to the point where I couldn't add any more tables to the space to accommodate all the desserts... Yes, people baked that much stuff for our guest of honour.

We did up boxes for the ladies to take bounty from the sweet table home with them, again with our copyright-infringement (eek!) take on the Bergdorf Goodman logo. I like to think of it as free advertising for that wonderful store... yeah, that's it...

Finally, a glimpse of the paper, tissue and ribbon we wrapped the flowers up with at the end of the party. The ladies literally left with armfuls of flowers, books and sweets!

Thank you, as always, to Anthony Manieri from 5ive15ifteen Photo Company and a special shout out to all the Oliver & Bonaccini staff at Malaparte. You all helped us create an experience that few will forget anytime soon...

PS: WedLuxe Magazine featured this shower on their blog last month. Click here for more pics and even more details!

A Three-Hour Tour... A Three-Hour Tour

So, you may have heard through the grapevine that we built a 5000 sq. ft. floating ballroom in Muskoka a couple of weeks ago. Yes, you read right: it was well and truly floating.  On a lake.

The dilemma? If the tent is on the water, where on earth do you put the toilets? Our solution was to float them right next to the tent. Yup. On the water too. This post is dedicated to the journey the Royal Flush took that day -- it's Maiden Voyage, so to speak. The first picture shows us backing the 30,000 pound bathroom trailer onto a barge before sending it on on it's 3-hour trip across Lake Joseph...

This photo shows how little wiggle room there was to manoeuvre it into place in our attempt to get it perfectly centred for even weight distribution. For those of you techie readers out there, the barge is 12' x 40' and the bathroom is 8.5' x 32,' with a 3-ft hitch to factor in as well. The barge driver had to add ballast to the left side once it was in place to make it a more even ride.

Over three hours later, this was the first view I had of the unit coming into view. I squealed like a proud mother, once I finally saw it arriving. It had been like sending your child off to first day of kindergarten, watching it pull away from the boat launch, heading off into the great unknown...

Doesn't it look lonely, out there by itself, slowly chugging into place? The party-goers never questioned how the bathroom got beside the tent... it was just there. Now, dear readers, you know what went into making it happen. (Not to mention the fact we had to factor in that it was going to weigh a whole lot more when it went back on it's merry way to dry land... ahem). Yes, all of these things have to be accounted for: we can't leave anything to chance!

Yet another example of the extremely non-boring life of an Event Planner...

We Really 'Love the Design!'

Last year, one of our favourite couples called their wedding off, just 3 weeks before the big day.

Naturally, everyone was devastated, and for all the reasons you can imagine. However, I'm so happy to report that they went away from the experience, went to therapy, worked hard on their relationship and... 11 months later, married each other in what had to be one of the most unique, moving and powerful ceremonies we've ever witnessed. More on that to come... but first, I thought I'd share a bit of their story through the stationery...

When it came time to let their friends and family know they were "really going to do this," we turned (again) to our friend Christine Flynn at Love the Design to design a Save-the-New-Date announcement. She worked with the couple and came up with the wonderful list of things (above) about their relationship and even poke a little fun at the "almost" wedding that didn't happen the year before. I hope you can read all the details, because some are downright hilarious.

When it came time to send out the second wedding invitation, our bride was lamenting that she really loved her first one and couldn't imagine anything that could improve upon it. That's when I suggested we send out the EXACT same invitation, only this time, with the original date crossed off and the new one 'handwritten' in over it. And that's exactly what we did; Christine made the changes, they went off to the letterpressers and voilà: the guests got a slightly modified version of the original invitation! 

I gather the response was tremendous (it's always encouraging when something has it's intended effect) and the stationery totally set the tone of what was to come. Wait till you see the photos from this one... a true Happily Ever After story, if ever there was one...

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.

What is 'à la Piscine?'

Last month, my sister and I had the privilege of visiting our Auntie Liz at her home in the South of France. It was only 8 days, but my God, we packed a lot into our limited time together. Her house is near St. Tropez, but we also spent a night at the famed Negresco Hotel in Nice and it was while we were there that we were first introduced to 'à la Piscine.' 

We were out for my sister's birthday dinner and thought a glass (or two) of champagne was in order. We noticed you could get a regular 'coupe' (glass), or the à la Piscine (by the pool, in French) version for an extra 3 Euros. Curious, we asked our server what that was...

He explained (in French) that it was served with ice, which immediately went nowhere with us. (I was thinking -- they want to charge me 3 Euros to put ICE in my champagne? No way!) Not to mention that it would dilute the magical elixir... He tried a little harder, telling us it was "extremely popular in France," but still, we didn't bite. 

We returned to St. Tropez and really didn't think about it again until we were sitting at Senequier (pictured above) at the Port, having our daily glass of rosé with lunch and noticed we had the option to have it à la Piscine too! So, it wasn't just champagne the French were adding ice to these days, it was rosé as well? What on earth? But still, we didn't try it...

By now you may be wondering where this post is going and what it might have to do with the events we help plan. Well, your patience is about to be rewarded...

When we returned home to Canada, we were telling the rest of our family about this crazy French Trend we kept seeing -- only THIS time, my sister decided to Google it and we were shocked to read the key piece of information the server in Nice neglected to mention: the "ice" is actually frozen little cubes of champagne! Or rosé, depending on what you're drinking... Now the extra charge for "ice" made sense: frozen alcohol, floating in the alcohol! Oh la la! 

Needless to say, we wasted no time getting to a liquor store to purchase specimens and have just spent the entire long weekend perfecting the technique, because I plan to serve this at all my parties this coming summer! 

Here's what we learned, after bottles and bottles of experimentation, all in the Name of Science:

1: It takes almost half a bottle to fill an ice cube tray (and really, this tray's partitions were too small -- you want to make bigger cubes).

2. We tried it both in the old-school coupe glasses and the more modern flutes; it works (and for some reason tastes better because of the ice-to-volume-of-champagne ratio) in the taller glasses.

3. You'll want to make a fair bit of "ice" -- because the alcohol content won't let it freeze completely; it therefore melts faster than regular ice.

4. It works beautifully with rosé too. I love how the cubes look like little blobs of jelly...

5. The French are really on to something here: for the hot summer months, both of these drinks tasted that much more refreshing, just because they were colder. And somehow, the frozen cubes added a little bit of je ne sais quoi  that we never realized was lacking before!

6. Vive la France!

Lindsay + Jamie: Before and After

We had such great response to our previous 'Before and After' post that I thought we should do it again, this time with the wedding of Lindsay and Jamie that was so beautifully captured by Anthony Manieri of 5ive15ifteen Photo Company and gorgeously featured in the Winter/Spring edition of WedLuxe magazine. I've started this post with an 'after' shot first (because it just looks better as the first image!), but from here on in, we'll go to 'before' pictures first...

 

Here's the view, looking in the same direction, taken the day before, just as they were starting to rig the ceiling with all the AV equipment. This is the order in which a tent wedding comes to life: 1. Floor, 2: Tent, 3. AV/electrical and chandeliers, if required, 4. Draping, 5. Carpet, 6. Furniture, 7. Floral/decor and finally, 8. People!

Now we move to the big day itself... You can see that the ceiling is draped, the carpet and tables are laid and Gisele and Co. are starting to load the floral in. Way off in the distance, you can see the chairs are already in place for the ceremony later that afternoon...

This shot shows how everything came together on the tables... our 'Garden Inside a Tent' concept come to life... I always say that once clients have planned a wedding, they'll never attend another one in quite the same way! After you've spent months and months on every little detail, down to which rose will sit in which way on which linen napkin, you notice things you never would before planning your own...

The Money Shot: Gabi kept the vinyl tent sides on to keep guests out until Anthony had finished taking photos. This picture shows the massive floral pieces hanging over the dance floor; they were covered with hydrangea, roses and phalaenopsis orchids and the actual structures mimicked the boxes on the tables that held the topiaries.

And finally, our charming couple, twirling around the dance floor for their First Dance... To read their wedding story as it appeared in the pages of WedLuxe Magazine, click here.