I am incredibly honored to have my friends and very talented wedding planners on the blog today talking about how they approach the wedding day. Amanda and Tiffany of Events Luxe have been planning weddings and setting the standard in event planning for years now. I am so thankful for their eye for detail and ability to help the couple really enjoy their wedding day. Yeah, they're amazing...
Brides often wonder: “Now that I’m engaged, what is the first thing I should do??”
We tend to believe that if you want the best vendors in town for your budget (including your wedding venue and caterer, your photographer, your florist..), you should start by hiring a wedding planner.
If you have a focus on design for your wedding (you envision a very dramatic reception, you want every element to reflect your personalities as a couple, but you don’t know how to execute the thoughts in your head), you should hire a wedding designer.
Being wedding designers and planners, we are often hired at the very beginning of a bride’s planning process, where we can create a “dream team” of vendors in order to execute a perfectly planned and perfectly designed wedding day. Funny enough, as I typed this, we got a phone call from a bride saying “I don’t know where to start… so I thought I’d give you a call!” We hear that a lot. And it makes us smile every single time. There is something very rewarding about partnering up with a couple at the very beginning in order to learn all about them and help create a very special wedding, one that is memorable, unique, and incredibly personal to them. It’s what gets us springing out of our beds with a smile every morning.
Below, we thought we would share 3 contrasting looks that we created based on the client’s unique personalities and needs.
A sunset wedding theme, based on special sunsets the couple shared when they met many years before in Mexico.
An indoor sunset was created with specialty lighting, tablescapes, floral centerpieces, bouquets, and cake were among elements that were designed with the magic hour colors of the sunset in mind. Photos courtesy of Under Grace Photography.
An event designed around an ombre theme, created for The Knot magazine using colors fading from pale sea green to deep purple tones. Scroll up to the sunset wedding to see how both of these events use a same tone of purple – but look nothing like one another. We wanted to showcase the ombre look to brides to introduce a modern idea that hadn’t been seen in St Louis before.
Photos courtesy of The Rasers Photography.
A tropical theme – we designed this reception to look “underwater” with Manzanita branch centerpieces painted a
glossy red to achieve the look of coral, aqua to match the color of the sea, and white was representative of the white sand. “Beach themes” can easily go wrong, so this wedding was carefully executed to look unique and colorful while paying a gentle homage to the Caribbean, where the groom was born and raised. Photos courtesy of Under Grace Photography.
The first and most important part of the process of designing a unique event is to explore what is important to the couple or client and going in one specific direction. Your wedding can quickly become a strange mess if you love horses, and your fiancé loves racecars. Those perhaps may not be suitable elements to use as your theme. But if bicycling is important to both of you, it’s how you met, it’s how you spend your time, etc, it could be a very cute idea to execute into a beautiful event. And many times, color is all you need. Themes are not a requirement! Sometimes a theme just leads you in the right direction. But if the color green is what makes you both happy, start there, and work your way out.
And don’t forget the details! Photographers love details. We like to carry our theme throughout to each small element. Again, it is important to keep things modern and not douse every detail with your theme in an over-the-top way. Sometimes you just need to know when to stop. But small details (such as the menu above which we wrote to say “Me N U”, get it?), are things photographers eat up. And they are the small things that sadly, you will forget about. It is important to remember that all the effort you put into your big day will shine for only a few hours at your wedding. The time goes by so fast. Your flowers will die, your invitations will get thrown away, your meal will be eaten, your first dance will pass in 2 minutes. But in a photograph, those things live forever! All the money and effort invested in each element will stay with you always with a beautiful photograph. And brides, be honest with your photographers. If you have a very important element that you really don’t want to forget about, be sure to mention it so that he or she can get a few different angles on it, and make sure you are left with the perfect photo to commemorate it.
In the end, have FUN, and work with your wedding designer to create something unique to YOU: that is the motto of Events Luxe. We design for you, not for us. This is your day. Shout it from the rooftops!!
Love,
The Girls at EL (Tiffany & Amanda)
