I wanted to leave you for the day with this amazing Grecian wedding shot by the talented girls at Belathee Photography. May today’s posts inspire you to dream in color when it comes to planning your wedding…to remember that the world is filled with places like these that are just waiting for a beautiful couple to share their vows with.
Remember to check out our new Destination Guide if you are planning a destination style wedding!
I have one last real wedding to share with you today, from Belathee Photography, another of our amazing Destination Guide vendors. This wedding took place in Greece and is the epitome of destination style and understated, whitewashed elegance…
A few more pictures from this incredible wedding are on their way!
Here is the absolutely brilliant post-wedding shoot that Lauri Levenfeld shot of today’s featured couple…
From the oh-so-cute bride…
The day-after photos were inspired by our idea to take wedding photos with the vintage plane Ruggero flies. Upon realizing that there would not be enough time for such photos on the wedding day, we decided it would be fun to do it the following day. Our wedding photographer, Lauri Levenfeld, was very enthusiastic about the idea and provided great suggestions, so we asked her to photograph the second day as well. To add to the vintage feel, I wore the wedding suit and pillbox hat my mother had worn for her wedding in the 1960’s. We also located vintage suitcases to add to the backdrop. The classic Austin Healy we had borrowed for the weekend fit right in with the theme. The plane is kept at the Santa Rosa airport, where the historic hanger provided a perfect backdrop for the photos.
I wanted to share a few more images and details from the Napa Valley wedding that Lauri Levenfeld shot…
More details from the bride…
During the ceremony, the officiant, a retired judge who is a family friend and who also happened to be my trial advocacy teacher in law school, remarked that our first encounter reminded him of the song “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific. This inspired our friend Matt, an extraordinarily talented singer, to perform the song for us later in the evening, since he coincidentally had the track for it in his car. He was hesitant to do so at first, since it had not been planned, but when he heard the last lines of my toast, which happened to mirror the last lines of the song, he decided he could not let the opportunity pass. It was one of our favorite moments of the evening.
My fiance’s coworker lent us a 1966 light blue Austin Healy for our wedding getaway car. During the cocktail hour we hopped in the car and drove down the long tree-lined driveway leading to the estate to share a few moments together and take photos.
The Bridesmaids/ Flowers Girls Dresses:
The bridesmaids wore espresso silk tricotine dresses in various styles from J. Crew. Ruggero’s, my fiance’s daughter, was the Junior Bridesmaid and wore a white Us Angels dress with a chocolate brown sash. The five adorable flower girls wore white dresses with green sashes from Us Angels.
The Dress:
My dress was designed by Christos and was made of silk organza. At my request, the tailors at Saks Fifth Avenue removed the train and painstakingly moved the lace that had been on the train onto the back of the dress, so I could move around easily in it and not drag the train on the gravel. It ended up being incredibly comfortable and perfect to dance in. Ruggero bought his navy blue lightweight wool suit by Belvest from Wilkes Bashford, and wore a green tie and dark brown Bruno Magli shoes.
The fun didn’t stop here…the couple had Lauri help them with an INCREDIBLE photo shoot after the big day. Stay tuned!
Today we are celebrating the launch of our Destination Guide, the Little Black Book’s newest addition. Some may consider a destination wedding one that guests have to travel far and wide to attend, one that is planned on some incredible beach in the middle of nowhere, one that is incredibly difficult to plan but so romantic to attend.
But, that isn’t really what this guide is about. Although all of the vendors listed will travel far and wide, wherever your wedding may take you, they will also travel twenty minutes outside of town to the cute winery near your house or an hour down the road to a great resort. To SMP, destination weddings simply mean that they aren’t in your own backyard. They are usually weekend weddings, those where guests stay to enjoy the scenery and of course, the company.
One of my favorite photographers within the Destination Guide is none other than Lauri Levenfeld of Zoom Photography in San Francisco. And this wedding…just thirty minutes outside of San Francisco in Napa Valley, is a beautiful reflection of Lauri’s talents.
A few details from the bride…
We both wanted a destination wedding, but also wanted some place close enough to the Bay Area that guests could either enjoy a full weekend of events or just come for the day. We also envisioned a wedding set entirely outdoors, both for the ceremony and reception. As soon as we visited Beaulieu Garden, a private estate located in Rutherford, in Napa Valley, we knew it would be a perfect setting for our wedding.
We wanted an elegant, classic, and joyful wedding. Our focus was on enjoying a delicious meal and wine with our family and friends, surrounded by vineyards and beautiful flowers. Our guests sat at long banquet tables, and the first course of organic heirloom tomatoes (grown by Paula Le Duc on right on the grounds) and mozzarella, prosciutto, marinated baby artichokes, roasted gypsy peppers, and olive oil poached prawns with preserved Meyer lemons was passed family- style, in fitting with our shared Italian heritage.
We named the tables after our favorite ski areas where we had skied together or separately, with our table named after the mountain where were engaged. And since we love dark chocolate, we chose as our favors to have Recchuiti chocolates in small white boxes tied with green ribbon personalized with our names. The square three layer wedding cake from Perfect Endings was covered with fresh white flowers. It had three flavors – chocolate with chocolate butter cream with fresh raspberries, vanilla with chantilly butter cream with fresh raspberries, and lemon with lemon curd filling.
More to come from this beautiful wedding!
We are celebrating the launch of our new Little Black Book addition, the Destination Guide, with a few pictures from the spectacular featured wedding, shot by Christian Oth…
Any reception held near an infinity pool like this one, is one that goes down in the “absolutely gorgeous” books. Every element, from the insanely beautiful bride to the gorgeous bridesmaids, to the pretty flowers and simple decor…is stunning.
Although I am sure that a wedding this beautiful wasn’t very difficult to shoot, the photographs captured by Christian Oth are complete works of art. Pretty enough to hang on any wall, in any home.
We have more featured weddings from vendors in our new Destination Guide coming throughout the day, so stay tuned!
We are officially launching the newest addition to our Little Black Book…Style Me Pretty’s Destination Guide, filled with incredible vendors who specialize in world-wide weddings. Their work is the best of the best, unmatched in quality and design. Whether your wedding is right here in the states or half way around the world, these vendors will help you turn your vision into an absolutely stunning reality! Photo by Christian Oth.
Brace yourself for some serious eye candy…Christian Oth, one of our new Destination Wedding Vendors, captured this beautifully inspired wedding. And, it just might be one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever seen…
More to come!
Check out these adorable muff’s by Flowers on the Vineyard. Hand muffs are a great alternative to the traditional bouquet for a winter wedding…they just have that dreamy, romantic quality to them. Straight out of an old Grace Kelly movie. Plus, you’ll be a little more cozy during your ceremony, without sacrificing that lovely floral detailing!
We have been hard at work behind-the-scenes here at SMP building up our Little Black Book of Vendors, making sure that we are not only growing the cities that we represent, but that we are doing so thoughtfully, with each and every vendor representing Style Me Pretty’s guidelines for innovations and style.
And today, we are officially introducing the newest addition to our Little Black Book…Style Me Pretty’s Destination Wedding Guide! The companies in our guide are those who specialize in destination style weddings, which means that they will make the whole process of planning this type of wedding so much easier and more seamless…something that is hard to come by! Their work is the absolute best in the biz, so you can rest assured that you will be well cared for.
To kick off this fun new adventure, I wanted to showcase some of the weddings from our destination vendors. The first by the amazingly talented (and really, “amazingly talented” doesn’t do him justice at all) Christian Oth!
This is what I am talking about people! The photography is as good as it ever gets…it’s vivid, it’s full of life, it’s completely and totally spectacular. Stay tuned for more of this gorgeous wedding.
One last note, we are taking our sweet time with this guide, as we want to be 100% sure that the companies we recommend are a good fit…in that, they focus their work on destination weddings AND that their quality is unmatched. Spend some time looking through our new guide…and make sure to really click through each listing, as the vendors have complete portfolios of some absolutely gorgeous weddings!
And as the amazing garden party tuned to evening, the entire wedding got even more beautiful…
From Fiona, the lovely bride…
On each table there was a pink wine glass with a small paper butterfly perched on the glass as the name card to again tie in with the garden party style of the day. I had bought lots of pink painted tea glasses from a recent trip to Marrakech (they were so cheap, I think I got them for about 20 pence each (about 40 cents) I think and they looked like they cost so much more!) and these were used to decorate the table. We had candelabras as the centre pieces and these were filled with roses, hydrangeas and ivory. At the entrance to the marquee we also scattered rose petals and lavender so the smell when everyone walked in was amazing!
At the end of the evening just as we left each guest was given a pack of matches with our names and the wedding date on and a huge sparkler, I wanted fireworks but the budget didn’t stretch to that so I thought that this worked just as well. It was so much fun, particularly as people got carried away and quite a few were set off in the marquee!
{and finally, some shameless bragging on SMP…I couldn’t resist}
In terms of my inspiration – honestly, it came from Style Me Pretty. I absolutely love the website and really it is so much better than anything you get in the UK (that was one of my biggest frustrations with the wedding, everything I liked was from the States!). All of the weddings on the site are so so beautiful and detailed, the colour palettes and ideas were just incredible and I wish that I could get married 10 times over so I could use all of the ideas I collected! The weddings featured really inspired me and I love the fact that no matter what the budget the weddings are beautiful.
Now for the details…from the color palette to the perfectly simple touches, everything about this wedding was so lovely, so thoughtfully sophisticated.
From the bride, Fiona…
The pink theme ran through the day – bridesmaids dresses, flowers, ushers ties, wine glasses, pink lemonade, pink champagne, pink ribbon to tie the order of service together, rose petals etc. The favours were small packs of mints that had ‘mint to be’ written on them in pink along with our names. I actually got them from the For Your Party website in the States.
I didn’t want a formal meal (in The UK everyone seems to go for meat and vegetables!) so for the wedding breakfast we served sausages and mash and we served the chocolate wedding cake as part of the desert. We then had a tiered cheese cake which we served later on in the evening.
Okay, today’s earlier pictures were pretty…but it’s this incredible party, in a beautifully British garden-style wedding, that I am really loving!
From the bride…
All I really wanted from my wedding was a fantastic party with all of my friends and family around me. I hate formality so wanted a very relaxed affair (we used a photos journalist for our pictures so we didn’t have to worry about posing for shots) but I wanted it to be really stylish too! I decide on pink as my colour scheme as Tom and I both love the colour and instead of giving myself loads of stress trying to match everything to one shade of pink I decide to go for all different shades of the colour, which actually ended up working really well.
I guess that the theme for the day was a relaxed, country garden style, party, nothing overly formal. I wanted everything to be very relaxed and twinkly so there was loads of candle light and flowers, nothing too structured. The bridesmaids each wore a rose in their hair and I wore a gardenia in the evening in my hair once I had taken off my veil.
More to come!
I have so many more pictures from today’s featured wedding, shot by Mark Wallis, to share with you…
The Double-Decker, the fresh from the garden style flowers, the pretty pink bridesmaids…oh my. You’ll see throughout the day just how sweet this wedding was, filled with intimate little details, feminine charm and a sense of family that you just can’t deny.
From the gorgeous bride, Fiona…
I got married in Yorkshire on 13th September. I had always wanted to have my wedding reception at home so Tom and I got married in our local church, just up the hill from my parents house and then everyone was brought back down to the house in a vintage bus for a drinks reception on my parents lawn followed by the reception in a marquee we had put up in the farmers field behind our house!!
It had been the most awful summer here and had rained constantly. The marquee even had to go down a week early to try and dry out the field as it was so water logged. I was convinced that our wedding was going to be a very wet day and had even bought stacks of pink golf umbrellas because I was certain we would have rain along with pink wellington boots for me and the bridesmaids incase we had to walk through puddles, but amazingly the sun came out and we had a dry day!
More to come!!
Now that we’ve set our clocks back and the cold weather is starting to really settle in, I’ve been in a wintery mood. Then I found these charming brooches on Etsy. The Swarovski crystals and pearls are so delicate –just like a real snowflake. And the ostrich feather, well…fabulous. Plus, this brooch has a fastener which allows it to be worn in more than one place, so after the wedding you can move it from your veil to your dress or clutch at the reception!
People always ask me how I choose the weddings that are featured on SMP. And to be honest, I don’t really have a good answer. I write about those that I love…whether it’s a particularly unique style, a great color palette or simply a feeling that I get when I look through the pictures. And, that is exactly why I am posting today’s wedding…there is just something so wonderful about this elegant, oh-so-British, garden style affair.
Before I show you all of the beautiful details, I thought these pictures of the bride getting ready were absolutely gorgeous…
All of the absolutely, tear-inducing gorgeous photographs were captured by Mark Wallis. There are no words for how beautiful some of the pictures are that we are going to feature today, I only wish that I could show you ALL of them.
From the bride, Fiona…
I wore a strapless beaded wedding dress and once I had the dress the style of the day really came together. I love sparkle so I wanted it to be twinkly day!
I had shoes custom made by a fantastic place called Emmy shoes in London to match the dress and bought extra dress lace so that it could be put onto the front of the shoes to match. I also had custom made Swarovski covered converse trainers for the dancing (more sparkle!)! I had Bride written on one shoe in crystals and Mrs Crompton on the other, they were a real talking point during the dancing!
It’s time to announce the DIY contest winner! I can’t believe how gorgeous the projects that we featured were…filled with charm, personality and an amazing attention to detail. Since I couldn’t possibly choose a winner all by myself, I’ve asked the amazingly talented Grace Bonney at Design*Sponge and the forever chic Jennifer Sbranti of Hostess with the Mostess Blog to send their top picks! Together, we’ve chosen the best project…
First, Grace’s Top Picks...
1. The absolutely adorable Stiched Programs
2. The simple, but chic Birds Nest Favors
3. The fabulous Hot Cocoa & Marshmallows
And Jennifer’s Picks…
1. the scrumptious Hot Cocoa and Marshmallows
2. Custom Centerpieces for their originality and resourcefulness
3. Gumball Favors, because they’re so cute and simple to do!
And of course, My Top Picks!
1. The amazingly cute Hot Cocoa and Marshmallows
2. Love Story Books because they are just so sweet
3. Stiched Programs as they embody what a DIY project should be
SO…The winner is, with the most votes from the three of us combined, the Hot Cocoa and Marshmallow bags!
I have to admit, I’ve known for a few hours who the winner was, and because I was so in love with all of her projects, I’ve asked her to be a contributing DIY editor on Style Me Pretty!!
Kathleen, the oh-so-creative girl behind the Cocoa and Marshmallows, the Custom Matchbooks and the Sparkler bundles, will be sending us fun DIY projects every few weeks, starting next month. Plus, we’ll also get a sneak peak of her own recent wedding…and it’s SO worth the wait.
Thanks so much to everyone who entered! Your projects will live on Style Me Pretty and will inspire brides for years to come to incorporate their own DIY projects into their wedding style! If your project didn’t make it up, I am going to hold on to them for our next contest.
A few more pictures from the gorgeous ABCD Designs Papercupp wedding that we featured earlier…
all of these gorgeous photographs were captured by Jennifer Davis Photography
So, so beautiful! Just goes to show that an invitation design really can serve as a springboard for your entire wedding style! Very cool.
And, guess what’s even cooler…ABCD Designs Papercupp is hosting a suprise giveaway today!! They are gifting a custom monogram design, worth $195, a custom rubber stamp of the design and a coordinating pink ink pad to one lucky reader!
Just describe your favorite design from their site in the comments section, and they will choose a winner at random in the coming days!
Speaking of beautiful stationery…remember these great designs by ABCD Designs Papercupp that we featured during Pink Week? Well, they recently sent me pics from the wedding inspired by that fabulous elephant design!
all of these gorgeous photographs were captured by Jennifer Davis Photography
How pretty is this! LOVE the elephants, love the stunning pink color palette, love the mix of textures in the baskets, the florals, the cigars. I have more pics coming, so stay tuned!
I actually saved my favorite Delphine post for last…how stinking cute are these coffee stir sticks and customized napkins? LOVE (shouting from the rooftops!).
They sticks can be used for coffee, cocktails or as skewers for olives, cheese, you get the picture. Erika, the mastermind behind all of these gorgeous designs, even thought to stick the shorter ones in cupcakes as a cute topper! You can buy all of these products either by emailing her directly (erika{at}delphinepress.com for custom designs) OR through ForYourParty.com in the FYP Library under the header “Delphine.”
And, if you are in need of even more paper inspiration, check out Erika’s blog. She features some of her other great designs, fun products and so much more!
Stay tuned, we have a fun real wedding coming up and we are announcing our DIY winner later today!
