Click here for the full gallery of images!

From Julie Mikos…Mary Ann and Garret were wed on July 14 in Napa Valley, and celebrated during an intimate reception with 20 of their closest family and friends. Mary Ann said, “Our love is special, unique and rare. And that’s the experience we wanted to share with each other and our families. We wanted an intimate experience for ourselves and our guests, and really wanted to give everyone a taste of all that Napa Valley has to offer. We engaged Dee Merz to help us design the perfect experience, and she accomplished more than we could have imagined. Dee planned our events perfectly. She translated our vision by getting to know who we are, what is important to us, what our lives are like together as a couple, how we feel about each other and the importance our children and family. We put our trust in her and the team she choose to design the events, and she out did herself.”

She said, “For the past 20 years, our family has been getting together for family dinner every week on Thursdays. Our wedding at Brix took place on Thursday, and it was a family dinner like no other!”

The couple’s vibrant flowers stole the show, and afterward, “we took the flowers to the Veterans Home in Napa,” Mary Ann said. “It was a fantastic experience for the kids to go and share our good fortune with veterans that have so selflessly served our country. It was one of the best parts of the trip!”

Photography: Julie Mikos Photographer / Flowers: Jessica Switala with Fleurs de France / Event Design: Dee Merz / Event Planning: Dee Merz / Linens: La Tavola Linen / Ceremony Location: Brix / Reception Location: Brix / Invitations: Elizabeth Hubbell Studio / Shoes: Stuart Weitzman / Dress: Jasmine Couture Bridal / Rehearsal dinner location: Auberge Du Soleil / Cake: Perfect Endings / Hair and Makeup: Monique Javier / Music: Ecoutez Music Theresa Calpotura (Wedding/Cocktail Hour) Bodlovich Carter Jazz Quartet (Dinner and Reception)

© Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate Wedding Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Auberge du Soleil, Brix, Dee Merz, Elizabeth Hubbell, Fleurs de France, Jasmine Couture Bridal, Julie Mikos, Perfect Endings, Stuart Weitzman
Post categories: Casual Elegance, The Blog

From the lovely bride … Everything about our wedding was personal, in that we chose every single detail of the wedding. The head table garland and all floral arrangements were handmade and were absolutely beautiful. It was exactly what we wanted.

We felt strongly that we wanted our wedding to reflect all we love abut wine country, exuding casual elegance. We wanted it to be all about good friends, food, wine and the unbelievably beautiful scenery. Our flowers were soft and romantic. The head table garland was absolutely stunning, stretching the length of the head table. The flowers included David Austin roses, hydrangeas, orchids and other soft, delicate flowers. The colors were soft peaches, creams, bright greens and pinks with pops of brighter coral here and there.

Photography: Julie Mikos | Photographer / Flowers: Green Valley Growers / Event Design: Stephanie Beer of Covenant Coordinating / Event Planning: Stephanie Beer of Covenant Coordinating / Ceremony Location: Mayacama / Reception Location: Mayacama / Invitations: Minted / Bride’s Shoes: Jimmy Choo / Cake: Fleur de Lisa / Wedding Gown: Romona Keveza / Bridesmaids Dresses: J.Crew / Hair & Makeup: It’s A Date at The Powder Room

© Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate Wedding Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: California, Casual Elegance, Color Palette Coral, Color Palette Pink, Covenant Coordinating, Fleur de Lisa, Flower girls, Green Valley Growers, J. Crew, Jimmy Choo, Julie Mikos, Lace, Lavender, Mayacama, Minted, Napa Valley, Outdoor Ceremony, Outdoor Wedding, Pearls, Ring Bearers, Romona Keveza, Santa Rosa, Traditional Elegance, Vineyard Wedding, Watercolor, Wedding Photographers, Wine Country, Winery Wedding
Post categories: Casual Elegance, Little Black Book Blog

Click here to see the entire gallery of images!

From Julie Mikos…Clifford and Vivian created a “simple, intimate and fun” affair, according to the bride, who married her groom on May 7 at Carmel Valley Ranch. “We found Carmel Valley Ranch almost by chance,” Vivian said. “We stayed there on a whim to celebrate our engagement and loved it so much that we decided to get married there!”

The bride carried “lush peonies, delicate anemones, lisianthus and open garden roses,” Vivian said, while decorating the reception space with “the architectural simplicity of calla lilies, spring tulips and gerrondos.” Vivian said, ” We especially loved the intimacy of our ceremony, our vows, the wonderful food, the (almost endless) drinks, and just being around our closest friends and family.”

Special details from their day included custom-made bridesmaids dresses, late-night servings of chocolate chip cookies and milk, specialty cocktails for both men and women, and favors made of serve-yourself Sour Patch Kids and Gummi Bears.

Wedding Photography: Julie Mikos / Floral Design: Rose Hip Floral Design / Event Planning: Sarah Ward Events / Location + Caterer: Carmel Valley Ranch / Wedding Invitations: The Groom / Bride’s Shoes: Enzo / Wedding Dress: Demetrios / Bridesmaid Dresses: Custom / Hair piece: Presumptuous Me / Makeup: Emily Nguyen of Alist Makeup

© Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate Wedding Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: California Weddings, Carmel Valley Ranch, Demetrios, Enzo, Julie Mikos, Outdoor Wedding, Presumptuous Me, Rose Hip Floral Design, Sarah Ward Events, Traditional Elegance
Post categories: Traditional Elegance

click here for the full wedding gallery!

From the talented Amy Nichols – I am so thrilled to share John and Taylor’s wedding with Style Me Pretty’s readers! I couldn’t ask for more ideal and lovely clients. We started working together a year before the wedding — picking the perfect venues for their ceremony and reception. I loved getting to know them and their parents, and their story was such a cute one. They had met and been friends at Stanford for years before dating. Taylor’s sisters kept asking her why she wasn’t dating John, and soon enough, they were!  Both John and Taylor’s families were not from the Bay Area, so this wedding was very much a destination wedding for the majority of their wedding guests. We designed custom save-the-dates from Union Street Papery featuring San Francisco icons and places that were important to them. These icons were then again used on the escort cards and wedding programs.

The wedding reception was at the historic and beautiful Ferry Building in San Francisco, and it was catered by Paula Le Duc Fine Catering.  The color palette we chose featured cool blues, purple, green and white. I suggested that we do unique (but all white) bouquets for each bridesmaid — so one bridesmaid had all tulips, one had all ranunculus, and so on. I love the monochromatic clusters of vases for the centerpieces from Lidia Sadoun of La Fleuriste. Each table was a little different from the next! The entire evening was photographed beautifully by the very talented Julie Mikos.

Photography: Julie Mikos / Event Planning: Amy Nichols / Reception Venue: Ferry Building / Ceremony: St. John’s Presbyterian Church / Flower: La Fleuriste / Caterer: Paula Le Duc / Rentals: Classic Party Rentals / Ceremony Music: Nob Hill String Ensembles / Band: David Martin’s House Party / Hair and Makeup: Joseph Cozza Salon / Transportation: Events West / Cake: Cake Coquette

© Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate Wedding Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amy Nichols, Cake Coquette, California Weddings, Classic Party Rentals, David Martin's House Party, Events West, Ferry Building, Joseph Cozza Salon, Julie Mikos, La Fleuriste, Nob Hill String Ensembles, Paula Le Duc Fine Catering, San Francisco, St. John's Presbyterian Church
Post categories: The Blog, Traditional Elegance

click here to see the full wedding gallery!

Working with local vendors and supporting green business practices was one of Kelly and Eddie’s main goals for their August wedding. That and to have an amazing celebration supported by friends and family. Kelly and Eddie are both architects with impeccable taste and a strong sense of style they had a clear vision for their special day.

Kelly and Eddie met their florist, Julia Lojo, owner of Bloomies, located in the Rockridge Market Hall, at their local nursery in the East Bay. Julia was just wrapping up a class on floral arrangement using locally grown, sustainable plants when they met. They were striving for a “green” wedding, so much so that they GREW THEIR OWN FLOWERS! Kelly and Eddie’s green friendly idea to supplement their floral arrangements with succulents and dahlias grown in their own garden was an instant hit with Julia.

Julia was the right local florist who agreed to go into their garden the day before the wedding to cut the flowers. Obviously she had to supplement with some flowers, but she managed to harvest a great amount for the wedding. Kelly and Eddie also contributed their own creativity by creating the terrariums that added to the floral centerpieces for each table at the Headlands Center for the Arts “mess hall”. Katie Powers catering staff runs the onsite kitchen; serving organic, locally grown affair of the highest quality. The Headland’s Center itself is a restored barracks from the WWII era, and provides an interesting backdrop for any event. The heavy metal table in the foyer was perfect for escort cards and was soften by a well-suited birdcage with floral arrangement.

On site to coordinate the event, Sadie Waddington, owner of One Big Fish Green Events, located in San Francisco, brought to life Kelly and Eddie’s ideas for their perfect celebration. Lights were hung, air-plants laid in their individual bed of sand and set to hang in glass bulbs, table numbers placed and candles lit. Sadie’s goal to provide each client with an unforgettable experience, one that will last a lifetime, was surely met that day. She managed to coordinate all of these creative pieces for a perfect, colorful and relaxed green wedding in one of my favorite locations. Thanks, Kelly and Eddie for a gorgeous wedding to photograph!

Florist: Bloomies / Reception Venue: Headlands Center for the Arts / Catering: Katie Powers Catering / Photography: Julie Mikos Photographer / Event Planning: One Big Fish Green Events / Photobooth: Magnolia PhotoBooth / Entertainment: Sutherland Entertainment DJ /Acoustic guitar (Owner – Spencer Sutherland) / Wedding Cake: Torino Bakery

© Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate Wedding Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bloomies, California Weddings, Eco Friendly, Eco-Wedding, Green, Green Wedding, Headlands Center for the Arts, Julie Mikos, Katie Powers Catering, Magnolia PhotoBooth, Northern California, One Big Fish Green Events, San Francsico, Sutherland Entertainment, Torino Bakery
Post categories: Casual Elegance

click here to see the full gallery of goodness!

From Julie Mikos…Young couple and new parents, Beka and Josh, live in a tiny mountain town outside of Phoenix and had an extremely limited budget for their wedding, but wanted to invite practically their entire town population. Luckily, the bride and her mother are both artists and very crafty and were able to create all of the details on their own.

The bride spent weeks preparing. Cutting and stringing all of the birds, creating all of the decorative pinwheels for the cupcakes, directing her fiance (who is a carpenter) to build frames to house the pictures of them together as they grew up (yes, they’ve know each other since they were babies!), etc. They also recruited a small army of town-folk to help decorate, put together floral arrangements set in colored glass (collected by the bride and inspired by Martha Stewart’s recent article on colored glass collections), set-up tables and chairs and even cater the food. The ceremony was an extremely private ceremony which couldn’t be photographed, but the party was held at a friend’s cabin down the dirt road and nearly the whole town DID attend and pitched in to help. I was honored to also pitch in and help as the bride was one of my former wedding photography interns and now a good friend. This wedding truly took a village to create and was down-home charming!

From the bride…I wanted my wedding to be fun. I was inspired by old mexican colors and decor. We had a small budget so I looked for ways to make my wedding beautiful and fun without spending too much. I got almost all of my ideas from Style Me Pretty like the colored glass and paper birds. My friends and I went to work collecting glass from all the antique stores in town months leading up to the wedding. My mom painted all of the table centerpieces, signs, and peacock mural. I wanted everything to be personal. Josh made me frames from old barn wood and I filled them with photos of us and our new family. I bought a lot of scrapbooking paper and crafted the birds, cake topper, and pinwheels with it. Using the paper really tied everything together. With the help of all my close family and friends, Josh and I were able to have the wedding of our dreams. They helped us with everything, down to the home brewed beer and amazing wedding cake.  We laughed, danced, and had the time of our lives.

Photographer: Julie Mikos Photographer / Minister: Trina Kamp / Stylist: Kathy Karrys / Hair and Make-up: Rose Walker & Sumer Harper / Dress: Davids Bridal / Wedding shrugs: Mary and Angelika via Etsy / Decor: Rebekah Sampson (bride) & Elizabeth Silver(mob) / Music: Landon Shill / Food and drink: Walker Catering / Flower arrangements: Glenn Widger & Lucy Karrys / Cake: Sydney Kamp

© Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate Wedding Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Backyard, Craft, Do-It-Yourself Inspired, Handmade, Julie Mikos, mountains, Phoenix
Post categories: Do-It-Yourself Inspired

They were married at the historic Grace Episcopal Cathedral Chapel in San Francisco.

Julie did her usual superb work capturing the pre-wedding gorgeousness …

The reception was at The Lodge at The Regency Center …

from Julie Mikos …
A creative and crafty couple, Sarah and Matt decided they wanted to put loads of personal touches in their wedding day planning. They chose a San Francisco port town theme and included images of ships on their invitations as well as the stamp that went out with the invitation and they were all sealed with a wax seal of an anchor.

Sarah and Matt spent months prior to the wedding scouring flea markets for little antique bottles so that all of their guests could get a table seating “card” which was actually a personally written “message in a bottle” written by the bride and groom.

Going beyond the port city theme, Sarah and Matt also put lots of personal touches into what they wore. Sarah found an antique headpiece and sewed the veil onto it. She had a bridesmaid sew hew grandmother’s brooch onto her dress that day of the wedding and she also sewed the decorative pieces that she found at flea markets onto her shoes and purse.

Such a   g o r g e o u s  c e l e b r a t i o n !!!  Congratulations, Sarah & Matt … and THANKS so much, Julie for sharing!

Click {here} to see the entire SMP gallery of photos from Sarah and Matt’s wedding and {here} to see Julie Mikos’ entire portfolio on SMP.

You can also see more of the terrific invitation suite over on Hello! Lucky’s blog {here}.

Photography: Julie Mikos | Photographer
Caterer: Barbara Llewellyn Catering
Bar: Best Beverage Catering
Linens: Barbara Llewellyn Catering
Décor/Floral: A Simple Ceremony
DJ: The Spinheads
Cake: Carolyn Wong Custom Cakes and Desserts
Invitations: Hello! Lucky

© Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate Wedding Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: A Simple Ceremony, Barbara Llewellyn Catering, Best Beverage Catering, Carolyn Wong Cakes, Grace Episcopal Church, Hello! Lucky, Julie Mikos, San Francisco, The Spinheads
Post categories: Little Black Book Blog, Traditional Elegance, Vintage Chic, Wedding Details, Wedding Photography

{complete gallery here}

From Gena ~ Ryan and I love art deco design and were inspired by the classic and clean lines of the Bentley Reserve building, which we chose as the venue for our wedding. In keeping with this simple, yet elegant design, we chose silver, white and black as our color scheme.

I love calla lilies and our florist, Laura Little from Floramor, showed me a picture of white and black calla lilies in bullet vases. I thought it was beautiful and chose it to be the centerpiece for the dinner tables.

The planning process was somewhat stressful because of all the decisions Ryan and I had to make and anxiety about whether everything would come together. Amy Nichols helped so much by keeping us on track, and coordinating between our different vendors.

Our wedding day was absolutely perfect, thanks to Amy. It was the best day of our lives.

Gena’s stunning gown was designed by Jin Wang in San Francisco. Bridesmaids’ dresses were from the Dessy Collection.

What an absolutely gorgeous wedding celebration! Congratulations to Gena and Ryan and a big, big thank-you to Julie Mikos, Amy Nichols for sharing!

© Style Me Pretty : The Ultimate Wedding Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amy Nichols, Ballroom, Bently Reserve, Calla Lillies, Centerpiece, Color Palette Black White, Dessy, Floramor, Jin Wang, Julie Mikos, McCall's, San Francisco
Post categories: Contemporary, Little Black Book Blog, Traditional Elegance, Wedding Photography, Wedding Planners & Designers