A&P Wedding
Friday, February 8, 2013 at 4:52PM
How did 2012 pass by so quickly?!? My apologies for 11 months of silence, but I promise I was working on projects!
Enough babbling, on to the good stuff. What did I do in 2012? I will start off with the mother of all projects. If you remember, I had the chance to design my first wedding in 2011. In 2012, I was HIRED for the first time as a wedding designer. Annie and Patrice (whom I know from college) reached out to me early June asking if I would be interested in designing their wedding. I would basically be given free reign on everything, and I could choose which parts I wanted/did not want to work on. Here's the catch: they only had the venue... and nothing else... and the wedding was during the end of August. I would also be planning the wedding from New York and fly to California a week before the wedding. Challenge accepted.
How did it turn out? I'll let you be the judge.
All photos courtesy of Tikko Weddings (except where noted)
These origami flower balls, also known as kusudama, became the central theme of the wedding which was held at University Club of Palo Alto.
The ceremony took place outside under some shady trees.
The altar where the couple shared their first communion as husband and wife was kept clean and simple.
The aisle was decorated with little bouquets of baby's breath and billy balls wrapped in burlap.
Here is a better angle of the aisle decor (photo courtesy of my iPhone 3GS).
This will require some imagination since I could not find a picture. The ring bearer (who was adorable!) walked down the aisle with a sign hanging around his neck that said the following:
After the ceremony, guests enjoyed a cool beverage from an iced tea and lemonade table. I decorated the paper straws with message flags ("The most gorgeous man alive", "Ms. Ravishing", "Call me, no maybes", "You're Welcome").
The party moved indoors to the reception area.
A clearer look at what I printed out on the name cards. Cows for steak. Fish for, well, fish. Eggplant for vegetarian.
I panicked when Annie and Patrice asked if I could do the centerpieces. I don't have any experience with flowers! Even though the centerpieces ended up being pretty simple, I am still relieved they turned out well. Who knew baby's breath could look so classy?
Patrice is an avid photographer, so we wanted to make sure a photo collage of some sort was included in the wedding. I ended up using it as a backdrop for the candy table. Let's pretend the photos aren't crooked... it took a few tries and lots of tape before I was able to get it right.
To continue with the photography theme and keep the wedding interactive and fun, we decided to have a polaroid picture station. I also could not find a photo of the entire table, but here are some key elements. The only thing missing is a picture of the wall where I hung twine. Guests would sign their polaroid photos and clip them to the twine with mini clothespins. By the end of the evening, the wall was covered with photos (Tip: To encourage participation, appoint bossy, yet charismatic friends to roam the reception hall with the camera.)
For display only!
The cutting cakes were decorated with flowers by the venue coordinator/florist Jessica Fields.
This is how the reception hall ceiling turned out. These flower balls, which were larger than the ones used for the ceremony, ranged from eight-ish inches to over a foot long in diameter.
I want to leave you with some behind-the-scene shots I took throughout the preparation process. Here are a few stacks of paper (AKA paper Mayan pyramids) waiting to be folded. I folded over 5000 sheets of paper (84 flower balls)!
These are the large flower balls...
... and these are the little ones.
Reader Comments (2)
Absolutely gorgeous details! Any couple would be lucky to have such wonderful decorations to celebrate their wedding day and any photographer would be lucky to have such beautiful details to capture!
Beautiful job Grace!