Sweet Ceremonies (Part 2)

Since it was so hard to choose only a few ceremony settings to share in my last post, I thought I'd keep it going with even more sweet wedding ceremonies!

Over 1000 flowers were woven in with green garlands, curly willow and pink cherry blossoms to create this dramatic chuppah.  Strands of crystals across the roof added extra glam for this focal point at the Highline Hotel. Amazing rose gold glitter runner from The Original Runner Company.

Photo: Christian Oth Studio

The bride said she'd been dreaming of a clear lucite chuppah... so that is what we created! Flowers across the top and at the base softened the look at Tribeca Rooftop. 

Photo: Gustavo Campos

All cherry blossom all the time at this Cipriani 42nd Street wedding ceremony.

Photo: Douglass Benedict

Not a flower in sight for this modern, yet delicate lavender fabric chuppah at Trump Soho. Another custom runner from The Original Runner Company.

Photo: Gustavo Campos

With so many gorgeous arches in the New York Public Library, we had to mimic that beautiful shape with a curly willow and white dendrobium orchid construction. 

Photo: Allan Zepeda

This bold, asymmetric chuppah has become a favorite because it was at once simple and funky, soft and bright.  Since the view from Sixty Five at the Rainbow Room is such a wow, we wanted to make sure guests could appreciate both the setting and the scene.

Photo: Brian Dorsey Studios

As wedding season is soon upon us, I am excited for the new ceremony designs in the works!

:-) Lindsay

Carolyn and Jeff: Sophisticated City Wedding

This, my friends, was a great wedding! Loads of cool details, a truly creative layout and a couple who wanted a wedding that was, let's say, ALL IN. No stone left unturned.  

Carolyn and Jeff wanted a wedding that screamed NYC from every angle, so the selection of the venue was paramount. After checking out almost every venue in the City and changing their wedding date to accommodate the venue's availability, they selected the sleek and modern Trump Soho Hotel for all of their wedding events - from a Friday evening welcome cocktail party to a Sunday morning farewell brunch. 

The ceremony was the bride's terrain... she had the strongest vision for this atmosphere, so we knocked it out of the park from the first rendering. Carolyn wanted it to be both modern and warm so we used lots of minimalistic elements like ghost chairs and a slim fabric chuppah, but then created tons of glow with a pair of candle walls and candles down the aisle. The lighting was set like a theater - really dark except for the "stage" so the photos don't show the whole essence... I included our initial rendering so you can see some more!

Cocktail hour was set to be a divergence from the romantic ceremony with a lively, fresh summer atmosphere. We used lounge pieces for most of the seating as well as a huge bar detailed with the mod pattern that we introduced with the custom invitations we designed for Carolyn and Jeff. 

For the escort card table, we built another candle wall as the backdrop and then used grass green cards with white calligraphy by Michael Weinstein on a gorgeous brown ostrich table from Party Rental, Ltd.

The dining room was, I must admit, one of our biggest challenges - and one of our biggest successes. As it happens with many events, the couple's guest list grew significantly throughout the planning process, so we were faced with the challenge of fitting the room to its capacity without sacrificing all of the creative layout and design concepts we had been working toward. The most economical way to use a space is to fill it with round tables (which is why they are the standard at most venues), but Carolyn and Jeff didn't want a traditional dining environment or a traditional sit-down menu. So, we designed a supper club style dining room with a mix of some long feast tables along with some tall bar style tables, banquette tables and lounge groupings. On top of that, we had 3 huge food stations in the room. In short, the least space efficient design possible. But... we used every inch and made it work. And it was pretty fabulous if I may say so myself!

Each table type had different floral collections. Long tables had lush bouquets of lavender roses, green orchids and white tulips mixed with architectural arrangements of white calla lilies, whereas the bar and banquette tables had collections of singular blooms including purple callas, green hydrangea and white orchids. The circle was a common theme throughout the design so we used circle patterned votives and even a dot patterned gobo to cast an ethereal, sparkly glow over the entire room.

Many tables in the room were white lacquer rather than covered with linen, so to warm up the surfaces and give them greater connectivity to the darker elements in the room, we designed wooden table runners and adhered them to the white tables, giving the look that the wood was inlayed in the white table. These were crazy-cool... hopefully you can get a little taste of it.

2012 was such an amazing year for LLE... our events were bigger, better, more creative and more exciting than ever before. I am unendingly grateful to every client who put their trust in me to make the most special days of their lives even more unique and beautiful.  And, I am infinitely indebted to my outstanding team of designers, planners, interns and producers, without whom not one event this year would have been possible. I don't know how I got so lucky, but I have the absolute best people in the event biz on my crew, and they faithfully stand behind me and enthusiastically support my crazy ideas, all in the name of making pretty parties. 

So, on this final day of 2012, thank you, thank you, thank you. Wishing you health, happiness and many celebrations of joy in the new year!

xo,

Ines' Funky and Fun Birthday Surprise

This gig was just plain fun. When a great client calls and tells me that I can pick a cool place for a cool party and it just needs to look and feel cool, well.... that's just cool. It was a special birthday for long time client Ines, and her husband Augusto wanted to surprise her with a birthday bash (check out their wedding here). The only requirement is that it needed to be a venue with a view. With that in mind, there was only one choice for me - SoHi at the new Trump SoHo Hotel has the sickest view of New York that I have ever seen, so it was a shoo-in.



We put together a station-style menu for this relaxed party which means that tables would not be fully set with china, silver and glassware. This makes for a very important decor challenge: how to still make the table look interesting and full when, indeed, it is not full. The answer? A patterned tablecloth! A plain, solid cloth can look empty when there is not a charger plate, silverware, etc. so bringing in a cloth with pattern or texture provides visual interest in lieu of the other elements.



Since Ines and Augusto have small children (see one of their birthday celebrations here), they wanted to include their own kids as well as the children of their guests. To give them a little something to do while the adults were eating, we created a kids' craft table with stickers, crayons, pipe cleaners, wax sticks and other fun goodies. I also used a lower table and kids' chairs so that they would feel extra comfortable.



SoHi has very cool little nooks in the walls opposite the windows so we carried the floral concept through to add more color around the room. One of the greatest features of this space, though, is the honeycomb ceiling with color changing LED's which provides both color and texture.





You know it is not a party without a cake - and this cake rocked! My buds Leslie and Mark at Mark Joseph Cakes worked with me to translate the style of this party into this modern, square cake that was one of the biggest "wows" of the night.



All photos by Sharon Schuster

How do you feel about all the pink? It was definitely the color of the season at LLE, so stay tuned for more!