Leah and Adam part 2, Before and after

Leah and Adam's wedding was full of glamour, fun and color! Their venue, the newly remodeled Lynnwood Convention Center, wasn't the typical wedding venue, which made it all the more fun for me to transform. Here are a few before and after shots of Leah's venue:
(shot by Azzura Photography)
(even their before pictures are better than mine!) :)












and a photo from my Iphone, with just a few tables in the space...


















The room above was used for the ceremony, are you ready for the transformation??



Image by Philip Meadows

Yes, that's the same bulletin/board covered space! Amazing what we can do with fabulous draping and lighting! We'll go more into the actual design process in our next post, but one of the fun changes was completely transforming the space during the cocktail hour...the right hand walls you see in the ceremony picture above went away, to make the room twice as big for the reception (guests were outside enjoying cocktails!) We hung our chandelier, changed the lighting to a deep red, and brought in the dining tables - Voila!


We wouldn't have these great images except for the exceptional talent of Azzura Photography and Philip Meadows Photography, so thank you to two talented artists! We also could not have made this transformation without our fabulous set-up and tear-down crew, the great lighting and draping technicians, and the fabuous staff at Lynnwood Convention Center
The staff literally bent over backwards to make everything fabulous for the bride and groom!

Stay tuned for part 3 of Leah and Adam's wedding, discussing our inspiration, design process and sketches! (and visit Part one of our series, Azzura's feature of this wedding, here)

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Bella Signature Design featured on Azzura Cafe

One of my favorite (and most challenging) weddings was just a few weeks ago - Leah and Adam's October wedding. After changing her venue half-way through the design process, I must admit I was a bit concerned when I first saw the new venue - as nice as the Lynnwood Convention Center is, it's fluorescent lights and bulletin board covered walls didn't scream "wedding" at all, and I was concerned that the budget would not cover the transformation I had in mind. However, despite quite a few cuts from the original design, I was very happy with the overall transformation, and how we turned a meeting hall into Leah's dream wedding. The venue is actually perfect for such a transformation!!

The wedding was shot by the wonderful Tania from Azzura Photography, and is featured on their blog this week, click on Azzura Cafe to see the post! Stay tuned later this week for a timelapse video of the transformation, more photos from photographer Philip Meadows (who stopped by to shoot a few photos as well, including a room panorama), and a post on our design process, including sketches.

Thanks to Tania form Azzura, for capturing all our work (and this amazing couple) beautifully, and for featuring it on Azzura Cafe. Always a pleasure to work with you!

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Bella Featured on Gray Likes Weddings Blog

What a nice surprise today to be featured on the fabulous "Grey Likes Weddings" blog! This was a super fun, stunning outdoor wedding on Bainbridge Island I designed this summer, photographed by the brilliant Bradley Hanson - here are the images from Bradley that Grey posted...we'll post more images ourselves soon! Thanks, Grey!

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Real Wedding: September wedding at the Fairmont

What if the bride's point of inspiration is another wedding?
Gabriela and Tim were married at the beautiful Fairmont Hotel in Seattle on a windy, blustery rainy day. The weather did not faze them one bit however, they were stunning, elegant, and determined to have a good time. We first wrote about this wedding a month ago, to see the details of our design collaboration and other photographs, click on Collaborating with the bride

Gabriela was one of my rare brides who knew what she wanted from the moment she saw one of our weddings featured in a magazine. She so loved the aisle pieces and centerpieces from that wedding, that she wanted to hire us to do the same thing! Being a stickler to create something fitting for them (versus recreating from another wedding), we delineated what she liked about them, and then use those element to design HER pieces, but more fitting into her space. (The Garden Room an Spanish Terrace at the the Fairmont Hotel.) In addition, we had she had a color scheme of tangerine, ruby red, light pink and ivory...NOT an easy color combination! ) I love a challenge, though, so I knew we could make the colors work together, and make this wedding as unique as all our others.


The end result really fitted well within the space, exceeded her expections (I LOVE next day emails from brides!!) and was kept the elements of what she loved from her initial selection but improved upon it, with little details like the beaded petals and duchess rose bowls.





And of course, it was all perfectly captured by Tania from Azzura Photography!

Thanks Tania, for the beautiful photos, and Gabriela and Tim for letting me be a part of your special day - it was a pleasure to design with you and create beauty for your day!

Daniela

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Collaborating with the bride

When I design a tabletop or an event, I think not only in terms of color, but also texture, depth and variation of hues, warm versus cool tones, dark versus light. There are a ton of elements to bring together harmoniously while creating what the clients wants.

This last weekend we designed a wedding at the beautiful Fairmont Olympic. The room is filled with natural light and has ceiling at least 20 feet tall! I love designing for this space, which usually is an easy and fun task. In all honesty, I felt a bit challenged at first on this one, as the bride was very adamant about a color scheme of ruby red, tangerine and light pink, against a stark ivory backdrop. Usually I advise against strong colors against white or cream, as it can be harsh when not done just right. Our bride had fallen in love with centerpieces we had created at a past wedding, with lush autumn colors of ruby and persimmon, and she absolutely had to have them - but she really really loved pink, and insisted on adding that into the centerpieces. I suggested a rich fuchsia to match the vibrancy of the other hues, but she wanted a paler pink, so the search was on! I found a medium pink hue in the "Attache" rose, and let it play off of the orange and ruby tones, mixed in with some neutral green to fit in with the garden atmosphre of the space (the Garden Room at the Fairmont).

Being a more traditional bride, she also wanted cream linens, so we showed her lots of options that would create depth through texture, to avoid a flat, high contrast feel. She chose a perfect netted overlay with a hint of sparkle, from the always fabulous Wildflower Linens. Adding some texture to the linen made the contrast between the cream and the bold color much less severe, and made a nice transition from the tabletop to the height of the centerpieces. My favorite votive holders from Glassybaby looked amazing throughout the room!
The colors really came alive, and the special touches made all the difference. We were very lucky to have two great photographers there - we'll post photos from the night's official photographer Seattle's Azzura Photography as soon as they come in.

We were also really excited for our first opportunity to work with the incredible Philip Meadows, a photographer out of the UK (now living in Seattle). Philip is an amazing artist, and we were honored to have him shoot our designs!

The aisle pieces...

Centerpieces
Details: strung rose petals suspended from the centerpiece

One of our duchess rose bowls, individual petals layered by hand to create a larger, lush rose:

(all images copyright Philip Meadows Photography). Thank you Philip, for some beautiful images!

Overall, a successful collaboration between a bride's wishes and our design, don't you think?

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Point of Inspiration

As an event designer, I am always looking for inspiration. It comes from the craziest things: the color of the water as it ripples across the beach at my home, snow melting and dripping into a puddle, and even how my favorite chartreuse sweater looks when thrown onto my persimmon ottoman in my study. (yes, I've actually created designs from those inspirations!) I often ask my brides for a "point of inspiration," something that captures the essence of what they like, even if they do not know why. It can be a scrap of paper, a piece of clothing, a picture - anything! Last year, one of my brides came to me with these fabulous shoes:


what a perfect point of inspiration! She loved the colors together, the slight shine of the matte satin, the ornateness of the design without being overly fussy, and the asymmetry. Does that tell me about her sense of style and what she likes? You bet it does! Here were some of the results:
A posy - love how the color palette turned out!
Hanging Aranda orchids, from the 'orchid trees' we created at the altar.

Note the asymmetry both in the bride's bouquet above, and in the centerpieces.
The chocolate linens made the deep hues pop, and the magenta lighting we used later that evening create a romantic yet energetic feel. Do you think we captured the essence our bride wanted to create?

What could you use as your point of inspiration?

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Introducing "Swoon": the best in dessert and favor displays

Here at Bella Signature Design we have long created custom Cake stands, beautiful dessert and candy displays, and even custom favor displays.  One of our goals has been to create "Swoon," a stand alone company that can create these displays for any wedding or event!  We are so excited to add "Swoon" to our repertoire of services, and hope that you will enjoy what we have to offer! This last weekend we were super excited to work with the very talented Jessica Holt, who not only is an amazing calligrapher and stationery designer, but is fabulous at creating all sorts of custom items to brand an event, from custom water bottle labels 

to candy/dessert bar tags. (and much, much more!) Now, although candy bars have been around for a while and are often done halfway, this one turned out so fabulously that I had to show you all!  

The wedding's color palette was mainly light pink and grapefruit(yellow), with accents of feather gray.  The custom candy bar was built by Jessica's team, (and yes, it is available for rent through us) and the backdrop sewn to match the colors of this particular event - how fun!

So excited to have Jessica part of the Bella team!

Daniela

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Before and After: Purple wedding

On friday we showed you the "before" post of this weekend's wedding, the flowers that came in, and a sneak peak at the linens. Here is the "after!"

The wedding turned out quite pretty, with a beautiful sunny day at the always stunning Kiana Lodge. There was definitely a LOT of purple going on, which was just what the bride had asked for! Purple Reign indeed. I was glad we had included quite a bit of chartreuse to make the purple "pop!" a bit more, it made it fresher and not as dark as it could have been.

The groom's boutonniere.

The bride's bouquet

The bridesmaids bouquets

The aisle markers
Altar arrangement

A centerpiece

What do you think?

Daniela

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