Couples wanted for a Stylised Engagement Session in Madrid

The Jason Groupp from NYC are heading over to Madrid at the beginning of March and are looking for newly engaged couples for a stylised photo shoot.

A signature of their studio is I Heart New York and they have some stunning stylised takes for an engagement session, take a look here to find out more, a touch of NYC Madrid Style!

So if you are heading to Madrid on the 1st and 2nd March and would love an engagement photo session with this fabulous team do contact them or perhaps this could be a good excuse to plan a pre wedding romantic getaway!

Due to the fact this is rather short notice they are also considering anyone with a special occasion, perhaps an anniversary or a celebration.

We are also hugely excited too as NYC comes again later this year in the form of another amazing photographer, to visit Reviva and photograph some of our weddings to take back across the Atlantic!

Spanish Wedding Inspiration

We are always looking for spanish wedding inspirations and just had to share this with you.  A Hip Hacienda wedding created by the hugely amazing Lisa Vorce.

I love the rustic qualities of this wedding, steering away from the conventional wedding furniture and chairs and using the dark woods combined with hessian textures and the terracotta containers.  One thing I think flags up in this delightful wedding is the attention to the stationery and the details, it is the use of the teal design on the chairs and churros bags that brings this wedding to life and of course we love the papel picado.

Indian Wedding Inspirations in Marbella

As Indian Weddings take Marbella by storm, we thought we would share some of the inspirations we are creating for our weddings. 

The explosion of colours used for Indian weddings are glorious and here we have created a more cohesive look to our weddings by keeping to a heady mix of beautiful colours.

Ivory, gold and red are a hugely popular colour combination, mix this in with a fushsia and yellow and a dash of purple creates a vibrant combination.

We have kept one of our designs to just using a peacock colour theme of purples, turquoises, aquas and golds but throwing in a touch of orange for the reception tables.

There are so many glorious details from floral elephants, embellished gold confetti cones, lots of lots of bling, particuarly this year with the latest rage for metallic wedding cakes and we love the idea of using slightly different textures and fabrics to bring different elements into creating our Indian wedding styles.

A fuchsia, red and yellow Indian Wedding Inspiration

An explosion of Colours

A Peacock Inspiration

Muted Golds, Ivories and Red

Images have been sourced from Karen Wise and Maharani Weddings

We hope you enjoy our inspirations as we publish them and to keep up to date with us, as we move into 2012, join our Facebook page

A Sophisticated Wedding at La Cabane, Los Monteros, Marbella

The stunning setting at La Cabane Beach Club in Los Monteros hotel is one of our favourite venues here in Marbella, it never fails to have that wow factor.

We were delighted when Lauren contacted us to help her plan, design and create her wedding for early September.

Lauren wanted a midsummer garden theme but kept very elegant and fresh, without any rustic influences, she is a huge fan of less is more and wanted everything beautifully dressed from the chairs to the tables.

As Lauren lives here in Marbella, we started at the beginning, creating Save the Dates, followed by mailing out the invitations, designed and crafted by Anoulka.

We kept the wedding design simple and elegant using white and silver styling with a touch of blues, sage greens and a dash of crystal.

The chairs were dressed in our loose style white satin covers finished off with silver satin sashes. We included some beach elements into the day including a charming sand ceremony and the stunning wedding cake with silver shells and starfish designed by Fi.

Lauren´s bridal flowers were kept to whites with a touch of crystal and we used stunning silver candelabras for the tables dressed with blue hydrangeas, white roses and orchids.

Adding in our famous twinkle with pool candles, lanterns and fairy lights, the final effect was stunning and complimented the beach club perfectly.

Our thanks to all our wonderful suppliers that helped us create such a perfect day, including Andreas Holms for these stunning photographs, to Fi, the wonderful cake designer, to Carla for organising such a fabulous wedding and to us for our lovely decorations!

Some lovely emails

Image courtesy of Jeremy Standley Photography

I often receive some lovely emails about my blog which is always very heartwarming to hear that so many people out there are inspired by my work.

For me of course it is not work, it is a passion.

I have always loved styling and creating settings whether it be my sister´s 21st birthday party (many years ago!) a film launch party, a wedding or indeed a home or a showhome.

I have to admit though the whole romance of weddings took over and I am fortunate enough that this is my business and I enjoy every moment creating, researching and designing weddings.

We are known for particular creative ways in which we style weddings, which has become a bit of a benchmark.

Often I receive comments about weddings we have styled and weddings where we have not been present and always the feedback is that something special was missing as we were not there, which I find very flattering, the fairy godmother was not waving her magic is often quoted!

But nothing stays the same, that would be boring! and we are very excited about some of our new projects we are currently working on for 2012.

Here is a lovely email we received today from across the waters :)

Hello Laura,

I stumbled across your blog in the wee hours this morning.
I am a new wedding planner in Pennsylania (US). I spend a lot of time on the internet looking for the next best thing to write about in my blog.
I just have to tell you that I have never seen more beautiful unique weddings than the ones from your site.
Your weddings are sophisticated, simple, and personal.

Perhaps I like it so much because that is my style.
I think that the cornerstone of a beautiful wedding is picking a venue that has a lot of character. I see that a lot in your weddings. I only wish you were in Italy. I hope to add destination weddings in Italy soon (I spent a lot of time in Italy and hence the name of my business, Brava Weddings).

Thanks so much. I will be reading all your archives and look forward to your next post!

Your newest big fan, Lisa Vernon www.bravaweddings.com

We have helped clients design their weddings in Italy, France and the US, by working with them to organise and create cohesive inspiration boards and pull all their ideas into a manageable decor programme. If you would like wedding styling assistance or indeed wish us to travel to style your wedding day please do get in touch.

We are on Twitter and Facebook if you wish to follow our latest weddings, inspirations and updates.

Can you overdecorate a wedding?

Taste and style are commodoties that people desire and certainly when it comes to decorating your wedding day this is important, so are some weddings overdecorated?

We recently had this experience with one of our clients which we would like to share.

Our client had booked her stunning wedding, set in beautiful grounds with a fabulous pool, very Moorish styling, a gorgeous marquee and yet she wanted the marquee dressed with white tissue paper pom poms?

We have seen the craze of tissue pom poms and they are lovely for a baby shower and look fabulous in our local cake shop but for a super stylish wedding, sorry no!

I had to get bossy and take charge at this point and steer our client to much more tasteful styling of her wedding which thank goodness she agreed with instantly which of course is why she hired us.

She ended up with a beautifully styled evening using lots of candles, white chill out areas and it was all very tastefully decorated.

I was so relieved she had accepted my advice as I did have a sleepless night wondering how best to approach this subject!

I am sure our clients were relieved too, as the decorations I suggested were not appropriate to her wedding style were almost another 1000 euros which I immediately wiped off their quote, but I could not bear the thought of cheap wedding decorations in such a stylish setting!

I am not knocking this pom pom craze, last year at one of our weddings we used them but it suited the venue as it was a funky, fun wedding with lots of bright colours so we were able to use them and it worked.

However, we have seen a few weddings posted this year and it looks more like a children´s playground with an In the Night Garden feel to it. I think the pom poms are now on their way out unless they are super stylish silver or gold ones but not the cheap tissue paper ones unless you wish to use them for a baby shower or a cake shop decoration.

Less is more is what I tell all my clients, concentrate on the lovely details, the personal touches, thanking your guests for coming, the stationery, how things are set out on the day from the cocktail sticks to the tablescapes.

Make your wedding personal and stamp your style on it, don´t try to overdress your venue.

Unless you have a super large budget keep it elegant and simple otherwise you will spoil what could be a very beautiful wedding into a cheap decoration showground, if you don´t like it don´t use it.

You should have seen my face earlier this year when I was presented with different bags of foil confetti for each table, I had gold top hats for one table, purple hearts for another, silver stars the list was endless, I nearly died!

Don´t do it unless you really have to! If it is not stylish or tasteful then leave it out.

Creating a wedding here in Spain is all about being outside, Mamma Mia twinkling lights always spring to mind for me and keep it simple and elegant as you are in such beautiful surroudings.

Moroccan Inspired Wedding Decorations

This morning I fell upon a fabulous blog called Bridal Musings which you must head over to take a look at, gorgeous weddings and inspirations.

Being established in the South of Spain many of our weddings have a slight element of Moroccan styling and we love the ideas on here using my favorite Moroccan colour combos.



For more information on these inspiration boards head over to Bridal Musings, I guarantee you will be there for a while!

Hans Christian Andersen Fairytale Wedding

I found this wedding tonight on Facebook from Wedluxe Magazine.

A very different style to our previous post but again I have a client in mind who is getting married here in September when I saw this beautiful interpretation of a fairytale wedding and love the elegant airy and light underwater inspired details.

A very soft and sophisticated theme and love the use of the silver twigs and seaweeds plus the pearls and seashells and all the beautiful crystal details.

We recently did a very similar theme at the Los Monteros hotel all based around a beautiful seashell and starfish necklace our bride had especially made, we will be posting this wedding shortly.

I do think different textures on the tables make such a difference to the normal white table linens, white plates, glassware, etc that is usually provided. If a bride can add in a table cover perhaps in silver, tie the napkins with ribbons and a tiny silver starfish or pearl detail and just add some finishing details this just lifts everything and makes such a difference to the overall look of what I consider a finished table.

The only thing I am not sure about here are the crabs, I don´t think I would like to sit with one of these staring at me! Mind you I do suffer from a fish phobia as well as being allergic to tequila! That is it though I am not a complete phobic!

Fun Begins on the Costa Del Sol!

I have to confess I love weddings, now there is a surprise! The fun and silly season is here on the Costa Del Sol and has begun in earnest, which is hugely exciting.

We have got off to a wonderful start with some fabulous weddings, photos to come, and all our new ideas that we have all been working hard on all winter are now coming into fruition.

I just had to share this photo with you though, from Jeremy's new photo booth which BTW was supposed to be a 5 minute pop up job, but having watched Jeremy and Jenni on Sunday, I am sure it took at least 10 minutes of wrestling but sure it will be a sleek job within the next month ;)

But well worth the 10 minute wait as the photos are brilliant and such fun, you must check out the link http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeremy-Standley-Photography/54532672389 to see what fun was had with this photo booth, a must now I think for any wedding here!

We also created a fabulous candy bar, amongst many other things, and did make the hotel staff, I am sure quite alarmed when we started jumping and clapping excitedly as we switched the fairy lights on, it was a bit like the Oxford street Christmas lights, perhaps not quite the same but we were thrilled.

I have to also mention whilst on this blog subject, that this wedding was at the Cortijo Bravo in Velez Malaga, the staff at this hotel were absolutely charming and helpful.

Our thanks to Moira at Perfect Spanish Weddings for being a huge supporter of our wedding styling, flowers and decoration service and to Rob the DJ for constantly and tirelessly keeping our weddings on their feet, in fact I have yet to meet a man that can eat so many liquorice allsorts in one night along with Jeremy ;) That is a feat believe me!