Southern Weddings

Next Exit really made our day (and my week!) here at SW with this wedding.  It’s hard to say what we like most about Kim + Kevin’s wedding, planned by the oh-so-talented Mary Dann: the fresh green and natural brown accents on everything from the bridesmaids’ flowy Bella Bridesmaid’s dresses to the charming goodie boxes, the bride’s hand-tied bouquet from Nisie at Enchanted Florist or that to-die-for “Sweet Dreams” candy bar?  Yes, please!  We especially like how the couple’s fun-loving and down-to-earth personalities shone through with the many handmade DIY items they incorporated into their big day.  For starters, we’d love a glass of Kevin’s home-brewed (and bottled!) peach and pear cider.  And how about that adorable brown and lime green ribbon decorating the Ross Moor Pastries cake?  Can you believe the bride made it herself?

How did the two of you meet? Tell us your story. We met at a bar in Hermosa Beach. My friend was dancing and accidentally spilled her drink on Kevin’s lap! I apologized profusely and we started talking. He was different than most other guys you meet at bars: genuine and very down to earth. He asked for my number and we spoke on the phone for a few months before we ever hung out again. Being friends first was very helpful. 6 years later, here we are!

What was the design inspiration for your wedding? We both really like a natural and organic look.

Favorite design element of your big day: The centerpieces and the chuppah both were stunning and simply amazing!

Tell us about finding your wedding dress: I only looked at one place – Renee Strauss for the Bride – and I tried on a bunch of dresses. My mother was with me, and Renee (the owner) said to us, “If you love it, why don’t you just buy it and be done with it, so you can cross this item off of your list?” We agreed and that’s just what we did! I’m so happy we made that decision, because I absolutely loved my dress and could not have been happier.

Describe your wedding flowers: We chose green cymbidium orchids, white phalaenopsis orchids, white hydrangea and manzanita branches. The centerpieces were decorative boxes with plants. The floral bouquets had gardenias tucked into them to make them smell delicious! Nisie, our florist, is truly an artist.

Describe your wedding cake: It was simple: white, square-shaped and decorated with green cymbidiums. I made the ribbon for the trim (brown with a lime green stripe in the center) and it took me less than 5 minutes. The cake sat on a bamboo stand that went perfectly with the rest of the decor. Two of the layers were red velvet and the other two were carrot, both with cream cheese frosting… ‘mmm!

Our 2 favorite details of the wedding: Our martini ice sculpture and luge was a huge hit. It dispensed apple and lemon drop martinis and had our names and a palm tree etched into the ice! The “Sweet Dreams” candy station that greeted guests as they left our party was also quite popular.

Were there any surprises? YES!  Our wedding planner had transformed our wedding suite at the end of the night. It took our breath away!  Rose petals, candles, champagne and a table full of desserts were just a few things that really made us feel like a king and queen.

Three adjectives that describe the day are: Loving, fun and blissful.

What advice would you give to someone planning their wedding? Hire good vendors: they make all the difference in the world!  We would re-hire every single one of ours in a heartbeat.  Try to have fun with the planning instead of letting it cause stress.  Also, if you are going on a honeymoon, don’t leave the very next day.  Leave 2 days after the wedding!

What’s next for you as a couple? Traveling and enjoying each other’s company.

What are you looking forward to in the future? Being as happy as our parents are.

Any DIY items? I did both the ribbon for the wedding cake and the party favors.  Also, my husband brews his own beer as a hobby and he made peach and pear cider for our favors. He made the cider and then bottled and labeled it with custom-made vinyl labels.  We wrote a note to our guests and our wedding planner had them printed and tied around the neck of the bottles with raffia. They were so cute! We also gave our overnight hotel guests a cute welcome box with goodies inside.  To personalize the boxes, we made custom and included a nice note.

Favorite inspirational site: Our florists’ and photographers’ websites showcasing the weddings they had done in the past were extremely helpful.  But my mom was the greatest inspiration of all. She did most of the planning, since that’s her specialty.  I don’t know what we would have done without her!

Congratulations on your truly beautiful wedding, Kim + Kevin!  Enjoy your travels together as newly-weds!

This wedding is absolutely amazing! From the bride’s beautiful dress, from {Romona Keveza}, to the chic floral arrangements, by {Minoo’s Flowers} and Oswaldo Hernandez, elegant is the best word to describe Shadi + Robert’s big day. Photographer {Anna Kuperberg} caught every stunning detail of the event, which took place at {Cornerstone Gardens} and was catered by {Alex’s Catering}. The simple and stylish cake is by {Torino Baking}. A special thanks to {A Savvy Event} day of coordinator for making sure Shadi + Robert’s wedding went off without a hitch. To see more of this wedding, check out Anna’s {Blog}.

How did the two of you meet? Tell us your story. Unknowingly, Robert and I worked at the same company for a few years before crossing paths. He worked in the San Mateo location while I worked in the Dublin location, each in unrelated departments. It was a rare occasion for Robert to work out of the Dublin office but on one lucky day he did. I happen to sit in a cube right behind the administrative assistant who happened to step away from her desk when Robert showed up. I was headed back to my desk from the break room and saw him waiting for the administrative assistant to return. I was feeling helpful that day and approached him to see what he needed. After I called an admin to find him a place to sit, I headed to my cube. I realized immediately that the guy I just helped was the first handsome man I had spotted since I started working at the company three years ago. I was determined to find out more and soon started a search for this mystery man. Feeling brave, I approached him and asked him a silly question to get the dialogue started. We both looked each other up in the company directory right away and he sent me an email thanking me for my help.The emails continued, he asked me out on a date, and let’s just say that the day after our first date I told my coworkers I would marry this man. Woman’s intuition!
What was the design inspiration for your wedding? A phalaenopsis orchid. Orchids exude a confident, modern, charm that is both sexy and romantic at once.
Favorite design element of your big day: Do I have to pick one? Though the barn is really a compilation of elements, the décor and ambience really showed off the look I was going for. We had a backdrop of sheer draping to define the all white lounge of leather couches, ghost chairs, large white vases of peonies, hydrangea, and orchids, beautiful chandeliers, and a dramatic white dance floor and lots of candles all inside an otherwise rustic barn.
Tell us about finding your wedding dress: Let’s just say I almost didn’t have a dress but that would be a very long story. The designer cut my dress too small but amazingly it ended up working out and the dress was exactly what I wanted. When you find it, you just know! The architectural look was in perfect harmony with our wedding.
Describe your wedding flowers: Lush, sleek, modern and dramatic all at once. Our venue was an amazing garden with several different spaces that allowed us and our guests to explore the grounds throughout the evening. This allowed our florist (my talented mother) to change the focus of the arrangements in each space while maintaining the look and sticking to a specific group of flowers. We started off on the vineyard lawn for a traditional Persian ceremony. Here we brought in our color theme of white, yellow, and pewter. This is the only place where I used yellow in my arrangements via a long runner of mixed flowers. I had hydrangea balls hanging on the tree above the welcome table, floating across the water pond behind us, and decorating the pew aisle chairs. I had phalaenopsis orchids galore! My bridesmaids each had cascading bouquets of them and we had huge arrangements full of orchids next to us. I had a bouquet of cattleya orchids and ostrich feathers wrapped with satin pewter ribbon. The cocktail hour was on the barn terrace and consisted of groupings of white vases filled with hydrangea flowers only. Dinner was under an open air tent surrounded by fully bloomed white garden roses. We had two versions of centerpieces. Most were fluffy mixes of all white flowers including peonies, phalaenopsis, hydrangea, tulips and spray roses set atop pewter linen and low enough to allow easy conversation. The other centerpieces were single bloom arrangements of phalaenopsis orchids. Each dinner napkin had an orchid elegantly resting on top. When it was time to dance we headed back to the barn, but this time inside. The barn was decorated in all white and the flowers were mixed arrangements reused from other portions of the wedding. At the end of the evening we had a table set up next to our Ecuadorian chocolate favors so that our guests could take centerpieces home as an extra treat.
Describe your wedding cake: Julie of Torino Baking is amazing. Both for the person she is and the cakes she bakes. The look was inspired by the combination of a few different cakes I found on blogs online. We went with a two flavored fondant covered cake: banana cake with cream cheese frosting and a dark chocolate cake inspired by black bottom cupcakes (dark chocolate, cream cheese frosting, and mini chocolate chips). Delicious with a capital D. The design was very modern and included a super sized cattleya orchid sugar flower and had orbiting pewter ribbon. The pewter ribbon was a re-occurring design element that started on my invitations and was carried throughout the evening in small doses.
Our favorite detail of the wedding was: Another tough question. I would have to say the tent draping. I think the sheer fabric had a huge impact without actually drawing attention. It really helped create the dinner space and worked very well with the pewter linens, fluffy centerpieces and intricate china. Robert’s favorite detail was the linen. Just kidding. His favorite was the white dance floor. I don’t think anybody expected it to add so much to the barn décor.
Three adjectives that describe the day are: Modern, Romantic, Airy
What advice would you give to someone planning their wedding? Enjoy it. The planning takes up way more time than the actual day so if you don’t enjoy it you’re missing out. Take advantage and set dates with girlfriends, your mom, and your husband to be. Every one of the wedding activities and errands shared with friends and family become cherished memories.
Any DIY items? Many. I designed and put together the escort cards, bar menus, table numbers and “best wishes” for the Manzanita branch guest book. My mom is an amazing florist (Minoo’s Flowers) and worked with the super talented florist Oswaldo Hernandez who is a great friend of hers. I guess it isn’t really DIY but I was able to work very closely with my “florist” to achieve exactly the look I wanted. I also did the schematics and design for the spaces used throughout the evening. This includes designing the lounge, the barn terrace, the tent, and ceremony using different tools, sketches, and what I learned in an introductory interior design course. The toughest DIY undertaking was the tent draping…not easy! We had a quote for over $3,000 for a design company to install some pre made sheer draping so we decided we could buy the fabric and make it ourselves for under $1,000. My mom, my dad, and I designed the draping together and my mom sewed it with the help of her close friends. It took a huge gang of us to install these the night before the wedding but all the work was well worth it.
What’s next for you as a couple? What are you looking forward to in the future? Traveling, buying our first home, and continuing to learn together and about each other.

Congratulations Shadi + Robert! We wish you the best life has to offer!

Erin + Ted definitely deserved a wonderful wedding after spending most of their eight years together in different cities! Wedding planner {Lora McFadden} helped make sure the day was perfect. The wedding took place at Old St. Anne’s Church and the reception took place at {St. Andrew’s School} where the couple first met. The couple’s big day was captured by {Jared Wilson Photography}. The beautiful blue and white floral arrangements are by {Flowers by Le Style 25} and {Liz Marden} provided five wedding cakes in five flavors, also in blue and white. Erin’s dress is from {Vera Wang} and her shoes, {Valentino}. Check out more of Erin + Ted on Jared’s {Blog}.

How did the two of you meet? Tell us your story. We met when I started as a sophomore at our boarding school (where the wedding reception was almost 10 years later). We instantly became best friends but it wasn’t until senior year that we started to date and we’ve been together ever since! Then, we relied on long drives and phone calls for college because we were at different schools. After we graduated, Ted moved to Boston for work and I moved to Baltimore for school so it was another year of flying around the country to be together. FINALLY, after all that time, I moved to Boston last year and we got to be in the same place again. When I started medical school, we moved to Chicago and Ted proposed (finally–we had been dating for 8 years by now) on our first night here which also happened to be our dating anniversary! It was a perfect introduction to our new city.
What was the design inspiration for your wedding? Definitely rustic chic. We really wanted to capture the beauty of St. Andrew’s but also throw in a little bit of our personality which is pretty laid back. We wanted the day to feel like a fun dinner party but for 250 of our closest friends and family!!
Favorite design element of your big day: The entire reception look was designed around the mahogany dining room tables at St. Andrew’s which we moved out to the Front Lawn for the reception. Everything really stemmed from there.
Tell us about finding your wedding dress: My mom flew to Chicago for the weekend and met me at the Vera Wang store. The consultant who was helping me pulled out this navy blue dress and told me that it was available in ivory and that it would be perfect. But, the ivory version was at the cleaner’s and wouldn’t be back until later in the week when my mom would be back home. So, even though I absolutely loved it, we spent the rest of the weekend looking for something else. After we couldn’t find anything, I went back to Vera Wang on my own and tried the dress in ivory. I was the only one to see it on before we bought it!!! But, it was absolutely perfect.
Describe your wedding flowers: We/I (let’s be honest, Ted really didn’t care about the flowers) really like funky, unique flowers so I met with the florist and described my really vague image that consisted of nothing by pincushion proteas. They turned out beautifully and we actually got cream peonies in June which is just unheard of so I was really excited.
Describe your wedding cake: We are pretty indecisive so when our baker suggested that we have a spread of cakes instead of the traditional big cake, we knew that was perfect! We got to have five different cakes with five different designs and most importantly, five different flavors!
Our favorite detail of the wedding was: The napkins that we had in great fabrics to highlight our wedding colors and accent the tables which really were the centerpiece of the settings. Ted really loved the cigars (and so did many of our guests)–they were the perfect end to the night and a great respite from dancing. Oh, and we served milkshakes during late night and everyone enjoyed the cool-down!
Three adjectives that describe the day are: festive, muddy, perfect
What advice would you give to someone planning their wedding? Enjoy it but don’t obsess about it. I stressed over little things that ultimately didn’t matter at all–no one cared if the tablecloths on the cocktail tables were canary yellow or dandelion. AND, hire a great photographer because the day goes so quickly and you want to remember it all. We spent a long time making our escort cards but by the time we got to the tent, they were all gone and we never got to see the spread!!
What’s next for you as a couple? What are you looking forward to in the future? We’re really looking forward to getting settled in to Chicago and exploring this wonderful city. We’re ready to travel together and enjoy our new life as a married couple.

Congratulations Erin +Ted! We wish you all the best in your life together!