Rocket Science Weddings and Events

These cylindrical beauties were from Gretchen & Chuck's wedding at Earle Brown Heritage Center last Friday. It was a picture perfect day, and soon I will be blogging their Instagram photos. But for now, enjoy these super easy cylinders.

We used the cylinders in conjunction with floral and other cool elements, such as the birch stumps and cut off wine bottles. Here you can see a cylinder with a floating garden rose. I love having the versatility of height the glass cylinder can offer. I think a lot of people feel you have to fill them all the way to the top. I think having the rose at the bottom of the cylinder is more impactful than if we had floated it higher up.

To wrap the burlap around the cylinder was so easy! Thanks to Pearls & Lace for these amazing centerpieces. Take burlap "ribbon" in the width that you want, wrap it around and adhere with hot glue, double sided tape or small corsage pins.

As it got darker, the lights transformed the room. I love the combo of the mercury glass and cylinder. The texture in the mercury glass mimics the burlap.

Yes, last Cylinder Thursday featured orchids. But this goes to show you how versatile an orchid is, and a glass cylinder for that matter! Check out these golden blooms floating... so pretty. 

Setting aside the fact that today isn't Thursday, I am finally getting back in to the swing of my super popular Cylinder Thursday posts. (I would've posted on Thursday but was having some technical difficulties). This past week I got to spend a few amazing days in FABULOUS Las Vegas at the uber-luxe Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Engage! a luxury wedding business summit. Expect to see a lot of great stuff coming from this trip, I was inspired by so many people and things, like this bathroom arrangement at the hotel. (Who says cylinders can't be luxury?!)

Whenever I think of a single stem of orchids, I either go with the inexpensive dendrobium orchid or the more pricey (and bigger) cymbidium orchid. I forget about this amazing beauty, the James Story orchid. It is modern, sophisticated and red!

I cannot believe it has been almost a month since I blogged! Good thing I have an intern starting soon so I can focus on blogging more (or make her do it!).

I did this with Emily and Tracy's (award-winning, hearten-featured) and Katie and Nick's weddings, and I thought it was cool. Maybe they did too... Anyway, here are a few of my favorite Instagram photos I took for Soraya and Kevin's wedding a few weeks back. It was such a beautiful day! I cannot wait to see the pro pics by Roee Dori, but I will have to wait a bit longer. In the meantime, enjoy my amateur photography skills.

Well, this blog post is only about a month overdue! This year I had the privilege of being the Design & Decor Chairperson for the STAR Awards. The ISES STAR Awards is Minnesota's way of recognizing top wedding and event professionals. Basically it is our industry's Grammy's or Golden Globes. But besides the awards part of the party, it is a time for the whole industry to come out and let loose. This year was no exception! The party was a blast and I had so much fun with my fellow ISES members planning it. 

Here are some photos from the event, but I thought it might be interesting to see how the design started. I have included the ideaboard pages first followed by the photos from the event that relate to it. Kind of a "before and after" or something like that.

Enjoy!

The theme this year was "Bootlegger's Ball" and we found the perfect venue, the Nicollet Island Pavilion. Mintahoe and their staff were amazing to work with, and didn't say no to any of our crazy ideas!

Everyone knows that there is always a secret entrance to get in to a Speakeasy, and ours was a Laundromat. Thanks to our friends and family, and Saver's for donating all of the clothes. We had over a 1,000 pieces of clothes hanging up. Accent Store Fixtures and Bauer Bros. supplied some key elements such as the vintage commercial dryer and countertops. 

Because of the size of this party and our crazy ideas, there wasn't room for our "laundromat" inside the Pavilion. We had to put up a tent with a 60ft walkway to create this area. Midway Party Rental supplied all the tenting. It sure would've been cold to have registration outside!

The award nominees got their own little swanky registration area and lounge, complete with specialty cocktails, hors d'eouvres and a DJ (provided by Level 11) mixing current tunes with 1920s music. We called this space the Zebra Lounge and the nominees had to give the bouncer at the door a password to get in.

Thankfully I had met Amanda of Lime Canary Vintage Rentals before we decided on doing a 1920s party, otherwise I don't know how we would've found all of the great vintage furniture we needed. She supplied everything for the Zebra Lounge and elsewhere. Chandelier is by Event Lab, linens by Connie Duglin Specialty Linen, Zebra Lounge graphic by Gretchen Berry Design Co., and printing by Signarama.

The non-nominee guests hung out in the Speakeasy. Since the Speakeasy was going to be in a white tent, we had our work cut out for us to change it. So many yards of fabric! Thanks to Avant Decor, Perimeters Group, BeEvents, Event Lab, Cort and Sassfras Floral & Garden Design for transforming the tent.

We ended up also having casino games for the after party, thanks to Mintahoe. They were a big hit with the guests, especially my dad.

Probably one of my favorite spaces was the Distillery. We utilized the Pavilion's built in bar and brick walls to create this space that we used for drinking (naturally) and photos of the winners with their awards.

Who knew that all these barrels could be found at Midway Party Rental?! The super cool conveyor belt came from Event Lab, lighting done by AV for You.

The main part of the event, the awards ceremony, was in the Cabaret.

Linens provided by Connie Duglin, table lamps by Apres, chiavari chairs by Ultimate Events.

Our craziest idea of the whole party was to build a wall inside the Pavilion creating separate spaces. A plain pipe & drape wall just wouldn't do, we wanted it to look like an interior wall of a building. The look was achieved thanks to some amazing graphic design work by Chris Medower and printing by Big Ink. I think this was the part people talked about the most. The wall looked like real wallpaper, and we created moulding and entryways (and even wall sconces) printed on one long piece of fabric.

Lamps provided by BeEvents, end table by Bungalow Six, and couch by Lime Canary Vintage Rentals.

After the party, is the after party! The rooms on the other side of the wall we created opened up after the awards ceremony was over. One of the rooms was the Black & White Bar.

How cool is that wall of 1920s movies?! MetroConnections did all the furnishings in this space. Sassafras Floral & Garden Design did the centerpiece.

The other after party space was the Dessert Den...

Behind the wall of "taxidermy" and frames was the tarot card reader! I waited in line while eating many many bite sized pieces of cheesecake by Muddy Paws. The vegan taxidermy was made by Amy Terry.

Vintage dresser from Lime Canary Vintage Rentals, vintage undergarments supplied by Rocket Science Weddings & Events. The gorgeous chandelier came from Apres, along with drapery on the tent frames creating the two smaller spaces inside the Dessert Den.

Furniture from BeEvents and Cort. Throw pillows from Cort and Bungalow Six. Rug from Rocket Science Weddings & Events. Uplighting in the Dessert Den was done by Bellagala.

Final spaces, small but important!

Graphics by Gretchen Berry Design Co. and furniture provided by Lime Canary Vintage Rentals.

Okay, so that is it for the party! Just one more photo...

Me WINNING! Best Wedding and Volunteer of the Year.