Rocket Science Weddings and Events

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, my only regret is that I didn't get to work with Kaela and Korey longer. They were such a fun, nice and cool couple (oh, and gorgeous!). I had the pleasure of helping them out with their day of coordination in July. Here are just a few of my favorite photos done by Andrew Vick of Vick Photography. Some of the other great vendors involved were:

VENUE: Semple Mansion

FLORIST: Eric of Floral Logic

DJ: Flow DJ

CATERER: Russell's on the Lake

MAKEUP: Brett Dorian

CAKE: Queen of Cakes

PHOTO BOOTH: The Traveling Photo Booth

LOVE this amazing dress shot! Beautiful!

Flawless makeup, flawless bride.

Gotta have some fun on your wedding day!

The bridal bouquet: roses, sweet pea, freesia, dusty miller

The tree ceremony instead of a unity candle.

On their way downstairs for the social hour.

Cheese, my favorite food. Great display done by Russell's on the Lake.

The little ring bearer tuckered out after the ceremony!

The family Model T, a wedding tradition.

The end! And the beginning. Congratulations you two!

I love this picture from Lauren & Pat's wedding by Sally of La Vie Photography. Happy Friday!

Now that I am blogging more, I am exploring the blogosphere and stumbled across celebrity wedding planner Mindy Weiss' blog. What did I discover?! Celebrities are just like you and me, they love glass cylinders! Here are some cylinders she used in a design for a beach wedding. LOVE!

This post today is in honor of Jen and Josh's wedding this past weekend. Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Rutz! I will of course post a full blog post of their day when I get the amazing photos from 1012 photo. Until then, on to Cylinder Thursday!

This cylinder makes use of the abundant hosta plant. (If you don't have hosta overtaking your yard and you want to try this look, you can head to my house or my mom's house, we have plenty!) I love hosta leaves because of their deep veins. Even a solid green leaf is so pretty because the veins add texture. The hosta leaf makes a good, local substitute for an aspidistra leaf, reducing the carbon footprint (and cost if you cut them from your yard) of the arrangement. Go green with greens!

Here is how this easy arrangement comes together:

1. Pick your hosta leaves. For this wedding the sister of the bride had these large, variegated leaves that I loved. When I cut them I left a little stem so I could keep them in water overnight. For the arrangement though I cut the stem off using a sharp knife and then flipped the leaf over and "deveined" it, making the back of the leaf a little more pliable. You have have to be careful not to cut too much off or else you cut through the leaf.

2. Hold the leaf between your thumb and forefinger and wrap around to make a tight loop. Place in cylinder.

3. Fill with water to desired height.

4. Top with candle or other floral.

This leaf was not as long as some others, so it didn't wrap around the cylinder as well. However, I like this look too. The leaf takes up most of the cylinder and you get more of a "leaf feel" as opposed to just abstract green color in the cylinder.

Here are the cylinders as one of Jen and Josh's centerpiece. You can see how great they work for a long, skinny dinner table. They don't take up much room but have high impact. We used a variety of yellow flowers, but these are floating cushion mums. Other flowers that would work great as a floating top to the cylinder: roses, standard or Fiji mums, dahlias, gerbera daisies, and cymbidium orchids.