Sparkly Autumnal Inspirations

I love October, partly because it is my birthday month and I have a good excuse to eat cakes and also because I take great delight in glitter and October is the month I have a good excuse to start decorating my house for the winter.

I have just had my house repainted this week, my walls and house are all super white, clean and ready for the festive season so I am looking for some inspirations for winter decorations.

With Halloween just around the corner, I am not a huge fan of the ghoulish, macabre look with green hair, blood and gore, but do love a bit of sparkle. 

My spooky efforts are pumpkin fairy lights hung over my mirrors along with some cute Halloween snow/gitter shakers and some rather lovely ceramic candle holders in the form of pumpkins and ghosts, from Whittards, which I have had now for years :)

On my quest for pretty yet spooky things, I had to share these gold gilded pumpkins with you, aren´t they just gorgeous, I love them and they would be fabulous for an October wedding.  

I would love to take this home to use as a decoration in my own home if I was presented with this at a wedding or party.

To see the DIY tutorial as to how to make these do pop over to Cupcakes and Cashmere.  A new Facebook page I found today and well worth having a look over for some wonderful crafty, creative ideas :)

Velvet Pumpkins to Welcome October

As we welcome October bringing us fresh, bright autumnal days and an urge to nestle down for the winter with cosy things surrounding us, I had to share these gorgeous velvet pumpkins with you from Plush Pumpkins, are they just divine, I want some!

I love textures, and the joy that something so simple can bring, and how gorgeous would these look as props for an autumnal wedding or party.  

I cannot find any excuse to have some, other than just cosseting them in my own home or perhaps to treat myself for my birthday :)

Do have a look at the Plush Pumpkin website, it is beautiful and completely in love with everything on it, they even have acorns, hearts and mushrooms, deep sigh!

A Bold Colourful Mediterranean Inspiration

Patience is a virtue and I have lots of it thank goodness.

My family might disagree with me when I cannot find things as this is my pet hate and my patience usually goes flying out the window at a very fast rate if I cannot find something, I hold my hands up, it is a red flag to a bull!

However I love nothing better and more therapeutic than designing and planning our weddings and events, quietly watching fashion trends and bringing new and fresh styles to my business.  I love a challenge and could not bear to be turning out the same well versed styles time and time again.

I approach each wedding as a new challenging, creative project and love playing around with ideas and thinking out of the box styling for our weddings with suggestions our clients have not thought about.  I prefer to be a leader rather than led and always have which is why I have worked in the design industry now for nearly 30 years, quite an achievement :)

I was thrilled last week, having finally managed to hit the shops, how the Ikat tribal prints were everywhere.  

Having foreseen this way back and blogged that this was a new fashion and we would see this in the 2013 and 2014 wedding trends, it was lovely to see that my predictions were spot on and tribal fabrics, bright colours and the ethnic style is now everywhere in the fashion industry which will of course filter into the interior and wedding trends.  

Now back to patience, I am patiently waiting for our summer to heat up, we have had a strange year with an unusually chilly May and June and strong winds, not my favourite weather. 

I am also now waiting patiently to see images of our fabulous weddings we have created over the past month to share with you. 

Patience required again as we are re-branding the business to move it forward, we have reshuffled and I have some fabulous designers now working with me along with enthusiastic fresh talent in the events industry, if I could wave my famous magic wand faster I would but all good things come to those that wait!

So in the meantime as I design and create and inspire myself I thought it would be lovely to share these warm Mediterranean colours with you of a shoot featured on Elizabeth Anne Designs.

We love the warm sunshine colours, the gorgeous tropical florals and the Spanish influences from the use of the crockery to the cute door knobs, which I seem to buy in abundance here from Zara home. I have a drawer full of pretty door knobs and handles, perhaps my other obsession as well as cushions and candles :)!

To see more of this fabulous Mediterranean photo shoot and the talented vendors involved do pop over to Elizabeth Anne Designs.

Guess where we are featured! In Style Me Pretty Little Black Book

Many moons ago when I started Reviva Weddings I spent hours scouring the websites for inspiration and fabulous ideas, I fell upon many beautifully created websites sharing love for all things weddings and styling.

One of the first websites, I recall, was the Knot followed closely by Martha Stewart Weddings.   

Snippet and Ink had some beautiful inspiration boards and as I worked on my own business I often browsed the internet looking for the latest wedding trends and fashion.  

I soon recognised some of the Wedding World Web leaders as being Junebug Weddings and Style Me Pretty and never in a million years did I think I would ever achieve being accepted and featured on both these amazing websites as one of their recommended Destination Wedding Planners and Designers.

My love of all things Spain, combined with my professional design and styling skills, I am fortunate to have created an amazing business whilst bringing up my smallest daughter and juggling two teenage daughters, which I am hugely proud of, delivering beautiful weddings to our wonderful clients time and time again.

So after many years of hard work, I am known for burning the midnight oil, I am thrilled to have achieved so much and absolutely love what I do.

Plus I am also known for scoffing wedding cake samples, trying to steal cupcakes, standing on my soapbox about commissions in wedding world, earned the honorary title of the Fairy Godmother of the Costa Del Sol who waves her magic wand hence my magic sparkles on our Blog that follow the cursor, surviving on less sleep than Maggie Thatcher and drinking coffee until it comes out my ears :)

I am now delighted to have Reviva recognised as one of the most creative and innovative Wedding Designers and Planners in Spain.

We are squeaking with excitement to be featured in Style Me Pretty´s family on their Little Black Book as recommended Wedding Planners and Stylists here in Spain.

I would also like to thank our team who have supported me and helped me to get where we are today, including Carla, Isabel, Loraine and Anoulka, an amazing array of hugely talented girls who are all passionate as I am about weddings, along with the fabulous suppliers, venues and photographers we have the pleasure of working with, without whom we could not create our weddings and showcase our hard work.

 And last but of course the most important, all the beautiful brides and their handsome grooms and lovely families who have trusted us to create their magical days.

I sound like I am standing on the stage for an Oscar, but we are proud of our achievements however will not cry or waffle on about our families!

The images on this post are a sneak peek from a beautiful wedding we planned and styled at the iconic Marbella Club two weeks ago, more to come on this wedding and our thanks to Agata Jensen Photography for a sneak peek of this beautiful wedding :)

A Soft Yellow Colour Palette for Weddings

Spring has sprung I hope finally here in Southern Spain.

 Our weather prediction has a big yellow thing in the sky tomorrow so fingers crossed after two months of what seems like eternal rain our famous Mediterranean summer is just around the corner!

Here at Reviva we have been looking at lots of colour trends and yellows are currently predominant along with purples being featured in many spring inspirations so we thought we would create an inspiration board using this beautiful buttery hue, a colour that works well with pinks and golds as well as lilacs and soft blues.

We are also designing some desert tables and love this one featured on Amy Atlas along with some fabulous images found on Pinterest.

Ikat Inspirations for Weddings

I love the fusion of different cultures into weddings and have been watching with interest the latest fashion to storm into wedding world replacing the 2012 chevron trend.

Ikat is not a classic and timeless design either for weddings, but never the less we are going to share a few inspirations with you over the next week using Ikat within a wedding design as it is about to storm wedding world for 2013.

Ikat is a dyeing technique similar to tie and die and popular in many Asian countries, the actual word Ikat originates from Indonesia and the designs, I think, have a lovely ethnic quality to them and remind me of a very 70´s bedlinen I had as a child in the classic peach and grey!

I love the use of Ikat in this wedding featured above by High Society as there are a lot of interesting design and styling elements pulling this fabulous wedding design together.

Ikat would be perfect for a bohemian beach style wedding in shades of whites, blues and turquoises and I do want to incorporate this design into one of our gorgeous beach weddings we are designing here in September.

Here though, I love the combination of the rather grand, stately venue as a backdrop to the ornamental decor, from the vivid colours of the florals, combined with the ethnic qualities of the Moroccan style lamps and Ikat table runners.  

There is such a use of contradictory styles and yet they work so well together to create a stunning setting for this beautiful wedding.

To see more of this gorgeous Ikat styled wedding do head over to High Society.

Spanish Inspiration Board for Weddings in Spain

I shared this fabulous inspiration board yesterday on Reviva´s Facebook page but had to post this gorgeous board from Camille Styles on the Blog too in case any of our readers and followers are not connected to us on Facebook.

 For me this gorgeous board has so many Spanish overtones, there is something rather dramatic about it which of course is evocative of our Andalucian flamenco drama that I adore and I love the combination of navy with the reds and dark pinks mixed with golds, it has my design brain ticking!

Do hop over and like our Facebook page we are always sharing fab ideas, inspirations and colour boards.

A Secret Garden Wedding Inspiration

As a young girl my magical world was provided by reading books and I was transported by my imagination into different worlds. I loved books and the wonderful places they would take me to that filled my dreams as I slept.   

Sometimes I wonder if it is this that made me want to create magical spaces as I became an adult.

Enid Blyton´s Faraway Tree,The Wishing Chair, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and the Famous Five are all some of many books I was fortunate enough to read as a small child and absolutely loved and I am so lucky my mother encouraged our reading of these enchanting stories.  

One of my favourite novels was The Secret Garden by Frances Hogdson Burnett, I so loved the mysterious wonder of this book and what the Secret Garden held within it´s walls as it was unlocked and discovered.

A Secret Garden wedding for me having read this book would be difficult to achieve with everything my imagination conjures up but I adore this photo shoot created by Hannah Gooch and Sarah Gawler featured on Love My Dress, it has that lovely mysterious quality about it that is so evocative of how I imagine a Secret Garden wedding.

I love the combination of nature and the glamour of the dress.  The styling details are beautifully done so I had to share this gorgeous and magical secret garden inspiration with you :)  If you have any beautiful childhood memories you would like to incorporate into your wedding day, we would love to hear about them.