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 :)

Gorgeous Wedding Details at the Hacienda San Rafael, Seville

We have been delighted, in the past few weeks, to head up to Seville to one of our favourite venues, the Hacienda San Rafael, to plan and style a few gorgeous weddings at this heavenly hideaway.

Margot and Sergy´s wedding was a wonderful fusion of oriental and Russian influences, including a tea ceremony and we designed and created many fabulous details to bring these elements into the wedding day.

 Creating beautiful hand folded paper origami hearts, paddle fans, paper parasols, pretty confetti cones, our famous blackboard signage, table seating plans hanging from the trees and of course gorgeous florals including different pastel coloured posies for the bridesmaids.

To bring the Spanish influence into the wedding Margot´s friend, Clara, created a design for Spanish ceramic tiles which we had created by a local artist, it was such a pretty idea and they were displayed on the tables along with an ad lib card and set off with the paper origami hearts, a mix that worked beautifully on each place setting.

The planning involved in orchestrating this wonderful weekend by Carla, for Margot and Sergy involved the couple organising a pre wedding trip to a local jamon producer for their guests, where they could see the jamons being made and visit the shop, a pre wedding bridal shower spa party in Seville and organising all the transport and accommodation arrangements for the guests to ensure a smooth running event.

It was an amazing weekend culminating in a fun filled wedding day full of delightful details.  We were thrilled to receive this email from Margot and Sergy so soon after their wonderful time here.

Hi Carla & Laura,

We are finally back in London, and still daydreaming about our wedding just a few days ago.
We would like to thank you both for doing such an amazing job - we really cannot describe the feeling we had during and after the wedding. It really was the best weekend we have ever had in our lives - so much happiness and joy, and just seeing all our friends and family together. We felt truly blessed.

It could not have happened without your professionalism and expertise. I hope you enjoyed it just as much as we did, I am sure there were quite a few stressful moments but everyone was complimenting on how great you were. I hope it was worthwhile for you too picking us as clients!

Thank you once again.

Sergy & Margot

The actual photographs will be posted as soon as we receive them but as we had created so many beautiful details and stationery I organised Marea from Lucky Girl Photography to come with us and take some photographs of our work and you can hop over to Marea´s blog to see more of this stunning venue and her fabulous work :)

The beautiful wedding cake was created by Sweet Things by Fi.

We have also been sent a short video by Ensu which is beautiful, to see the video click on this link.

Intimate Wedding La Virginia, Marbella

What can I say, but we love weddings and there is nothing more alarming and challenging than being sent a table seating plan for over 100 people at 1am in the night before a wedding to design, create and print read for the morning :)

But once a bride is forgiven and has since become a fabulous wedding planner and a good friend and even sent me creme eggs to win forgiveness 3 years later, you can imagine my delight when the aforementioned bestest bride recommended us to one of her family members to help them plan and decorate their gorgeous intimate wedding here in Marbella.  

We were delighted when Emma Jane and Paraic hired us and loved planning and creating their special day here at the stunning La Virginia church this week followed by a wedding reception dinner at the La Virginia restaurant.

We thought we would share some of the pretty details we created for Emma Jane.  

Our brief was she was wearing a vintage lace style dress and her sister who was the bridesmaid would be wearing champagne.

Combined with the stunningly beautiful setting of La Virginia we created a simple but elegant style and I incorporated a bit of colour into the menus using a bougainvillea design as the venue and its surroundings are covered in this beautifully Mediterranean flower.

The tables were dressed with tea coloured vintage Spanish lace table runners and we used the altar arrangement from the church for the dining table combined with two smaller floral arrangements and surrounded them with silver mercury tealights.

We provided blush coloured napkins tied with champagne satin ribbons to set off the table and insert the bougainvillea menus into.

The end result was beautiful and we are delighted to share these images with you from Pierre Richardson photography.

Our congratulations to Emma Jane and Paraic on such a special day.

Our congratulations as well to Claire and Jonathan as they are expecting their first child.

I was told a wedding stylist is for life recently by Chris and Faye, one of our 2011 bestest couples, as I was set the task of shopping for cots in Ikea and again it appears this applies!  Just wondering if Claire is going to email me asking for cots shortly, just hoping it will not be at 1am at night :)

If you wish to see Claire´s beautiful website and hire one of the best wedding planners in Ireland do hop over to White Sage Events.  Claire now has table seating plans down to a fine art!

Lavender and Purple Wedding Inspirations in Marbella

Lavender and purple is such a pretty, feminine and romantic colour scheme and you can never really go wrong with this colour combo, so today we have gone lavender crazy and shared some gorgeous inspiration boards that we are working on with our clients, to offer a bit of advice when it comes to choosing your wedding flowers for a hot climate.

Spring is the lavender time with some beautifully gorgeous smelling flowers from hyacinths, purple tulips, muscari and irises.  I wish we had more spring weddings here but sadly, with a sad face, Spain is a hot summer destination wedding area and spring weddings are scarce!

Recently I have been hugely excited to find tiny purple wild irises growing near our house and scattered in the fields around Marbella and Ronda, they disappeared for a while, but are now reappearing and look like bluebells from a distance. a wonderful sight.  

Lavender is also beginning to shoot out some pretty flowers so I will be picking these and drying them out ready to decorate napkins and use in our wedding decorations, I am sure our gardeners must wonder why all the lavenders in our village are beheaded every year but not planning to come clean!

Many of our weddings are hosted in our glorious, fabulously hot summers so what lavender and purple florals do we recommend to create this gorgeous colour combo in the summer heat in Marbella.

Hydrangeas, such a large fabulous bloom but prone to wilting in the heat, fine in water but for a wedding bouquet simply out of the question.  

There are some beautiful roses such as the Cool Water that are perfect for bouquets and all roses will withstand the heat here in Spain if prepared and treated properly.

Other gorgeous lilac and purple flowers to consider are freesia, lisianthus, veronicas, delphiniums and cala lilies along with the gorgeous purple vanda orchids, such a beautiful and exotic flower.

We hope you enjoy these inspirations for a beautiful lilac wedding palette and our advice for choosing your flowers for your wedding in a hot climate.

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.

Overstyling your Wedding

I am not a TV person, unless it is Claridges :) so every night I look through many of my favourite blogs and websites. I suppose it is a step up from my magazine obsession I had 15 years ago but far cheaper!

 

Most of my reading lists are about styling interiors, weddings and fashions in order to find things that interest me and to predict and forecast the latest trends.

 

I have always adored looking at beautiful images of weddings and homes for inspiration to create beautiful spaces. I love studying colours and textures, traditions, history of art, shapes and lighting. 

 

 

One thought tonight though crossed my mind, which is rather strange as I am a stylist and this is my profession and obsession, but can a wedding be overstyled? 

 

I have seen some images recently that have made me think about this question. 

 

The answer is yes weddings can be overstyled if done badly.

 

There are a huge amount of beautiful inspirations out there and many wedding photo shoots, but there is a skill required to put this together, get it wrong and it looks awful, get it right with the perfect balance and you are on course for a heavenly wedding!

 

Do make sure whoever you hire for your wedding or if you are DIYing has the eye for style, colour, taste and balancing when creating your wedding day.  Do say no to obviously homemade accessories, I have seen an expensive wedding ruined this year by ghastly handmade placecards smuggled in!

 

We look at fashion gone wrong everyday, don´t do this for your wedding!

 

I have not posted any photos for this blog post apart from a lovely festive photo as I do not wish anything or anyone to take offence in the wrong context albeit I like posting pretty images :)!

A Beautifully Chic and Elegant Wedding in Marbella

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has been a chilly day here in Marbella, well my version of chilly is below 20 degrees and tonight is a meagre 14 degrees, so I have taken up residence on my terrace in my cosy socks, pj´s and my hugely cuddly and warm dressing gown in which apparently I resemble a polar bear according to Twinks ?!

 

I love this time of year as we gather in photos from our weddings and actually have time to sit down and enjoy them, it is wonderful to be curled up looking at so many beautiful images of our gloriously hot and balmy Mediterreanean weddings we created this year.

 

This very chic and elegant wedding was held in June at the Finca de la Concepcion for one of our favorite clients, Niamh and Brian, who were such a delightful couple to meet and work with.

 

Niamh and Brian contacted us and after our initial meeting with them, we were hired as their wedding planners and stylist and had a lot of fun organising and decorating their very elegant wedding.

 

Niamh and Brian are a professional couple whom once they had hired us, trusted us implicity to organise all the details and translate their vision into reality as apart from flying in for the odd visit they really did not have time to devote to creating their day here and wanted to hire someone who would take over every detail and plan their day.

 

Which we did of course! and exceeded their expectations as we created a truly stylish and beautiful wedding day for them.

 

The ceremony was held at one of the lovely local churches in Elviria and after a beautiful and emotional ceremony, the guests were then transported in luxury air conditioned coaches to the Finca for a party to remember!  The Finca is one of my favourite venues and just oozes style.

 

Niamh had chosen a very elegant colour scheme of ivory, navy and blush with silver grey accents.

 

We created many beautiful details from a very magical and twinkling atmosphere with lots of our fairy lights and candles to gorgeous bridal flowers using white peonies, quicksand roses and white orchids.

 

The detail and attention to the five star food and catering from LePanto was outstanding, overseen of course by Carla.  The tables were dressed with polished silver cutlery and sparkling glassware, crisp white napkins decorated with silver grey satin ribbons and white orchids.

 

White hydrangeas, peonies and quicksand roses created elegant centrepieces surrounded with glass tealight votives.

 

A white and silver Moroccan chill out area was set out under the trees and our dancing shoes, aka flip flops proved yet again to be a huge hit.

 

The whole day and night was fabulous and went without a hitch and we love these gorgeous images from Jeremy Standley.

 

Here is an extract from our wonderful testimonial from Niamh and Brian, do take time to read it as the comments about trying to get the drunk friends on the bus did make us giggle!

 

It is strange actually I chose tonight to blog this wedding as shortly after their wedding Niamh and Brian moved to New York for Brian´s work, so we are thinking about them tonight as the storms rage over the city and hope they are safe, as well as our other lovely clients based there.

 

Dear Laura, Carla and Anoulka

Following Friday 15 June, we decided that, once our honeymoon was over, it would be a number one priority for us to take the time to sit down and write you an email to express our heartfelt thanks and admiration for the truly magnificent job you did with our wedding in Spain. I thank my lucky stars that I came across The Wedding Decorator blog in late 2010 ... and that it then turned out that Laura was free to meet us on a sunny day in January 2011 in Arte Cafe .... That much felt like fate! From the moment we met you both, we felt very comfortable having you help plan our wedding in Spain and that feeling only increased and multiplied as time moved on and the wedding day grew closer.

Laura: your taste and vision brought our wedding to a different level. The unique style of the wedding was always very important to me, even though I struggled at times to articulate precisely what that style was, but I can honestly say it was just 100% us. The bouquets for myself, the four bridesmaids and the two flower girls were the prettiest I have ever seen, while your decoration and lighting turned Finca la Concepcion into a more magical place than we could ever have imagined: the venue was so dreamy, beautiful and very, very classy. The table plan, the place settings and the displaying of the table names in their frames were all perfect and I literally could not find a single fault or think of how any of it could have been done any better. We absolutely loved every bit of it. THANK YOU so much for all your work, interest and infectious enthusiasm - you have a true gift for style and it is inspiring to see you using that talent and being successful doing something you love.

Carla: what can we say? Both Brian and I have always been deeply impressed by, and had a lot of respect for, your professionalism, organisation, attention to detail and dedication to our wedding; but even so, we were blown away by your performance on the day itself. You were extremely discreet and observant, always there in the background, watching what was going on, looking after everything (including, at various points, my dress - which involved you doubling as a fifth bridesmaid) and our wedding would simply not have happened or worked without you. Neither of us will ever forget the stress you strove to take away from us, or the fact that you were at Finca la Concepcion until well after 4am (when you had another wedding the next day in Seville!), herding Brian's drunk friends onto the last shuttle. THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts. You are simply brilliant at your job.

Anoulka: we wish that we had come to you on day one to help us with our invitations. We couldn't have been more pleased with how you stepped in at a very late stage, recreated (and, in our opinion, improved) an existing design and produced a set of stationery of such beautiful quality and style. You were always extremely thorough and responsive and you instilled great confidence from the start. Our guests kept commenting on all the "little touches", including the various items of stationery. Thanks also for bringing our flowers to Le Papillon the day after the wedding: we had hoped to meet you then but Nic, the manager, said you had been and gone already. It was really great to have the flowers the next day as they added to the ambience of the restaurant - so we are very appreciative that you took the time to do that.

Just to let you all know that the feedback from our guests has been exceptional. "Best wedding I have ever been at" was uttered to us numerous times throughout the night and the next day. One of Brian's friends took it even further and told us it was the "best day of his life" (Carla - this may have been one of the guys you were trying to get on that bus ....). The overwhelming message was that people had a very unique and memorable experience - and this is down to all your work.

Reviva Weddings looks like it is deservedly going from strength to strength and I can promise you that I will actively seek out opportunities to promote your company to anyone who will listen in New York, London or Dublin! 

 

So, the best of luck with the rest of the summer - I hope you have a little break in July and August - and THANKS AGAIN for a job amazingly well done.

Love from,

The new Mr and Mrs Maher

xxx