Adam & Perla's Colors of Mexico Wedding!

Date: October 2, 2010

Place: Hacienda Camino del Mar

Rental Agents: Boutique Villas

Photographer: Paulina Ulloa

Caterer: ByB

Cake: Memo from Charme

It took me a bit but here we are! Adam & Perla were an AMAZING couple to start off the 2010 wedding season! Being part of a multi-cultural relationship I completely understood when they both wanted to really combine the best of both worlds while, at the same time, really show-casing the colors and flavors of Mexico. They sent me first their invite, which I love:

While their main colors were bright orange and light blue, Perla also wanted to include a few more colors so that the event was a bit more colorful - so we added-in touches of yellow and red and a turquoise blue in order to accent the main colors. This was the inspiration board:

THE CEREMONY

We decided to utilize papel picado to introduce each of the different areas of the party, so we started off with a papel picado sign to indicate where the ceremony was to be .... I used gerbers, sunflower, circus roses, wax flowers and pin cushions for Perla's colorful bouquet. The bridesmaids had similar flowers but I accented theirs more with red and made them a bit smaller.

They both wanted the ceremony decor to be more about the beach than anything else. So, still considering the papel picado idea, Antonio created this amazing wooden chuppah and then we spiced it up a bit with bright colorful flowers. Adam's favorite flower was a sunflower so I thought it would be really beautiful and simple to use sunflowers to decorate the aisle.

THE COCKTAIL

Since we were going to be doing a lounge, station dinner, instead of a sit-down dinner, we decided to utilize high cocktail tables in the Hacienda. I love using pinata bases and filling them with flowers and, as an added Mexican artisan touch, we added-in metal frames of Frida and her artwork ... Perla loved the tin can centerpieces we did for Sara y Nick but I don't like doing the same thing twice if I can help it - so I thought we would use similar cans but punch holes in them and use them as candles instead- they looked awesome at night and were pretty decorations during the day! :) For the "guest book" we had a caricature drawn-up of them with space on the border for guests to write their well wishes. In the cocktail pool we placed their initials with flowers. I lucked out and found this amazing embroidered look patterned fabric with birds and Perla & Adam's colors and we peppered the lounge furniture with it and, of course, they had a Mariachi band to lead the guests from the ceremony to the cocktail area. Lovely!

THE RECEPTION/DANCE FLOOR

After the cocktail, we opened the doors into the Casita - we had more food stations in this half and a bit more lounge furniture along with a huge dance floor, as they had hired a local Cuban band and I knew it would fill up quickly (which it did :) ... We filled the dance floor with various colors and sizes of Chinese lanterns and, of course, had our famous maracas which we passed out during a fun song for guests to shake and dance with. In this pool we had papel-picado like lanterns floating in the pool. I loved this space but, yes, heart heart the cake - Memo did an AMAZING job with what I asked him to do - to give you an idea, you'll see the example I gave him and, then, what he did with it - HEART HEART!

WHAT I GAVE MEMO:

WHAT HE DID

Coming-up in the next couple of days I will have a VERY different wedding to show - Allyson & Jason's wedding which took place the very next weekend - crystals, roses, glam ... fun!

Don't forget to enter the WINWIN contest to win 20 of our hand-painted maracas - the drawing will be January 15th.

Sara y Nic - Destination Weddings & Honeymoons...

Well, I can finally say what the big "surprise" was for this summer ... Sara & Nic's wedding is featured in the "I Do" Sept/Oct issue of Destination Weddings & Honeymoons on stands now! So super exciting for us and it was super fun to see some photos taken by Anne Menke of the bride and groom that we hadn't seen before :). It was such a fun wedding to design and create and Sara & Nic were such a sweet, easy-going couple to work with, so it's just cherries upon cherries on the hot fudge sundae :).

Nikki & Roland's Vibrant Mexican Wedding!

Photo courtesy of Paulina Ulloa

All other photos by staff photographer, Soco

Well, we could point fingers at the computer who wouldn't run the picture dvd and then christmas and new years (those ornery holidays!) and the list could get really long - so, instead, THE BIGGEST EVER CONGRATULATIONS to Nikki & Roland on tying the knot this last December 5, 2009! ;)
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It seemed as though the fates were determined to deter all of Nikki & my plans for fairly easy, relaxed wedding planning. We had decided on Spiaggia way back when because their prices were great and the location was awesome and everything was going to be simple simple simple - to the point that I didn't even do an inspiration board! Of course, ya'all might know by now, but to make a long story short, Spiaggia sold itself (without informing us) and the new location decided to completely reinvent itself (again without informing us) and, thus, either Spiaggia or the new Cherry 7 up and ran off with Nikki's deposit money, each pointing the fingers at each other. Boo!!!

But, after some hot words from all three of us to the locale in question, Nikki took action, found this incredible, amazing villa (Casa Suenos del Mar) who was willing to rent for a night .... and, after all, fate was right, we were wrong, and the wedding turned out much better than we had originally planned for!!

The Bouquet

Nikki had decided to do bright, vibrant colors for her Mexican wedding so we decided on the tones of fuschia and orange with a touch of gold and mixed those colors into her bouquet - it looked great against her dress! Roland's bout followed suit -- good man!

The Ceremony

Well, originally the ceremony was going to be on the sand - so, with the new venue chosen just weeks before the wedding, I had to design something entirely different that would fit the new venue. I quite honestly don't know how this came to me - I knew that I still wanted the vibrant, colorful feel but I didn't want to block the beautiful view or amazing foliage - so we decided to surprise Nikki & Roland with strung roses ... they had originally wanted bougamvilia but that's not something we can order ... we have to "find" it and there wasn't a lot out - in the end, I think this ceremony huppah is one of my all-time favorites....

The Guest Cards

Nikki & Roland had a theme about certain dates meaning certain things to them, so I thought it would be great fun to make guest cards with chosen dates and have guest write their wishes and thoughts on them only to be opened the day on the card! I found this amazing talavera mailbox when I was out and about!

The Maracas

Nikki hearts hearts our maracas, so I wanted to do something extra special. Omar painted the flowers around the entire maraca (sounds easy - is not! ;), and accented their monogram with gold paint - if I had to do it over again, I might add a gold accent to the flower - but pretty nevertheless!

The Centerpieces

We overlayed the tables with a shimmery orange/cream chiffon and filled adobe pinata bases with alternating arrangements of fuschia and orange roses. Colorful candles surrounded the base and alternating fuschia and orange napkins stood-up tall in water glasses - love it!

The Kid's Table

We made little activity books for the kids to work on during dinner, accompanied by a Mexican wooden toy, crayons and a little ornament. Fun!

Candles & Nightscapes

Of course, we peppered the villa with oodles of candles and the villa transformed itself into a magical, romantic evening....

The Cake

Adore this cake .... check out the befores and afters here to see how a fairly monotone colored cake turned into this awesome creation by Memo of Charme! We also surprised Nikki & her daughter with their own individualized cake as they each adored a flavor that wasn't chosen to be "the cake" - we had the waiters bring it out as soon as Nikki & Roland cut the cake and everyone was happy!

Firedancers

They really did a fantastic job - we had floating globes and acrobatics - a really amazing way to end the evening....

DIY

I wanted to also say that Nikki did a great job on some of her DIY projects - she worked with us really closely to make sure that everything done, from start to finish, related and looked "just so" - I think she did a fantastic job!

Next week, barring disasters, we should have the photos up from Sara & Nic's wedding which took place this past saturday in Sayulita! We have a busy season ahead of us, but I have, in my 'spare time' (haha!) been working on some design inspiration boards ... so I will do my best to get those snuck in here somehow (or on facebook!).