We spotted another stunning Bella Figura bride and groom real wedding feature on Style Me Pretty! The ceremony and reception took place at the historic Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona. We love the details, color scheme, and most of all the jaw-dropping open-back dress by Monique Lhuillier. Our Victoria Calligraphy Letterpress Invitations by Sarah Hanna were printed in black ink on our luxurious 2-ply ivory paper and perfectly complimented the event with classic elegance.

The couple planned an outdoor ceremony and reception all within a “garden-party” theme but encountered an unexpected twist! The bride says,  “The weather gods had a different plan for us, however, as it decided to pour the day of our wedding and was freezing cold (ok, it was in the 40s, but that’s freezing for us Arizonans!)We made the decision to move everything indoors the morning of the wedding and I was a little concerned that our Plan B back-up space would end up looking like a generic ballroom. However, through sheer determination and incredibly hard work, our design team, Avant-Garde Studio, and our event planner, Rhonda Rush, were able to “recreate” my garden party theme indoors.  Avant-Garde even built the entire tent structure inside the ballroom and draped all of the walls.  They made the ballroom incredibly unique looking and beautiful. We moved the ceremony into the architecturally stunning Aztec Ballroom and it turned out better than we could have ever imagined. Despite the rain, the day was perfect, and the ceremony and reception went off without a hitch.  The sun even made an appearance long enough for our wonderful photographer, Elyse Hall, to snap some beautiful outdoor shots before the festivities began. The food was delicious, the music was lively and the dancing seemed to last all night, just like we wanted.”

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What feels like many moons ago, I shared my own Keswick letterpress wedding invitations here on the blog and at long last it’s time to share a few photos from our summer wedding last year. We celebrated our wedding with a two-day celebration in the beautiful Thousand Islands region of upstate New York, from which I hail. We were married in a private ceremony with just the closest of family and friends and then toasted our newlywed status with a cocktail party. We had planned for a beautiful outdoor ceremony at the Sackets Harbor Battlefield in a tree grove overlooking Lake Ontario. The weather had other plans. Rather than dodge rain drops, we moved our ceremony indoors last minute and were married at the private catering facility at the Madison Barracks where our cocktail party was to be held. It was nothing I had planned, yet, it was everything I could have ever wanted.

I wore a gorgeous lace Casablanca dress that I still love, champagne gold and pewter shoes from J.Crew, a Twigs & Honey flower in my hair, and a birdcage veil from Something Bold. My daddy walked me down the makeshift aisle and we both cried the whole time.

Though I am flower-obsessed and wanted a wedding that felt timeless, elegant and stylish, I had little to no interest in the bouquet tradition. I wanted simple, pretty flowers that didn’t break the bank. The answer was a small bouquet of my favorite flowers, white roses, for myself and pretty baby’s breath bouquets for my bridesmaids. We ordered the flowers wholesale and made them together as a group the night before.

Following the ceremony, we asked all of our family to join us for a group photo. Getting forty people to all look at the camera at once and smile was more work than you might imagine and it’s not really our style anyway so in the end we just asked people to hang out while our awesome photographer, James Bass, grabbed some shots. I love this one. It’s like we have this huge wall of love and laughter and joy behind us, which is a pretty great metaphor for the love we experience every day from our oversized collection of family, friends and loved ones.

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Remember this absolutely breathtaking wedding we shared a while back? This week we were contacted by Patricia and Richard’s wedding planner in Italy to let us know about the wedding being featured on her Italian Lakes Wedding blog. We love all of the behind the scenes info she shared about the event and how their incredible destination wedding weekend came together. Thanks so much for sharing, Valentina!

{Photos by Sora DeVore Photography}

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Jordan and Juan Carlos (Juancho) are a truly special Bella Figura couple who married in April 2008 after they fell in love while Jordan was living in Ecuador where Juan is from. This past fall they threw a wonderful eco-friendly wedding celebration in Jordan’s home state of Texas in October, four years to date of their very first kiss, and chose Bella Figura’s letterpress wedding invitations in our Amy design printed with taupe ink to kick it all off. It was a great pleasure for us to work with Jordan and her mother who corresponded closely with client coordinator Tiffany, and we love all of the ways Jordan and Juan Carlos worked to make their wedding green and eco-friendly. Theirs is a wedding that was truly centered on love, family and togetherness while limiting any negative environmental impact and we find that incredibly inspirational. According to Jordan, “…for the green aspects of the wedding, we wanted to have a self-indulgent time but not at the cost of our carbon footprint. ”

To kick off the weekend celebration in true Texas fashion, Jordan and Juan invited their guests from around the world to join them for an evening at the rodeo followed by dinner and then dancing at a favorite local tavern. It was a chance to bring together their friends and family from as far away as Ecuador, Spain, England, Germany, Mexico and from across the United States in a fun and festive way that allowed everyone to forge new friendships and make new memories. Guests camped out and stayed in cabins at a couple of dude ranches in the local area, enjoyed horseback rides, participated in a series of summer camp-inspired activities such as games, tournaments, and scavenger hunts during the day on Saturday before enjoying a hayride before dinner.
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{The wedding of Elizabeth & Felicia // Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, California // Circolo 2 letterpress wedding invitation design in champagne and pewter}

Our client coordinator Andrea had the great pleasure of working with Elizabeth (Eaz) to help choose the perfect wedding invitation for her ultra luxurious event. At first, Eaz was a bit skeptical about working with us exclusively by email and phone, but we are so happy that they did! Upon receiving their letterpress samples, Eaz and Felicia opted for the fun Circolo 2 design printed in champagne and pewter. The invitations coordinated perfectly with the charger plates they used and helped influence incredibly beautiful and personal details throughout their wedding. The couple infused their day with meaningful details that make it one of our favorite Bella Figura weddings to date.

Eaz and Felicia incorporated so many lovely details. Among their favorites were the rocks they used as place cards that were hand-painted by Felicia’s best man. They provided pretty custom embroidered handkerchiefs for all the happy tears and opted for flamenco guitar music in lieu of traditional wedding music during their ceremony. They had matching custom Converse All Star sneakers to wear after the ceremony and had a fabulously fun videobooth at their reception so guests could leave them personal video messages. The pastry chef for their wedding handmade beautiful lighted star ice bowls to serve their sorbet intermezzo and, our personal favorite, the matching chargers and invitations!

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Every day our Bella Figura clients are inspirations to us. They have good tastes in invitations, of course, but they also have amazing talents at planning fabulous weddings. So with our new web site, we wanted to start profiling some of the best weddings of our clients. We’re just thrilled that our first Bella Figura real wedding is this lovely couple, Allan & Brian, with a really spectacular wedding. When we saw photographs from their celebration at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, all of us here were just floored by the creativity of everything about the wedding. Allan & Brian choose the Circolo 2 design in cardinal and pewter, and their invitation really captured the spirit of their wedding. And then Allan sent us some amazing writing about the wedding too, the importance of the ceremony, and his thoughts about love that described, for us, what weddings are really about.

What was your inspiration for the wedding?
The arts are very important to us, which is one important reason why we chose Disney Concert Hall as the venue. We also both have an affinity for the music and styles of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. We wanted an event that was stylish and elegant but also fun. We opted for a black tie-optional champagne cocktail event. We love art deco style, so we wanted something inspired by that sensibility. But because the concert hall is so modern, we didn’t want a slavish re-creation of art deco. Instead, we wanted a fusion which was a challenge to pull off, but ended up working really well.

Tell us about the proposal.
It would be great if there were a story with lightning bolts or roses or bended knee in the moonlight. However, after 18 years together there was no such moment. Actually, we were quite surprised when the California Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing same-sex marriage in the state. Beginning that evening, friends and family started calling to ask, “So, are you going to do it?” We were both surprised to discover that we had repressed how much we wanted to get married — how important it was to have an event that included the people who mattered most to us. And so after a few days of weighing the options (such as a small ceremony at the county clerk office) we decided we wanted a real wedding. And, with Proposition 8 on the November ballot, we felt we had a brief window in which we could confidently plan something.

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