Friday’s FAB Finds {039}

So it’s hot. Really hot here in good ole shiny Virginia, although it looks like we might be getting a bit of a reprieve this weekend. But before you head out to the beach, we thought it would be fun to share a cool find with you before you’re off on your Summer adventures. Ya know, just to get you in the mood. Today we’re continuing our FAB Find from last week with Tori & Nick’s colorful and sweet BHLDN-inspired wedding. So without further ado…

Invitations (& People) We Love – Tori & Nick and Rock Paper Scissors – Part 2

You may remember Tori & Nick’s sweet summer garden affair with fun, light & bright colors – just looking at their paper designs and event decor made you feel instantly cooler. Rock Paper Scissors, along with Easton Events and Pat’s Floral Designs, all worked together to create a unique and cohesive look for this fun couple. We think it all came together beautifully to capture not only the couples personalities, but the light-hearted mood of their garden wedding, perfectly.

We personally hadn’t seen this many colors used together (2-3 colors are more standard) and when we’d heard about all of them, we were really wondering how it would work out together. Yet the green, coral, yellow and blues on the paper products all complement each other and beautifully pick up those same colors used elsewhere in the decor from the flowers, the vintage vases, the ribbons, the linens, dishes, candle holders, even the wallpaper used to line the table trays, in sublime and unexpected ways. Just a note of caution: we don’t recommend trying this at home. We would leave this type of expertise to the professionals.

Oh, and just in case you’re like us and have always wondered what the heck the difference is between table, escort & place cards, be sure to check out on of their fun and informative recent blog posts on that very subject.

Love the Mr. & Mrs. forks from BHLDN, too!

The programs doubled as fans–a tried and true feature that your guests will surely appreciate in the Summer months.

So what do you think? Do you like how it came all together and if so, will you be taking any inspiration from their wedding and applying it to your own event or party?

Stay cool y’all,
…anne

 

Friday’s FAB Finds {038}

Happy Friday’s FAB Finds, everyone! (C’mon, you remember those don’t you? )

Whew, well, what a week. We have some really big stuff brewing here at Holland Photo Arts World HQ that we absolutely can’t wait to share soon. We thinks we took on a bit too many projects during the height of wedding season, but really, how much sleep do we need anyway? We recently got to take a little break though and headed up to NYC this past weekend to catch the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a showing of Book of Mormon on Broadway. Holy cow, what an amazing trip. Sadly, Savage Beauty’s run ends this weekend, (hopefully you got to see it??), but Book of Mormon has been extended through Fall 2012 and we can’t recommend it highly enough. The only time we stopped laughing was when we we couldn’t hear the lines over everyone’s laughter! We wanted to put the pause button on the entire weekend – too much incredibleness to take in all at once. But alas, work and home were calling. Our loss is your gain though!

Invitations (& People) We Love – Sara & Matt and Rock, Paper, Scissors – Part 1

You know our love of paper so whenever we get something in the mail from Rock, Paper, Scissors, we just know it’s going to be good. We recently two lovely weddings (Sara & Matt and Tori & Nick) that took advantage of Dani & Heather’s incredible talent and we were so excited to photograph their creations. We shared just a taste of what they did for each unique couple in their individual blog posts, but we loved them so much, we just had to share some more. This week you’ll get to enjoy Sara & Matt’s invitation suite, which definitely did not disappoint! We love the dark navy blue with light fern green color combination that they also carried through to their ceremony programs, their custom wine bottle labels, and even their doughnut favor bags!

Beautiful calligraphy by Jen Maton of If So Inklined. How perfect is that name, btw?)

Sara & Matt’s invitation color scheme was crisp and clean – the perfect antidote for a steamy Summer day.

Check back next Friday to see more from Rock, Paper, Scissors and Tori & Nick’s incredible BHLDN inspired wedding!

 

Friday’s FAB Finds {037}

So we’re putting the finishing touches on our next recent wedding that we can’t wait to share with you, we’re thisclose, but it’s not quite ready yet (the Elves’ response to our tequila-featured incentive program hasn’t exactly been what we had hoped) so we’re going to take the opportunity to share another fun FAB Find with you!

And the crowd goes wild at the news. You are going wild aren’t you? Sure, of course you are!

Oh, and just in case you missed our last “really freakin’ cool” find, you can find it here. Trust us, it’s a good one if you haven’t yet discovered it.

This time (read: FAB Find) it’s personal. In a good way though – I really didn’t say it in a spooky serious voiceover kinda of way when I said it in my head. We’re super excited to share this FAB Find with you because it’s from one of our former wedding couples!

Ideas (& People) We Love – Personalized & Reusable Wedding Favors

Loyal blog readers may remember Tessie & Matt, who married a few Winters ago at the-stunning-in-any-season Clifton Inn. Well, they also happen to own their own small business in Charleston, West Virgina–Wallace Metal Works. They do incredible custom-made wrought iron work for private homes, companies, and restaurants throughout West Virgina and have recently added hand-made metal ornaments to their offerings that can be engraved with a couple’s name and wedding date.

We got to see the ornaments first hand at Ali & Ken’s wedding last year where Tessie was her made of honor, returning the honor as Ali was Tessie’s MOH – we love to see that and love even more getting to photograph weddings of friends of friends! Tessie and Matt also made the favors for all the guests – metal ornaments in three varying leaf/flower shapes – Dogwood Blossom, Grape Leaf and Oak Leaf, which fit a&k’s leaf/tree theme from their invites and escort cards, perfectly. Not surprisingly, they proved very popular and we even saw a couple of guests that day making trades with their table mates to get the one they wanted!

Since they were so popular, Tessie and Matt have since added a few more leaf designs, too. You can now choose between those three, as well as Maple Leaf and Ginkgo Leaf. Oh, and if you chose not to invest in the ornaments for all your guests, wouldn’t they make great wedding party gifts?

Leaf theme wouldn’t work for your wedding? Well, you’re in luck. Tessie and Matt are true artists (he’s a blacksmith, she’s a jewelry designer turned welder/metalsmith) and are happy to make other types of ornaments for couples looking for something unique to them. Give them a call or send them an email with what you’re thinking and I bet you’ll be amazed at what they can design and create in metal!

The cost per ornament for hand-painted personalization on the back like Ali & Ken’s is $20 and $35 each for the one with hand stamped personalization – both of which appear on the back of the ornament.

What a great idea and such a sweet way for your guests to remember their wedding whether they hang it each year on their Christmas tree or display year round hanging from a sunny window sash, which is where our very own ornament resides. (Thanks, t&m!) Oh, and this Christmas they’ll be debuting a wrought iron dragonfly ornament (can’t wait to see that one!) and next year they’re planning a tea rose ornament.

 

Friday’s FAB Finds {036}

Whoa, is it Friday already?! Excellent! Well, I’ve been sitting on this truly fabulous find for a while now since we’ve had so many gorgeous weddings & fun portrait sessions to share with you. Since we’re not quite ready to share the next one in the queue though, I get to feature a great find today! Yea! We hesitate to say it, but we think you’re going to fall in obsession with today’s FAB Find…

Links We Love – Pinterest

You may remember a while back when Bill posted about using Evernote for your wedding planning. Well, a fantastic new website has come along to also help save your back from lugging around that wedding inspiration binder! Seriously, we hope you don’t hold it against us when you find all the copious amounts of free time that you we know you have gone. Just gone. But I promise you, this time-suck is worth it!

What is Pinterest you ask and how can it work for me? Well, it is a basically a virtual clip board and anything you see on the Interwebs or that you scan in, can be copied and pasted into a “board”. Basically, you can pin a photo that you find of interest into a board you created. You can create an unlimited amount of boards (or at least as many as any human would want). You can create collections of things you love and share them with your friends and followers. You can also follow other peoples’ boards and pin something they found to one of your boards.

(Clink on the screen shots to see them full size.)

I have to admit, though, I’m quite the newbie and haven’t pinned a lot yet, but I absolutely *love* using it! Since I don’t have a wedding to plan, I’ve been using it primarily for home decorating & design inspiration. What I have so far:

My Studio Inspiration board has the most pins and is my most active board.

You can follow your favorite event designers & bloggers, whose taste and style you admire and get updates when they add new pics to their boards. I checked with a few of my favorite “follows” to see if I could share a few of their incredible boards with you…

Courtney Spencer of Merriment Events has a huge amount of eye candy pins and I absolutely love all her many specific categories. Makes it SO much easier to find things of interest.

Her gorgeous ceremony details board…

LOVE these unique color combos!

Jeannine is the founder of the fabulous Small & Chic in C’ville blog. She also happens to be planning a wedding!

And, of course, in honor of the BIG Wedding happening today, some royal inspiration for you!

And no proper English wedding inspiration would be complete without some fabulous hats!

Well, that all looks and sounds great, Anne, but how the heck do I pin something??? First you need to request an account. Since they’re a new site, they’re trying to take it slow and add people as they can, but you should hopefully get your verification email in a week or so. Create your account and install the Pin It bookmark (instructions on are their website) and then start pinning (even works on iPad). If you see some eye candy you love, click the Pin It bookmark and then choose the photo you want to pin. It’ll ask you which of your boards you want to pin it to, make notes about and even create tags so it’s easier for you and others to find something specific. Pinterest takes the source link and credits where the item was pinned from.

And if you’re worried about your fiance, family or friends seeing “too much” of your wedding plans, I would suggest creating another account without your full name where you can put all your finalized wedding plans.

And they even have an iPhone app coming soon!

There’s only one thing I’ve found I don’t like about Pinterest and that’s that oftentimes the original creator of photos doesn’t get credit for the photo because somebody pinned said photo from another blog or website who obtained it from the original creator. Yup, it’s happened to us. We’ve found photos of ours pinned from wedding blogs and the wedding blog gets the link credit on Pinterest boards. We don’t see any way around this right now, other than to require blogs to keep our watermark on the photos, but please do try to be fair and pin from the original creator when at all possible.

So what are you waiting for? Get pinning! Recipes you want to try, books you want to read, things you love, favorite quotations…..the possibilities are truly endless! And let me know when you do – I’d love to follow and see what you think is FAB!

Yours in pinning,
…anne

 

Friday’s FAB Finds {035}

Happy Friday! Let’s get right to it as we’ve got a “chockfull o’ beautiful, inspiring photos FAB Find” for your viewing pleasure today!

Places We Love – Veritas Vineyard

Well, looking back over some past FAB Finds, I was shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you, to discover that we had not yet featured one our very favorite places in our neck of the woods. Notice, I didn’t say favorite wedding venue. While it is most certainly one of those, it’s also just one of our favorite places to visit on our own time, as it were. When friends and family visit from out of town, Veritas is the FIRST (and oftentimes the only if it’s a short visit) winery we take them to. We love attending Starry Nights with dear friends and attending their big New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball one of these days is most definitely on our must-do list. Maybe you want to check out their upcoming Easter Brunch or Mother’s Day Brunch?

We can think of nothing better than hanging out on their big, comfy leather couches in their warm, red-hued tasting room, sipping some incredible wines, discovering tasty cheeses and toasting our good fortune that we get to live in such an incredible area such as the beautiful Blue Ridge. We are also lucky enough to get to shoot at Veritas more often than any other venue – local or otherwise! (We can’t believe our first wedding there was over five years – back in the Summer of 2005!) Owners Andrew and Patricia, along with their wine-maker daughter, Emily and equally fabulous younger daughter, Chloe, event manager extraordinaire, have been making brides and groom’s wishes come true for years now. Truly. While they host many, many weddings (sometimes three in one weekend!), they treat each and every couple as if it was their only wedding on the calendar – no matter now large or how intimate the wedding.

Just in case you need more enticement, check out just a few of our favorite Veritas wedding photos through out the years!

If you’re looking for an incredible space and location for your upcoming wedding, do yourself a favor and make sure Veritas is on your must-visit list!

Your FAB Finds Fairy Godmother,
…anne