Love Padlocks in Spain

Attaching a padlock to a bridge and throwing the key into the river is seen as a symbol of enduring love and this rather romantic idea of love padlocks, otherwise known as love locks, is proving a popular craze in most cities across Europe after the publication of the 2007 cult best-seller Ho Voglia De Te (I Want You) which saw a young couple attach a padlock to the city's Milvian Bridge and throw away the key into the river, as a sign of their love.  

This trend has spread, but not of course without controversy. 

Whilst it is a lovely romantic idea, it does appear sadly that in some cities it has caused problems with the weight of thousands of padlocks threatening structures and historical monuments, the Rialto bridge in Italy is one such structure that has suffered, I guess due to it´s already popular romantic setting. 

The not so romantic authorities of many cities have been apparently dismantling the padlocks with cutters, but in Moscow they have built metal trees instead on Luzhkov Bridge, giving a designated area for friends and lovers to express their love and affection.

Wouldn´t it be fabulous to have these in Marbella!

I was quite intrigued by this idea though and found out there is a bridge in most of the Spanish cities where this latest craze has developed including Malaga and Sevilla and even now in Madrid.

Perhaps Spain should now build some romantic structures to attract what I think is rather a romantic idea but in the meantime this could be perhaps bought into your wedding day either in the ceremony, stationery or even in the props.

I do love an inspiration so thought I would share this with you!

Spanish Wedding Inspiration

We are always looking for spanish wedding inspirations and just had to share this with you.  A Hip Hacienda wedding created by the hugely amazing Lisa Vorce.

I love the rustic qualities of this wedding, steering away from the conventional wedding furniture and chairs and using the dark woods combined with hessian textures and the terracotta containers.  One thing I think flags up in this delightful wedding is the attention to the stationery and the details, it is the use of the teal design on the chairs and churros bags that brings this wedding to life and of course we love the papel picado.

Spanish Burgundy Wedding Inspiration

I have been working on some wedding inspirations this weekend for one of our Sotogrande weddings next year. Our brief is burgundy, whites and a touch of silver with a destination wedding theme possibly incorporating maps of Spain and red wines.

The wedding will be held at a stunning monastery in Sotogrande which requires very minimal stylish decorations and for this particular venue a chill out area on the terrace is always lovely for the dancing later.

With the burgundy (red wine) colour mixed with whites, the two colours combined can be quite harsh so we have mixed in a sahara rose and some pale pinks which will soften and lift the colour combination.

Burgundy is a fabulous colour for a Spanish styled wedding, and combined with a dramatic black is truly stunning and brings the drama of Andalucian flamenco to the overall look and style. Not too much black though, we loved Sarah´s wedding this year using a black etching of a flamenco dancer.

Here we have created an inspiration board for one of our clients and used this flamenco graphic that was beautifully reproduced onto a stunning wedding cake by Fi and onto the stationery from Anoulka.

The combination of the deep burgundy with the ivories, very soft pinks and tea colours is a fabulous colour scheme.

To compliment the destination map idea we have suggested to run this through the wedding with the stationery details, perhaps confetti cones made out of maps of Spain, table seating and luggage tags and white suitcases. The design has only just been sent off but of course is still buzzing around in my design brain and yet to cover the red wine element!

This is where I start to wish time away as we create and design some fabulous weddings that I cannot wait to put together!

Back to glitter and Christmas this week, but we do like to share our wedding inspirations and designs with you as we sit here creating for 2012.

We would like to credit Sweet Things By Fi for this stunning flamenco cake and Jeremy Standley for the photography, without these fabulous photos we could not showcase our work as we do. The inspiration board was created by me using photos from pinterest and our own weddings.

Gorgeous Flamenco Style Wedding at El Oceano, Marbella

On a gorgeous day in September we were thrilled to be overseeing and decorating the stunning wedding of Sarah and Michael.

A moving church ceremony was held at the Encarnacion Church, just near the Orange Square in Marbella Old Town followed by cocktails in the square and then the wedding party headed to the fabulous Oceano Hotel for a beachside reception.

Sarah is actually a neighbour of mine as her mother lives near me, and I was delighted when they approached me to ask if we could finalise their wedding details and take over their files to look after them on this very special day.

Carla of course immediately took charge and Sarah visited our shop a few times to finalise the flowers and decor details for her flamenco styled wedding.

Loraine created gorgeous bridal bouquets in vanilla roses to compliment the bridesmaids dresses and Anoulka designed flamenco dancer stationery to compliment the stunning cake that Fi created for Sarah and Michael. I have to also admit we are all in love with Sarah´s dress so I will ask her next time I see her where it is from, as I know I will be asked!

A truly fantastic day was had by all and of course it could not be complete without Sarah entertaining her guests with her fantastic singing Wonderwall was sung especially for Michael.

Our thanks to Jeremy Standley for allowing us to share these fabulous photos.

Our congratulations to Sarah and Michael and hopefully see you both soon!

A Sevillian Orange Theme for Weddings

I love Sunday mornings and this morning is no exception as I get some quiet time to spend designing our weddings for next year.

Blues surged in popularity as a wedding colour this year and will be a trend colour again for 2012 along with orange which of course reflects the wonderful Sevillian orange theme for weddings in Spain.

I am currently designing a tablescape for one of our weddings and loved this styled photo shoot I found on Elizabeth Anne Designs.

We are designing a long U shaped table for an early May wedding and tulips are in season here which will keep the floral costs down quite dramatically, which is great as we can use an eclectic mix of glass jars and blue water bottles filled with tulips and white hydrangeas along with all sorts of different height candles and tealights and finish the dressing of this tablescape with small oranges and foliage. We are planning to use succulents as well in small pots to place the guests names in and tie blue napkins with raffia and a button detail :)

I am on a mission now to find orange crates and start washing and collecting jars!

As we create and design our weddings we will share our ideas and inspirations with you and of course we still have many beautiful weddings of our own to post over the coming months.

Creative Mental Blocks!

It is strange being a creative person, well for me, and I am not sure many can relate to this.

We have just finished a very intense September full of beautiful weddings that I thrive on.

I am constantly making lists, both mentally and of course in my pretty notepads albeit I have now become a master of Excel as long as it is colour coded!

By the time we arrive at the wedding day I cannot think about anything else. Call me obsessed but all the details are locked into my brain leaving little time for anything else.

It is now at this time of year, as we slow down and take stock, I feel brain dead and start to panic! All the creativity has gone and I always worry it will never come back but of course it does :) Thank goodness!

In order to get my creativity flowing again I need inspirations and I have to admit over the past few days I have been rather boredly surfing the internet looking at some average OK things but nothing that has made me sit up and go WOW!

Until tonight I fell upon this fabulous Mexican wedding created by Lisa Vorce, who I greatly admire, but I think it was the decorated donkey, along with the fact of course this could be translated into a Spanish theme, that immediately drew my attention to this as what brave person was put forward for this bit of styling!

Isn´t the whole wedding just divine from the bride´s stunning veil to all the gorgeous details.

I have just gone to heaven and back and finally reconnected with my creative brain again :)

With our new in house stationery department supervised by Anoulka with her new die cutting machine, nicknamed Cougar (long story but we are into names!) we are dying to start creating even more fabulous weddings and this will certainly be an inspiration to us.

More Delightful Details of our Flamenco Styled Wedding

Last night we shared this fabulous Flamenco styled wedding with you and here are some more of the wonderful details we created to style this wedding.

The bridal bouquet was actually a last minute order as Anna had wanted a fan but when we arrived with it she changed her mind, we had to be honest expected this so had plan b up our sleeves! Sometimes this does happen if a bride sees something but in reality it does not work. We knew Anna liked stargazer lilies so created a red rose and stargazer bouquet and the bridesmaid was in ivory roses with red alstromeria. Andrew´s buttonhole was a red rose to match Anna´s bouquet.

We created personalised fans decorated with a thin black ribbon and a paper red rose detail, always useful to keep the guests cool at the ceremonies here in Spain and styled the wedding stationery in fan shapes using the black damask detail and red rose theme.

The table seating fan shaped cards were hung in the courtyard and the menu cards were created to match.

The table linens were our black and white damask style linens and worked beautifully with the white chiavari chairs.

The centrepieces were storm lanterns with white candles and red sand and we sprinkled some red rose petals in, the principle table also had a gorgeous floral display surrounding the storm lantern and we finished off the tables using red tealights and spanish ceramic tiles for the table numbers.

We thoroughly enjoyed creating this wedding and are thrilled with the results and would like to congratulate Anna and Andrew on their beautiful wedding day and for allowing us to put our creative hats on!

Our thanks again to Andreas Holm´s for sharing these photographs with us and as I always say without these wonderful suppliers we work with we could never create such fabulous weddings or show them to you :)