Real wedding: Sarah + Nick

Theme / Color / Decor: (Modern with Charm)

My taste in design style has always been described as simple yet sophisticated, modern and charming by friends and family…so naturally, coming up with our wedding theme and decor was very easy. We wanted to go for something simple and elegant and incorporate nice contrasting hues of yellows, marigolds paired up with black. I also designed clustered pattern of ginkgo leafs on all my printed materials such as programs, invitations, signage, etc… it’s a personal favorite tree of my dad’s and I knew he would find this charming.

Ceremony & Reception: (Westin Hotel – Lakeside Pavillion Tent, Itasca IL)

We got lucky and were able to snag our tent at the hotel to have our ceremony and reception in. We utilized the same room to do both and just flipped the room during our cocktail hour (which was in the lobby). Our florist lined the aisle with clusters of lemony yellow and white floral arrangements and tall stemmed votives on both sides. It was very important for me to have both my mom and dad give me away to my husband, so also decided to go with a extra wide aisle runner so that BOTH my parents were able to walk me down the aisle. We chose to go with gold chivari chairs and had my coordinators place programs on each seat and also I designed these “Bride” side and “Groom” side signages to be tied to the very last row of both sides of the aisle so that the guests would know which side to sit at. It was very efficient method and there was no need for ushers either. We had our string quartet play Handel “Water Suites” for the bridal party procession and I picked Vivaldi’s “Winter Largo” for my walk down the aisle. The cocktail hour was when we incorporated both our Thailand and Korean heritage by having thai appetizers and me changing into my traditional korean dress. The highlight of the night was our photobooth! We had a photobooth station with a technician and I also had a photobook/message table set up where guests could paste their photo and leave a message in this book. (www.partyphotobooths.com)

Floral Design: (Grace Ha-Kim from www.vale-of-enna.com)

I have a friend who’s a fantastic floral designer. Grace, Vale of Enna. We worked together to come up with low and lush centerpieces for the ceremony and reception. I told her that I wanted a “spring garden” look to our wedding and she chose lush, wide blooms in hues of yellows and whites and lined each vase with sliced lemons. Our tent ended up smelling so lemony! Grace also used tall dogwood branches and tulips for our ceremony altar piece arrangements and place card table. My bouquet consisted of beautiful creamy white ranunculus and rice flowers with black sash and my bridal party had this gorgeous eye popping green centered yellow-orange ranunculus.

Invitation & Printed Materials: (Myself, Truly Smitten – www.trulysmitten.com)

I designed all the invitations and paper materials with the gingko leaf patterns. We have a ginkgo tree growing in my parent’s back yard so I took a leaf and just digitally illustrated it and voila! I had a pattern for my letterpressed invitation, programs, signages, menus etc… Designing my invitations was my favorite part about this wedding =)

Photographer: (David Turner Photo – www.davidturnerphoto.com)

We had a fantastic photographer and assistant that captured everything so well! I highly recommend him! They were truly a joy to work with.

Bridal Attire:

My dress is actually a generic no-name brand. I had my aunt alter the design of it and I attached the black sash to it. To compliment my dress and sash, I wore a black satin d’orsay heels, a simple silk and feather vintage floral hair piece and a waist length veil. My bridesmaids dresses were from Vera Wang and I had all of them wear bright yellow flats during the reception and cocktail hour and wear their formal black heels for ceremony only. Groom and groomsmen wore classic black and white tux with black ties.

Weather:

It was HORRID! Raining, storming AND snowing.