Vera Wang Bridal Archives - Page 6 of 6 - Smashing the Glass

The Manhattan wedding of Claudia and Felix, two professional ballet dancers, is the perfect way to ease you into your Monday. It’s bursting with style, creativity, fashionable touches, and super original ideas.

They picked a clean, crisp, white canvas NYC loft space, and warmed it up with a farmhouse, rustic feel. As Claudia herself puts it, they wanted to match up their city slicker selves with their dream of a country wedding, and it works brilliantly. They also incorporated lots of meaningful and amusing Jewish, American, and Dutch traditions (Felix hails from The Netherlands) so that their guests had lots of little surprises throughout the day. One of my favourite idea of theirs are the kippot (skullcaps) supplied for every guest with “my mother was right” inscribed on the inside. You get why I’m loving this wedding!

Claudia and Felix also managed to create the most original I’m-not-sure-I’ll-ever-see-anything-like-that-ever-again escort cards / favours — but I’ll let Claudia surprise you with those.

Finally I love Claudia’s Vera Wang dress and Valentino heels more than dark chocolate. And I like dark chocolate A LOT.

The sublime images come from the fabulous STAK Photography who captured every last detail beautifully.

AN URBAN LOFT VENUE
Claudia, the Bride: Our wedding was at a beautiful loft called Studio 450 in midtown Manhattan. The venue has amazing 360 degree views of the city but especially incredible views of the Hudson River. The space itself is industrial yet very clean and entirely white. It also had a lovely upstairs space and some terrace space.

Our initial idea was to get married upstate at a big old house in Rye, NY but as Felix and I are both urbanites at heart and with many out of town guests it seemed impractical. When we came upon Studio 450 we knew it was the perfect space to marry our city slicker selves with our dream of a country wedding.

This is a beautifully fresh and intimate summer wedding, set on a magical garden rooftop in the heart of London, that oozes style and elegance. It’s also the magical wedding of my brother, André, and my amazing sister-in-law, Lee Ann, so it has a very special place in my heart… (and if you look closely you can spot me in red Vivienne Westwood in the big group picture at the end!)

But back to the wedding – I loved Lee Ann’s idea of taking the shade of her apple green sash on her dress and using the fresh green colour throughout all kinds of details on her day.

And how did these two meet? Well it’s verrrry romantic: Lee Ann, a Floridian, and André, a born-and-bred Londoner, married after a whirlwind long-distance romance. They met on a 5-day Caribbean cruise in September 2006, were engaged 6 months later, and were married, less than a year to the day they met, in August 2007.

The Venue

Lee Ann, the Bride: Kensington Roof Gardens was our perfect venue. Towering above central London, the stunning gardens, complete with house flamingoes, seemed like the 8th wonder of the world! We wanted somewhere central as there were quite a few foreign guests in town for only a few days, but equally we wanted a beautiful, garden setting. Nothing could have been more perfect, and to top it all, Claire Vidler and her events term were superb to deal with throughout.

The magic ingredient, of which we have only the Gods to thank, was being blessed with glorious sunshine on the day.

THE DRESS WHICH LEAD TO THE THEME

My dress was by Vera Wang. I wanted something different and loved the ivory colour teamed with an apple green sash- perfect for our summer garden setting! In fact, the colour of the apple green sash set the theme of the wedding throughout, and the same shade was used on the invitation design, and all sorts of details from the sashes on the backs of the chairs to the flowers to the ribbons on the cake to the ketubah illustrations.

THE CHUPPAH + FLOWERS

We used a wonderful florist called Rebecca Fiest. I loved the idea of small arrangements all of one colour, and Rebecca interpreted my ideas sensitively and brilliantly. She also did such a beautiful job with the chuppah. I knew I wanted it to be constructed from bamboo poles with fresh spring flowers, and it couldn’t have turned out more beautifully.