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Gena & Tony | Extraordinarily imaginative ‘color explosion’ Jewish wedding at the Sydney Polo Club, NSW, Australia

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rainbow-wedding
Epic.

Get your sunglasses ready because todays wedding is a massive rainbow-hued color fest. Gena and her husband Tony had one of those weddings where there are so many details I love I hardly even know where to start.

There’s Gena’s pom pom crown, her crochet dress and her supersize bouquet filled with flowers of every possible hue, glitter, ribbons, and pom poms. Then we’ve got bridesmaids dressed in orange carrying big foil heart shaped balloons with tissue paper tassels instead of bouquets. There’s a super cute dog taking centre stage during the ceremony. And 1200 odd colored ribbons used to decorate the barn and chairs. The handmade resin crayons for buttonholes (a reference to the green crayon hair clip that Gena wore in her hair the night Tony first noticed her) are so cute!). And then there’s the way that Tony looks at Gena…

So have you got your sunglasses ready? Well get your Pinterest boards primed too because you are most certainly going to need them! All of these delectable images were taken by the rather brilliant Lara Hotz. (Oh and check out the mighty cute wedding film at the end of the post by The White Tree too!).
creative 'colour explosion' Jewish wedding at the Sydney Polo Club, NSW, Australia_0023

A RUSTIC VENUE
Our wedding was on a farm at the Sydney Polo Club, about an hour away from where we live. We wanted to have something a bit out of the ordinary (this can be hard with a big Jewish wedding but we knew we didn’t want a hotel reception room) and not expect people to have to travel too far. We ended up having the chuppah and dance floor inside the barn and connected a marquee to the side where the guests were seated. The barn doors slid open to connect the two spaces.
creative 'colour explosion' Jewish wedding at the Sydney Polo Club, NSW, Australia

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Jenny & Gareth | Super awesome Jewish beach wedding + pool party at Grand Satis Villa, Phang Nga Bay, Thailand

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Jewish beach wedding + pool party at Grand Satis Villa, Phang Nga Bay, Thailand
Jenny  and Gareth  are one seriously hot couple. I’m talking hot with a capital ‘H’ folks and I just know you’ll think the same  once you  see  their delicious destination wedding imagery by D-Image Plus.

But WAIT. It gets better. Their ceremony took place on the sand, footsteps away from the water’s edge  with  whales dancing in the sea behind the chuppah! And after the ceremony The Kardashians  (yes, The  Kardashians) photo-bombed their portrait shots on the beach!!

Their wedding planner, Jeanette Skelton,  told me, “The Kardashians turned up on the beach in front of the villa, after the ceremony, during the photo session.  They were staying at the nearby Iniala Resort and had their film crew on the beach to film for Keeping up with the Kardashians.  Of course they wanted to film Gareth and Jenny for their show and what luck for them to run into such a fabulous bride and groom!”

Jenny, originally from Melbourne, and Gareth, from Sydney, met in Thailand which is why getting married there was so significant  for them. Jeanette from  Luxury Events  Phuket  (liaising mostly with Gareth, as Jenny was studying for her chartered accountants certificate in the run up to her wedding) created an all-sorts-of-brilliant  day for this special couple and told me “every wedding is special and unique but there are some weddings that truly stand out with incredible energy and this was one of them.”

I have to agree with Jeanette – the energy is palpable! And after their intimate beach ceremony came a pumping party complete with pineapple and lemongrass infused vodka martinis, watermelon mojitos, pina coladas, long island ice phi phi’s  live music, obligatory crazy Jewish dancing, Thai sky lanterns, fire dancers and  an insane pool party with  falafel and pitta for  a midnight snack. Divine exotic  perfection!

Ready for a goooooood time? Over to the beautiful Jenny….

Jewish beach wedding + pool party at Grand Satis Villa, Phang Nga Bay, Thailand_0162
Kardashian wedding
Khloe and Kendall Kardashian taking the opportunity to pose with the gorgeous Jenny and Gareth!

Jewish beach wedding + pool party at Grand Satis Villa, Phang Nga Bay, Thailand_0150

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How to unearth inspiration and ideas for your wedding day

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Today’s post is written by the lovely Kate Shaw from Perfect Details. I’m a big fan of her site – she supplies the most beautiful wedding dà©cor accessories, hire wear and personalised details that together create some lovely finishing touches for your wedding day.

It’s really, really hot in everybody’s office this week, and any brides-to-be planning their wedding are finding their concentration slipping even more to table centre ideas, and where they can match a ribbon colour to their bridesmaid’s dresses…

But with so many places to research weddings, and too many people happy to give you their experience and opinion, where really is the best place to get new ideas for how you’d like the biggest day of your life to look?
Pinterest logo
PINTEREST
Currently the best way to lose hours at a time in our office… Careful it’s addictive. Use the menu top left to browse the whole wedding category, or use the search box to go more specific. Whether you’re looking for ideas for your dress, or you want theme ideas there are endless stunning images to inspire you.

Check out Perfect Detail’s Pinterest boards
Check out Smashing The Glass’s Pinterest boards

Find images you like and repin them to one board, or different categories such as invitations, table settings, hanging decorations…
Pinterest_wedding
photographer logo
WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER WEBSITES
A picture says a 1000 words? The better photographers have online blogs showing off all their best work, which is going to be capturing the magic and detail of other people’s weddings. You can find a photographer who has worked at your venue before so you can get ideas of how to specifically decorate that venue space.

Steven Brooks, a good friend to PerfectDetails.co.uk, is one of the best there is. His blog is full of gorgeous inspirational shots, giving you ideas not just on how to decorate your venue but also of the photos you’ll want to make sure you ask your photographer to get if you’re not lucky enough to have booked Steven himself!

Check out his blog
wedding photographer website

 

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Karen & Jeremy | London Jewish Wedding at the Wallace Collection Art Gallery, London, UK

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Wallace Collection Wedding
As the founder of Smashing The Glass it’s only right that I share my own wedding day, and all the creative ideas that were behind it, with you.

I love so many of the centuries-old Jewish traditions such as the hora, the beautiful songs, the chuppah, the smashing of the glass etc. but what my now-husband and I very much didn’t want was a party that followed the typical London Jewish-wedding-by-numbers formula… ie. fancy hotel, too many guests, the same kosher caterer that everyone uses, the same band etc…..

Wallace Collection Wedding LondonWallace Collection Wedding London
VENUE

I had always dreamt of an outdoor summer wedding and that’s one of the reasons why I love Israeli weddings – the chuppah under the stars, the all-night party vibe, the abundance of food and having the ceremony and party all in one venue. But when it came to organising our wedding it meant the world to us to have Jeremy’s 97 year old grandmother there and as she is unable to travel, a wedding abroad with guaranteed summer weather was out of the question.

London, our home city, was our next choice and the criteria for a venue was to have a feel of being in the outdoors without worrying about the unpredictable British weather spoiling the party, and a stylish, intimate venue, preferably with an arty slant to reflect our creative sides.Wallace Collection Wedding London
The Wallace Collection, once a family home, and now a stunning art collection, in the heart of the West End was our perfect choice. The stunning Courtyard flooded with natural light and dotted with trees and sculptures felt utterly al fresco, yet protected us from the elements with a phenomenal glass roof. Breathtaking and intimate at the same time, it ticked all the right boxes.

We wanted to have both the chuppah ceremony and the dinner dancing in the Courtyard to really feel as if the majority of the wedding was outdoors. We also loved the idea of the changing daylight from the hopefully sunny (and it was!) afternoon to the starry night sky. In between the ceremony and dinner our guests were able to look around all the artwork on the first floor of the house where all the galleries were open to our guests to meander round as they chatted, imbibed and grazed on Zafferano‘s (our chosen caterers) delicious canapà©s.

In terms of getting ready and spending our first night as a married couple, we stayed at the gorgeous Home House in Portman Square just a few minutes walk from the Wallace Collection.

Wallace_Collection_wedding1 Wallace Collection Wedding LondonWallace Collection Wedding London0188

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How to personalise your wedding: Create a logo and brand your Big Day

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how-to-create-a-wedding-logo
One of the most stylish, cost-effective and easiest ways of personalising your Big Day is to create a logo of you and your fiancà©’s initials or names and use it on your invitations, RSVP cards, thank you cards, menus and any other printed materials.

But why stop there? How about also  printing bespoke stickers or having a custom stamp made and personalising even more elements of your day? It’s amazing how simple this is to do and how much fun you can have branding different details of your day.

For my wedding to Jeremy, I used our initials   J and K, to create a very clean symbol that represented our union. As is often the case with logos, the simpler the better – the litmus test is said to be can you draw your logo with a stick in the sand? (Try that out on your honeymoon!).

Here you can see our wedding logo’s first outing on our ‘Save The Date’ that I designed.
SAVE THE DATE
Next on my design list, was creating the invitations and with these I combined the simplicity of the logo with a pop-art influenced collage of imagery that represented the two of us, our childhoods, and important landmarks and locations in our relationship. We wanted to make our invitations fun and also wanted to share elements of our personalities and relationship with our guests. The printing and production techniques were as important to me as the design so we chose to print them on a beautiful thick 640gsm stock called Omnia that has the texture of watercolour paper. I felt like our guests would almost be receiving a small pop art screen print when they received our invitation!

wedding-stationery
wedding invitation by Karen Cinnamon

The text and logo on the reverse of the invitation also had a quality feel as they were printed with raised thermography, and the font itself was traditional and pretty. No swirly wedding text for us! Our printers, Ashwyk, were fabulous to deal with, gave a really attentive service, and produced outstanding results that we were over the moon with.

Wedding_invitation
image: Ashwyk

The finishing touch was custom made square envelopes from Mount Street Printers with our logo on round stickers from Moo on the reverse. For our address labels we used these fantastic clear labels  and printed them at home with the same font we used on the invitation. The result was that the addresses looked as though they were professionally printed direct on the envelopes but it was actually all done on a home printer with these amazing clear labels. I really recommend them!

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