Sharon & Ryan's Wedding Featured in Pacific Rim Weddings Magaine

I have been dying to get a copy of the Winter/Spring 2010 issue of Pacific Weddings magazine. It came out a week or so ago, but has not hit the mainland stores just yet. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek from the Mauna Lani's director of Weddings and then my bride told me it was also featured on Toby Hoogs' blog. Thank you Toby for allowing me to use your copy of the images from the magazine.
The above image is of the phaleanopsis cake flowers and bamboo I created out of clay for Sharon and Ryan. This was a recreation of an inspiration photo that Toby himself took of another wedding that Sharon fell in love with. The Mauna Lani pastry chefs did a great job recreating the cake and look.
The above image of the starfish place card is another element I helped Sharon with. I did her wedding invitations, table cards, place cards and wedding programs for her beautiful Hawaiian wedding. Her brother officiated the ceremony. Their story was very touching and you could feel the love they share not only from the words but also from the beautiful images Toby captured.

I'm so blessed that my work has yet again been highlighted in another magazine. Sharon and Ryan are such a wonderful couple. They were fun to work with and it was nice to create what they had envisioned for their wedding day details.It's a true pleasure to work with wonderfully talented wedding professionals and equally wonderful clients. I'm truly honored to have my work featured in such a wonderful destination wedding magazine!

Real Wedding Photos - Sharon & Ryan

I'm so very excited to share these photos with you. My dear clients, Sharon & Ryan got their photos back from Hawaii photographer extraordinaire, Toby Hoogs. I've had the pleasure of working with Toby (meaning he's photographed many weddings I've worked on in the past) and he never ceases to amaze me with his talents.

Sharon and Ryan asked me to create their wedding invitations, place cards, favors, favor tags, table cards, cake flowers & bamboo, and program fans. These are the images that Sharon sent to me last night. Thank you Sharon and Ryan for sharing these with me and my readers! Sharon and Ryan got married at the beautiful Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows on the Big Island of Hawai'i. A beautiful resort and the wedding staff is top notch.Above is the head table setting! Simply gorgeous! Sharon had table names of places they have been or want to travel instead of doing traditional numbers.These are Sharon and Ryan's place cards.

The below 2 photos are the place cards I created (Sharon assembled the starfish and ribbon onto the place cards and created her own menus) as well as the complete guest table look. Beautiful colors and I love the votives.
The last two photos are of the cake! OMG, can I just say this cake is picture perfect! I can't believe how well the Mauna Lani's pastry chefs recreated the image that Sharon wanted them to replicate and how well my flowers and bamboo look. Absolutely STUNNING!

Plumeria Cake Topper and Favors

My client Randi had asked me to create some invitations and wedding announcements for her upcoming September wedding. Her wedding day is fast approaching and I just finished her favors, hair flower and cake topper. Randi wanted these delicious dark chocolate covered lilikoi shortbread cookies. Unfortunately the vendor doesn't ship with ice packs so when they arrived they were melted. :( Good thing that I had ordered a ton of cookies for another order and to give as gifts when we go back East to visit family. So, I told her that I would substitute with the other non-chocolate covered ones which worked out fine.
Randi asked last minute if I could do cake flowers. I suggested to her that maybe it's just better to do a vase arrangement that she could have as a keepsake afterwards since she is just having a round 9" cake. She agreed and so these are the pictures of her cake topper and favor!

Best wishes to Randi and Kirt on their wedding day even though it's over a month away. With me going out of town to visit family, I'm having to pull all my orders in from now until the 3rd week of September. It's going to be crazy....

Sharon & Ryan's Wedding Details Complete

It was a busy last couple of weeks but even more so the last couple of days. I've been frantically trying to get flowers made and painted, favors assembled, place cards printed, mounted and punched, and getting a 4 page wedding program printed and assembled on straw fans. I am happy and relieved to say that we finished the order today. Sharon's order in total included 110 favors (mixture of plumerias, tiare, phaleanopsis orchids, and mokara orchids), 105 place cards, 100 program fans, 50 water bottle sleeves, 12 table cards, 1 phaleanopsis orchid hair flower and 16 cake flowers and about 10 bamboo reeds). I need a vacation!!! :)I was hoping to have the night off, but I need to get started on the next order that's due. I wanted however to share some new photos with you so you can see the last of the items I finished today before they were boxed up to ship to the Big Island.

Best wishes to Sharon and Ryan!Before I get started on my next order, I wanted to share this last above photo of my bamboo reeds. I loved the lighting that was coming through my window yesterday evening as the sun was setting and it reminded me of bamboo or snake grass with the water glistening on the reeds. So many people commented how real they look. My husband even says I have "issues". LOL. This is why I love what I do, creativity at it's best and I love a good challenge. :)

Wedding Invitations and Details - Plumerias with Aqua Blue and Chocolate

Two of my favorite clients, Courtney and Todd, met with me last month and I shared with them a few design samples for their invitations and menus. They loved them and I told them I would create samples for all the pieces they wanted for their wedding (invitation, OOT tags, favors/place cards, water bottle sleeves and menu/fans). These are the samples I created last night for them. We're still working on their direction cards, but we're almost there! The first two pictures are their invitations. Thanks to Courtney she did the map for me so I just had to put it in her wedding invitation colors and get it to fit on the insert.

The next images are of her wedding reception dinner menu (YUMMY!) and the water bottle labels and tags for their out-of-town guests. The last picture is the favor box/place cards for each of their guests. They plan on filling them with Honolulu Cookie Co cookies! Yummy!
Courtney and Todd are super sweet and so easy to work with. I'm so fortunate to have wonderful clients like them to work with on a regular basis. :)

Tiffany Bllue, Coral Orange and Plumerias

Jessica and Alton are getting ready for their big wedding day come February 22nd. If you recall, they asked me to do their save the dates and wedding invitations with the Tiffany blue, coral orange and instead of the orange cymbidium they chose the white plumeria. They are having a small wedding at the Hyatt in Mau'i and asked me to carry their theme and color palette through to their wedding day details. I'm creating their water bottle sleeves, favors, program fans and thank you cards.
Here are a couple of shots of the favor and the thank you cards. I still believe that having a consistent look and feel carried through from start to finish really adds to a polished and stylish wedding!

Because Love Should Be Celebrated - More Wedding Details

Last night I managed to finish the revised samples of Alyssa & Daniel's other wedding week and wedding day details. The other items as I mentioned in the previous post are the out-of-town guest bag tags, table cards, and place card/favor boxes and circular dinner reception menus . These are the photos of the samples.

Because Love Should Be Celebrated - Wedding Programs

A few months back (seems like several), my client, Alyssa found me via TheKnot.com Mae & Jeremy Real Weddings feature. She fell in love with my designs and asked me if I would work on her December 6th destination wedding in Wailea, Mau'i. I was really hesitant knowing my busy September/October schedule, but after meeting her, I agreed to take her wedding order. I finished her invitations and everyone has commented how lovely they are. Now we're headed into all of her printed items for her OOT Bags (which I will post later on during her wedding - they are super duper cool!), menus, place card/favor boxes, wedding programs, table cards, etc.

The funny thing is that Alyssa and Daniel live minutes from where I live. They are such a fun and delightful couple. I'm very fortunate that I get to coordinated their wedding for my best friend Cheryl of Orchid Isle Weddings & Events because she's due around their wedding date and can't physically make it. Cheryl and I have worked on a few occasions as I was her assistant wedding planner when she did weddings on Oahu. This will one of the first times that I get to see all my work on the day of the wedding! So exciting... I'm really excited about being an on-location wedding blogger for a Mau'i destination wedding! It's hard to believe there's less than 45 days until their big day.

Anyway, to make a long story short, here is a sample of the tri-fold wedding ceremony program I'm doing for them. More items to come later this weekend as I build them out. Beautiful color palette of deep navy blue, light blue and a hint of orange. A soft blue palm leaf print to carry their wedding invitation design element through to the wedding day to keep the theme consistent.

More to come so stay tuned...

DK Designs Wedding Details - Place Cards, Table Numbers and Guest Book

Back in early September, Stacey contacted me and asked me if I could do her place cards, table numbers and guest book. She had seen my work via the Real Weddings - Mae & Jeremy feature on TheKnot.com. Her colors were very similar to Mae & Jeremy's except that her blue was more of a Caribbean blue. She sent me images of the bridesmaid dresses and asked that I true to get close to that color.

Her flowers are going to be a flame/mango orange calla and she liked the starfish place card idea. So we incorporated the two. She also had to figure out some way to incorporate the meal choice, so the hotel agreed that we could change the ribbon colors to signify which meal selection without making things too complicated.

This was a nice change of pace and I was able to complete it in one day. I've been doing so many flowers that doing a print job broke things up! However, it's back to more flowers today for my next bouquet order.

Congratulations and Best Wishes Stacey & Josh!

Because Love Should Be Celebrated...

One of my clients fell in love with this saying and wanted to somehow incorporate it into her wedding invitations. Alyssa and Daniel came to me by way of TheKnot.com Real Weddings Feature where my items were part of the photo gallery. Alyssa fell in love with my work and asked if I would do her wedding invitations and other printed items. I was reluctant at first just because my plate is pretty full, but after talking to her, I agreed to do the wedding.

We finally met today for the first time as her mom is here helping her with wedding planning items (turns out Alyssa lives 6 minutes away!). It was such a pleasure to meet them and they were so sweet and so friendly. Open to ideas, but at the same time they know what they want. So I had hoped to come up with more samples for them, but with my schedule this week and trying to make sure I got my orders completed on time, I had to work on Alyssa's samples between 1:30 and 4:00. I got a lot done, but was hoping to provide her with all of what she wanted to see.

Anyway, during a previous phone conversation with her and her mom, Linda, we talked about other ideas. She wanted the colors to be navy blue, light blue and just a hint of orange. We discussed the pineapple, palm fronds, cymbidiums, plumerias and even phaleonopsis orchids. I think personally I'm a little tired of doing cymbidiums even though I LOVE them! I think the 190 cymbidium orchid favors did me in. LOL!

For some reason during the design phase today, I was really drawn to the subtle nature of the palm fronds. The fully justified block font with the "Because Love Should Be Celebrate" was something she saw in a bridal book and fell in love with it. So I found a copy of "Style Your Wedding" by Susie Coelho and figured out what she wanted. Initially I had put it in a script font. This saying now becomes the theme or motif and it's actually quite nice! The navy blue when it sparkles in the light reminds me of how water glistens as the sun hits it. Very appropriate since they are getting married overlooking Molokini Lookout on Maui! Who wouldn't want to go to this wedding just to celebrate the love of to people becoming husband and wife. What better way to celebrate than a wedding in paradise!


The other wonderful thing is that Alyssa, Linda and I hit it off, which is a good thing because Cheryl of Orchid Isle Weddings asked if I would help coordinate her wedding for the rehearsal and the day of! I'm really excited. They are a fun bunch and I hope to meet Daniel soon too. It's going to be a beautiful wedding I can already tell. They're talking about a malasada station as the midnight snack! YUMMY! :) An island favorite - hot off the oil vat, rolled in sugar... zero calories (ok.. that is if you dance it off)! Even my husband was saying how really nice Alyssa and Linda were.


Anyway, these are some shots of the comps I did for Alyssa and they instantly fell in love with these. They are pictures of her invitation, table card and OOT tag and itinerary. She wanted to keep with the theme of their save the dates, but I think they're finding that they want to maybe just start a whole new theme which will carry through from the invitations to the wedding day! This'll be the first time that I get to help coordinate a wedding where I did a lot of the wedding details myself so what a treat it will be!

Some More Concepts...

The concepts keep on coming today.. These are some concepts I'm doing for Alyssa. I think I like the palm leaves better than the pineapple. I also worked on a few more concepts for Erin as well so you can see some of them here.

Erin is looking for whites/blacks and for a little pop of color she wants pinks and purples but also wants some natural elements as well. She fell in love with the honu (turtle) design I did for Teri and Frank so I made a sample for her as well with her colors in mind. Below is the favor tag and place card idea using the poppy motif.

Here's the other concepts being considered for the save-the-date cards (Erin likes peonies and she also liked a floral silhouette idea... Which one do you like best???