Guest Post - Renee from Frontier Flowers of Fontana

Here is my second-ever guest post from one of our absolute FAVORITE vendors, Renee at Frontier Flowers of Fontana. Renee is a real pro; the first time I noticed was at a wedding here in 2008 when someone with her shop dropped off flowers and a few hours later she personally came by to wipe fingerprints off the vases. It was then that I knew I could recommend her to brides without a moment's hesitation.

Here's Renee's take on what to look for in a florist for your wedding:

Your flowers add one of those finishing flourishes that complete your wedding's look. There are many different directions you can take with your decor; would you like a classic look that exudes romance and timeless elegance, or something a little edgier and funkier that pushes new design concepts? Either way (or any of the multiple ways in-between) it is important that your floral designs are reflective of your tastes, personality and style.

It is necessary when selecting a florist that you find one that understands and contributes to your vision. This does become difficult when you, as a client, are unsure of what you want. Before meeting with prospective florists, take time to compile a file of images, fabrics, textures and other elements that inspire you. Even if you may not know what it is you like about these things, a good designer will use the items as keys to unlock the creative direction for your event decor.

Find someone you trust, a designer who is confident in their abilities and is experienced in wedding design will help to ease any concerns you may have regarding your flowers. Find someone with depth of skill; look for a portfolio that exhibits a broad range of design capabilities and not just the same arrangement in 15 different color combinations. Find someone who listens to you; the right designer will take your ideas and give you some options that will help elevate your wedding to the next level.

Be sure to have a budget in mind when you go to your first consultation. General rule of thumb is 8-10% of the overall cost of the wedding should be budgeted for flowers, but I've done weddings with much more and much less...it's largely a personal preference. Budget is a really critical area to consider before you go through a consulation. Not having a reasonable budgeting plan can lead to a lot of frustration and upset. As a creative person who often has some pretty big ideas and concepts in my mind, if your budget restricts some of the more elaborate ideas I may share with you we may both end up disappointed. Communication at the beginning of the consulation is key to a successful first meeting.

Thanks, Renee!

Anyone can put together a vase full of flowers to put on the middle of the the table, but Renee is a true artist and has a wealth of ideas to make your wedding the amazing event you want it to be. (Did I mention she's also an absolute HOOT to work with?)

Back soon with pictures of our February 11th wedding in the Harbor Ballroom...

New Year's Eve

Ok, so it wasn't a wedding but I thought I'd post a couple of pictures of how our Harbor Ballroom looked on New Year's Eve. The colors were black and silver with burgundy accents. The tablecloths were called "Black Bombay" and had a silver circular pattern on them. And, of course, black satin chair covers with silver ties.

In this pictures you get a closer look at the centerpieces, designed by my talented counterpart, Hayley. She spray painted curly willow silver and we worked tirelessly making many, many large tissue paper pom poms. It was definitely a fun-looking room!

Ceremony Timing

We get a lot of questions about timing so I figured a blog post (or two) on the subject might be helpful.

"Prime Time" for ceremonies in our Gazebo is the early evening hours so that guests can go straight to cocktails and then dinner without a gap in between functions. We block one hour in the gazebo and actual ceremonies usually only last about 20-25 minutes. So if you block the gazebo beginning at 4pm, this is how that hour looks:

4pm: Start your music. This is the time you have listed on the wedding invitations, so guests should be arriving a bit before and, invariably, some will come a few minutes late.

4:10pm: Bridal procession starts.

4:40pm: Recessional. Guests will be directed by the officiant to the cocktail area and leaves about 20 minutes for pictures in the Gazebo.

If the bride and groom have done pictures prior to the ceremony, they should be able to wrap up the family pictures fairly quickly and join the reception in plenty of time to enjoy themselves.

I'll leave you with a great shot from Courtney and Elmer's wedding here on September 4th. Courtney wanted to make sure she had a picture of every single person at their wedding, so Matt got up on the balcony and this was the result. Great idea, Courtney!

Real Wedding September 4 - Part Two

I'm so incredibly excited to share these images with you from Saturday night. The Harbor Ballroom looked AMAZING and Matt Mason captured it in all it's glory just before the wedding guests entered. Thanks, Matt!

The bride had a vision of a "Roaring 20's" feel with lots of feathers and black and white. The only flowers were the girls' bouquets which sat on the head table, so the centerpieces on guest tables by Gia Bella Floral were made of either feathers or candles.

Our AV department really outdid themselves on the lights. There were 16 "uplights" all around the room and an additional 10 under the head table. They also had a GOBO on the dance floor in Courtney and Elmer's monogram.

We had white chair covers on all the chairs except for the head table, which had black covers. All the chairs had black and white ties. All guest tables had our house white table cloths but rented black napkins.

There were two square family tables at the front of the room. We created the rectangular shape using our conference tables and then special linens were rented. We chose to do those in black to really set them apart from the rest of the tables. Because there is a seam down the middle, we used a runner that matched the chair ties to hide it. These tables looked appropriate using the house white napkins.

Ah, the head table - this absolutely took my breath away! They had two tiers with seating for 8 on the riser and 10 on the floor. The linens matched the chair ties and then we had the black chair covers behind them. To really set it off, we did black draping behind the table and lit both tiers from underneath.

The crisp whiteness of the cake atop the black cloth really looked amazing, don't you think?

Luminary Bags

Here's an inexpensive way to add a lot of ambiance to a wedding: luminary bags. These are on the path to the Tent but we've also seen them lining the aisle toward the gazebo for ceremonies. Flameless candles are, of course, the safest option.

Real Wedding - June 5, 2010

They say it's good luck when it rains on your wedding day so the brides from this past weekend should probably play the lottery! We had to pull both of our ceremonies that were scheduled for the Harbor Gazebo inside to banquet rooms which is never fun, but it's a reality here in southeast Wisconsin. For this reason, we always block back-up space and hope and pray we don't have to use it. Most of the time we don't because ceremonies are usually just about 1/2 hour long but sometimes you just have to. This, unfortunately, was one of those weekends.

Here are some pictures of wedding that was in the Tent:


The bride provided lanterns for us - 60 of them - that our engineering staff hung throughout the room. There were 3 different sizes and they were all lit by batteries.

They rented white chair covers and you can see the runners on the tables were in soft yellow and a sage green.
Centerpieces were from Renee at Frontier Flowers of Fontana. She's one of our favorites, as I've probably mentioned before.

And the cake by Dea. Yum!

Real Wedding - May 15

Sorry for the delay in posting pictures from the May 15th wedding here at The Abbey. There was a technical issue and I'm not very technical, so I had to enlist help to get back up and running.



We had a gorgeous day for a wedding last weekend - nice and cool (60's) for the groomsmen! It can get hot out there at the Gazebo in August and the groomsmen get a little antsy in their tuxes sometimes.



There are a lot of different ways to walk down to the gazebo. This bride chose to leave from Building 2.







This wedding was for approximately 130 guests and they had their reception in the Harbor Ballroom. They ended up using the entire ballroom partly because they had a large stage for the band and they set their dance floor in the 2nd section of the ballroom and their tables in the last two sections farthest from the windows. They used the 1st section (the one with the windows) as a cocktail area, as we normally do.







I really like a mix of centerpieces to add interest to the room, especially if all the tables are round. These centerpieces were brought in from Pesche's Greenhouse in Lake Geneva.

All photos courtesy of Mozart Photography.

Congratulations to David and Kelly!

Real Wedding: April 10

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get a few pictures from our first spring wedding of 2010. I promise I'll be more timely in the future!

You might recall from this post that April 10 was a spectacular day in southeast Wisconsin and the bride had briefly considered holding her ceremony outside at our Harbor Gazebo. However, in the end she decided to stick with her original plan of holding the ceremony in the Wisconsin Ballroom. There, she was able to use the chivari chairs she had rented as well as some tall floral arrangements to mark the aisle. Both were re-purposed in the Harbor Ballroom for her reception.

photo courtesy of Mozart Photography

I thought the floral for this wedding was some of the best I've seen. The bride chose dark mahogany chivari chairs and had pewter pintuck linens. The neutral backdrop was so perfect for the colorful floral arrangements, don't you think? And I always love the mix of high and low centerpieces to add interest to each table.


photo courtesy of Mozart Photography

My favorite part of any wedding is the cake and this one was chocolate - it just doesn't get any better than this!photo courtesy of Mozart Photography

Congratulations to Karen and Adam on a beautiful wedding and best wishes!

Decor Options: Chairs

Pouring over wedding magazines and blogs can be a daunting task. When it comes to decor, the number of options can make your head spin! I'll be breaking down some of those options in this post when it comes to chairs, and then tackle linens, centerpieces, etc. later. If I tried to cover everying in one post, it would be so record-breakingly long the hotel's server would probably crash!

Ceremony:





Harbor Gazebo


Covered in the cost of a ceremony here at The Abbey is the set-up of these white folding chairs for your guests. They have a slight padding on the seat and are very basic. I have never had anyone use any chairs other than these for their ceremony, but I guess you could rent chivaris if you liked the look of those better (more on those later). You can see in the above picture this bride opted to have white tulle bows tied on the chairs closest to the aisle.

Reception:

Let's start with the standard option here, which is our banquet chair.


Banquet chairs in the Harbor Ballroom

In case you can't tell in the pictures, the color of our banquet chairs is a muted rosey-brown. One of the advantages of these chairs is that they are the most comfortable option for your guests.


The most economical option if you don't want the standard banquet chairs is to rent the same white folding chairs that were used for your ceremony to be moved into the dinner room. There is a $3.00 charge per chair.





Notice the boat centerpieces in the above picture. We've seen a few nautical themes in the Tent over the years and the white folding chairs enhance the effect.


We mostly see these chairs used in the Tent, but there have been a few brides who utilized them in the Ballrooms over the years, too, incorporating them in their color scheme or in the "feel" they were looking to create.



Pink and white in the Harbor Ballroom

Harbor Ballroom - this bride was going for a "martini lounge" effect, as you can see from the linens and centerpieces.


The next step up is chair covers. There are a million different colors to choose from (only slight exaggeration) and we have books in our office for brides to flip through. I will go into more on the actual linen choices in a later post, but here are some pictures to show you how chair covers transform the look of the room:




Chair covers, West Shore Pavillion

Chair covers, Harbor Ballroom



The cost of a chair cover is typically right around $5. You can get them for less if you forego the bow and the installation and I've seen it done, but am not sure I like it.



I had a bride a couple years ago who brought in white chair covers herself because she had a relative in the rental business so she got them for a great deal or maybe free, I don't know. We had the room set-up the night before so she brought in all the groomsmen and had them throw a cover on each chair with no bow/tie. They were then responsible for taking them away at the end of the night. For her, the covers were there to mask the color of the banquet chairs. I wouldn't say it was the most "polished" look but she accomplished her goal.



For couples who are on a budget and don't think they can afford chair covers for the entire room, I encourage them to think about getting covers for just the head table. If you have a traditional head table either on a riser or on the floor, this will set it apart from the rest of the guests and attract their attention as they enter the room.


And now for everyone's favorite: chivari chairs. These are the most "high-end" option for most weddings. They come in several different colors including silver, gold, white, black, natural wood and mahogany. There are now slip covers for the pads, too, so you can completely coordinate the look. You can see in the pictures below why chivaris are at the top of so many brides' wish lists:


Mahogany chivaris in Harbor Ballroom

Black chivaris in the West Shore PavillionGold chivaris in Harbor Ballroom


Pricing on chivaris runs close to $9.00 per chair once you add in the delivery and set-up charges. Unfortunately, I don't think you could get away with doing these at just the head table. If you want chivaris, you pretty much have to do the whole room. That's why we more often see these at the 50 person weddings and not the 250 person ones.


I was watching a show about JFK not long ago with footage of he and Jackie sitting at an elegant, formal dinner during his presidency and I immediately noticed they had chivari chairs. That's testament to the classic nature of these chairs. Every so often I'll hear someone (usually the father of the bride/keeper of the budget) complain they aren't very comfortable. Well all the more reason to get up and dance, right? Once a bride gets her heart set on these chairs, she almost always seems to find a way to get them.


There are a lot of ways to "enhance" the chivaris, but I will save that for my post about linen options. Come to think of it, that might be two posts. Decisions, decisions.....

Lanterns

Since we started in 2008, we've seen a lot of these paper lanterns at weddings. They add quite a bit of dimension to a room and are a relatively inexpensive way to "dress up" either the cocktail area or the reception room. Most of the brides who have used these have ordered them on the internet and brought them in for our engineering staff to hang them. Some brides have them hung just over the dance floor, but this bride had 200 covering the entire ceiling of the Harbor Ballroom. She had 3 different sizes and the smallest size had LED batteries in them, which we turned on just before we opened the doors.

With all the lights off and just the pink up-lights and small lanterns, the effect was REALLY striking! It was one of the most interesting weddings I've seen in the two years I've been here.

This next wedding was before my time, but I like how they hung the multi-colored lanterns just above the head table. It really added a festive touch to the whole room, don't you think?

You can also have these hung outside, in which case you would want to get the lighted ones. We've mostly seen white ones but they also have them in all colors so you can coordinate with your flowers and other decor.