WPCNR'S THE REAL DEAL. By The Wedding Jeannie, Jeannie Uyanik of Cap and Gown Weddings. July 27, 2008: Every season we get the unique opportunity to create beautiful weddings with our amazing clients.  And although some ideas we’ve seen a million times (personalized napkins, you don’t say?!), every now and then we get hit with something that’s so incredibly unique and fun, we can’t keep it to ourselves.  So as the summer wedding season winds to a close, Elizabeth West of C&G Weddings joins us again to offer you our “Best Of” Summer 2008 wedding ideas.    

5.  Nettleton Hollow

We all know being good to the environment while still planning amazing events is a constant struggle in the industry and especially for our “green” clients.  For their outdoor engagement party, our couple Lynn and Stephen wanted to create a natural and elegant feel without using a ton of fresh flowers that would die soon after being cut.  After doing some research, I came across the site www.nettletonhollow.com.

Nettleton Hollow has a beautiful array of lasting botanicals, grasses, foliage, and branches.  And considering you can reuse all of their materials, their price points are extremely fair.  The couple ended up using clusters of the coral bush branches which created a beach-like feel without it looking kitschy and overdone.  They also used these great 5’ long palm boats and filled them with fruits and dried flowers for food station décor.  It was a booming success and the couple walked away with great pieces they are now used in their apartment as a part of their everyday.

4.  Melangerie Inc

While this next couple’s wedding isn’t until August 23^rd, their amazing welcome bags still fall on this summer’s “best of” list.  The bride is a medical resident in psychiatry but has a super creative side so she truly enjoys everything in wedding design.  When we first started conversations of welcome bags, Tara didn’t get excited about paper bags or boxes filled with the traditional things like water and NYC maps at all. 

So I went on a crusade to track down NYC’s most creative duo and found Julie Tinker and Elana Dweck- the owners of Melangerie.  They specialize in custom gifting and the creation of what they call, “mélanges.”  For Tara and Greg, they created a custom NYC guide outlining the couple’s favorite spots, what they normally order, where their first date was, site of the proposal, etc and used the artwork from their Save the Date to reinforce their art deco feel and enhance consistency.  While I can’t disclose too much about the project prior to the wedding, the artists took the opportunity to customize every inch of the gift.  Check out their site for more creative ideas:  http://www.melangerienyc.com

3.  Southern Gospel

When trying to come up with a fun way to start her ceremony, one of our brides used a childhood story about the Pied Piper as inspiration for how to get her guests from the pre-ceremony cocktails out to the beach for the ceremony.  But instead of a flute playing peasant, she hired an amazing gospel choir to arrive at the venue on foot. 

They approached the house in full song and led guests out onto the beach in a parade of clapping and excitement.  When it was time for the bride to process, they started singing one of her favorite childhood songs, “This Little Light of Mine.”  The bride wanted to avoid weepy classical music and to keep the ceremony as an upbeat celebration.  Mission accomplished!

2.  ‘Still Live™’ by Brian Dorsey

One of our most fantastic NY photographers, Brian Dorsey introduced us to one of our favorite new ideas in interactive photography.  At a July 3^rd wedding at Pier Sixty in NYC, the photographer set up a live digital gallery of the photos for guests to see as they were taken.  It started with the moments before the ceremony that every guest doesn’t get to see and as the night progressed, the digital library got updated.  Guests could literally cut a rug on the dance floor and then moments later see themselves on screen as a part of this amazing rotating digital gallery on a large flat screen monitor.  Talk about instant gratification!  Check out Brian’s work at www.briandorseystudios.com

1.  Bridal Gowns through the Generations

A fantastic and extremely creative Floridian bride dreamed of wearing her grandmother’s dress as she walked down the aisle in her May wedding.  But when grandma told her she could not make any changes to the dress (and wearing it “as is” was not an option), she immediately had to come up with plan B.  And in this case, Plan B turned out to be even more incredible as Plan A!  She had a rare and unique situation where both her and her fiancé’s mother and grandmothers still had their wedding gowns.  So as a tribute to them and their beautiful dresses, she displayed them on manikins at the reception venue.  Not only did it give a peek into the family’s heritage, it offered a beautiful addition to the room’s décor.  (And grandma didn’t have to watch her gown get cut into a million pieces!). 

In an industry that has seen it all and done it all, it’s always nice to see when clients and vendors come up with something unique and special.  We hope that our list of favorites has inspired you to come up with your own ways to further personalize any event that you’re planning.  Enjoy the rest of the summer and here’s to a fantastic fall wedding season!  Throughout the weekends in August, we will be highlighting photos and stories from some of our most recent weddings this spring and summer.