Designing & planning your special day.
WRITTEN BY NISHA HALLERT
PHOTOS BY GAGEWOOD PHOTOGRAPHY
Your wedding is more than an event: It’s the most important story you will ever tell. The way in which you craft your nuptials reveals who you and your partner are as a couple. Thinking of matrimony as a personal narrative with a beginning, middle, and end helps you break your Big Day into manageable pieces. This strategy enables you to plan, design, and weave your tale more easily. How will you tell your wedding story?
THE BEGINNING
From the moment you get engaged, the research begins. You may find yourself flooded with excitement … and an overwhelming feeling of anxiety.
Venue
A venue sets the visual tone for your event. Take note of how the venue makes you feel as soon as you walk through the doors. Do you want your wedding to evoke the comfort of Grandma’s house? If so, a quaint bed and breakfast or cabin near your favorite lake might be the answer. A venue with a view can help ease the decoration budget — you’re substituting décor with vista. Full-service venues that provide tables and chairs as well as setup and teardown will be less stressful and ultimately better for your budget. Destination weddings are still hot this year, as are creative ceremonies with a twist, such as spiral ceremony setups, in which the aisle and seats on either side are arranged in a spiral.
Color and design
Color plays a major role in any wedding, evoking emotion and painting a picture for you and your guests. The color story extends throughout the entire process, from the invitations to makeup, bridesmaids’ dresses, flowers, lighting, décor, and even food and drink. This summer’s wedding colors trend toward bright and bold combinations, such as navy blue and rose gold, or greenery with fuchsia. Mixing metallic looks in the décor still is trendy as well. Do you want your wedding to look as if you’re on the beach in Bora Bora, while your venue is a museum? You can transform your venue into your dream destination through the effective use of colors and design accents, for instance by using different shades of blue, such as turquoise and teal with cobalt, then adding in bright green with coral accents. This color combination transports your party to a tropical paradise while remaining stateside.
The design aesthetic you choose also helps tell your wedding story, and flowers are a big part of that aesthetic. What is your style? Do you like romantic, abundant, textured blossoms that look as if you’ve stepped out of a fairytale? Peonies and garden roses are in vogue this year and easier to access than ever before, especially on the West Coast. Maybe you lean toward organic and natural. Using unusual greens for your centerpieces helps achieve this look. More greenery-heavy centerpieces, as opposed to flower-forward arrangements, are in this year. To read more of this year’s floral trends, explore Flowertrendsforecast.com.
Have you ever wondered why sunset weddings are so popular? The answer is lighting. Lighting helps enrich an event and provides a way to change the mood and environment. A sunset, one of Mother Nature’s most precious gifts, creates a priceless, everlasting feeling. You can create that same sunset ambience that will last your entire event by using uplights that wash an area of the room with light. Uplighting can evolve as your event does. The ceremony could start with a romantic lighting palette and change as the evening progresses to match the vibe, similar to a DJ creating moods with music. Image mapping also allows you to create any desired environment by projecting images onto surfaces or producing creative light shows. Do you want your guests to feel as if they’re floating on clouds? Image mapping can do that.
THE MIDDLE
Food and beverages
We are lucky to live on the West Coast, where we have access to some of the freshest produce and best wines, handcrafted beers, and spirits. It has become the norm to include locally or regionally sourced ingredients at catered events, so if your caterer is not promoting local options, look for another vendor. Go a step further and make a connection with the farmer or rancher. Did you know it might be possible to raise a specific item just for your wedding? Weaving a favorite food into your menu is a way to help connect the dots between you, the rancher or farmer, and the story you are trying to tell. For example, our Nevada Museum of Art culinary and event team worked with San Francisco Bay Area clients that were turophiles (cheese lovers). They also loved salmon and lamb. Our team curated a menu featuring cheese wheels comprised of regionally sourced cheeses from Cowgirl Creamery. They then created a wedding cake made of cheese wheels, which was served as the small plate appetizers for the guests to enjoy tableside. The lamb lollipop hors d’oeuvres came from Albaugh Ranch in Fallon, Nev. The entrée consisted of Bodega Bay wild-caught salmon, sourced from Ernie, a local fisherman. The bar stayed regional, too, using locally distilled gin and bourbon. Napa Valley wines rounded out the offerings.
Entertainment
Adding an interactive element to your wedding helps make the event extra memorable. Hosting a scavenger hunt on a property while the wedding party takes photos or having an illustrator create guest portraits are popular ideas this year. Love lawn games? Create unique cornhole boards for all to enjoy. Custom Snapchat Geofilters provide an easy way to engage guests in an activity, using only their smartphones. Silent disco, in which guests dance to music that’s heard via wireless headphones, is both trendy and ideal for locations that prohibit sound past a certain time. Traditional DJs and live musicians are timeless staples, but don’t be afraid to ratchet up your entertainment.
THE END
Photographers and videographers commemorate your wedding. Pictures are forever, so your venue needs to be camera ready. Visualize the areas you want photographed and communicate this desire to your event-planning team. If you’re going to Paris for your honeymoon, create a Parisian backdrop. If the venue will allow it, bring Fido along to pose with you for photos. Furry friends always are fashionable!
Drones also are quite popular this year, offering aerial perspectives that traditional videographers cannot capture. Make sure your venue allows drones before you seek one.
To help tell your wedding story, consider partnering with professional wedding service companies. Nace.net is a great national resource that enables you to search for such businesses. These companies have experts who can help make your Big Day perfect.
Nisha Hallert has more than 15 years of industry experience, planning 600-person galas, rooftop weddings, intimate exclusive dinners, events for VIPs such as President Clinton, and more. She currently works as director of special events & sales at the Nevada Museum of Art and serves as president of the Reno-Tahoe chapter of the National Association for Catering and Events. In 2014, Hallert and her team were awarded a national NACE award for the Best Social Event Production of the Year.
