As promised, here is the second and last installment of the story of Mindy & Ben.   No small wonder, we will be talking about this adventure for many, many years to come!

After the ceremony at the Broad Street Ministry, Marie Labbancz took this incredible couple out onto the center median for a classic Broad Street photoshoot.

Then finally, the couple arrived at the oh-so-very hip Crane Art Center in Philly for one of the most amazing wedding celebrations ever!   The building once housed a massive plumbing warehouse and huge seafood refrigerator, and is now home to some of the most innovative artists’ studios in the City.    Cocktails and divine hors d’oeuvres were impeccably created and served by the amazing chef and staff of Max Hansen Catering.   

See the gorgeous seating card table below?  I just adored this table executed with love and passion by Beautiful Blooms.   The individual vessels came from all over the place and were carefully chosen one at a time by Donna.   Honestly, there is a story behind each little vase.   And, again, with the cranes!   See how cool the seating cards are?  Two Paper Dolls did an amazing job on every single piece of paper.   Those guys never cease to blow me away!!   Look at that calligraphy!

And VU-Events — again — created exactly what we wanted.   They built this bar from scratch and lit it perfectly!

Finally the moment arrived and the massive metal refrigerator doors opened to a truly incredible room.   

Vic and his team at VU-Events did an amazing job of hanging TWELVE HUNDRED origami cranes that had been created one at a time in all different sizes and patterns of paper by a host of people put together by Beautiful Blooms.   How this started was that we had to come up with some way to deal with the acoustic issues that occur when one is planning to put a 15-piece band in a former refrigerator with 25′ ceilings.  We knew we had to drape the walls, but we also thought it best to install sound panels to kept the reverb to it’s absolute minimum.   Of course, huge sound panels across a ceiling are not exactly an attractive design element, so we decided to light them and hang origami cranes from them so it looked like flocks of crazy cranes flying across the ceiling.   The design and the plan could not not not have worked out better!   See for yourself!

The rest of the decor was pretty amazing, too!  

 

I want to tell you about a couple more things that made this wedding so so special (other than the fact that the couple and their families were among the sweetest, most loving group of people we’ve ever had the honor of working with).

First, the band:  Sultans of Swing.   I don’t know when i’ve ever seen a band rock a wedding like that.   It was just incredible.   At the end of the night, the guests were deliriously happy and exhausted from the incredible music and dancing that went on all night long, 

Then, the food.   Again, i would KILL for the ability to link to the incredible aromas that came from Max’s beautiful and divine food stations.   The guests raved and raved and raved — as they should!   Max outdid himself and his staff provided each and every guest with the best service they could ever possibly experience.  

The stunning cake and delicious cake was created by Truli Confectionary Arts!  Gorgeous!

Am I obsessing?  I guess I am.   This was the wedding of a lifetime.   I’ll stop talking now and just let you enjoy the rest of the photos!

   

 

Good night, guys!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Celebrations, Event Design, Philadelphia, Weddings, venues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.