Lucky Faye!   Her wedding gown will be custom-designed and created  by the famous couture dress designer and dressmaker,  Janice Martin. The gown is now down to two stunning designs.   And you get to choose which one Faye will wear on her wedding day!

When we last talked about the planning of Faye & Matt’s wedding, you were asked to vote on the invitation by Two Paper Dolls.   And the winner is:

Now, we’re on the wedding gown, and so far, the voting has been unbelievable.   The dam has opened and votes are pouring in.

At their first meeting, Faye and Janice got to know each other so that Janice could design the dress to not only to suit Faye’s beauty and style, but her personality as well.  Eclatante was there for the fittings of the muslin versions of each evolution of Janice’s designs. We were so impressed by Janice’s compassion and ability to figure out exactly where to begin and how to make Faye feel completely at ease with the process.  By the time Faye’s gown is complete, there is absolutely no doubt that it will be a one-of-kind couture wedding gown that was made to fit and suit Faye absolutely perfectly.

These two drawings depict the two designs by Janice that were created for Faye.

GOWN #1

This is a halter style fitted gown with a layered train. The fabric will be a cotton/silk blend and the gown will have a slight blue cast to it. The train starts higher in the front, lower in the back. The dress may have small covered buttons down back of gown. The train is of layers of chiffon or organza, so that each layer will “flow” or “float” evoking waves. The gown may also have a blue sash at waist to complement the bridesmaids dresses. Blue was chosen for two reasons:  First, Faye’s amazing eyes; and, second,  because the ceremony will take place at  the rotunda that juts out onto the water outside the Independent Seaport Museum.   The effect of this gown is “light and airy”. The halter style gives Faye’s figure support and her shoulders more definition.

Gown #2:

Same silhouette as Gown #1, but is a strapless fitted gown of shirred silk satin. This is a much more “formal” fabric. The train is layered with a “bubble” type effect, so that overall the gown would be more sculptural and elegant.  Both gowns are very “body conscious” so either will show off Faye’s lovely curves. Both gowns will feature blue in the construction to give depth and richness to the gown and flatter Faye’s skin tone and eyes!

So, just like you did with the invitations (thank you!), please log onto Philly.com/weddings to cast your vote for either Gown #1 or Gown #2.   Hurry, though.   Faye is very anxious to find out which gown is hers!!

Next time, you’ll be asked to choose between two amazing centerpieces from Beautiful Blooms.

Sometimes people create things that I love and just have to share.   My latest obsession are these great letterpress neighborhood cards created by the girl wonders at Two Paper Dolls.   I LOVE THESE.   But I need them to do one of Northern Liberties, yes?

You can get these from Two Paper Dolls at the place in Wayne or Pressed55 right here in the Piazza.   Or from their cool Etsy shop.

Kelly & Liam are an extraordinary couple.   Therefore, of course, they had an extraordinary wedding.  Everything took place at Kelly’s mother’s summer home on the beach in Bethany Beach, Delaware.

Amy Deputy was the incredible photographer that brilliantly captured every facet of this wedding. There is no way to do this wedding justice in just one post.   Soon you’ll see why.

Kelly & Liam met when Liam was working on Kelly’s home in Philly.  Liam is a true Irishman – with a sweet brogue and an amazing soccer game. Once they met, it was all over. They got engaged in June of this year, came to Eclatante in July and got married in September.   And what a wedding it was.

Carolyn of The Papery got right to work to create the perfect invitation for Kelly & Liam.   Totally reflective of the wedding being planned and Kelly’s elegant and clean style, the invitation was the guests first look into this amazing wedding.

We planned this stunning beach wedding (all the parts to take place on the sand with the reception in a tent) in a matter of weeks – and it came off without a hitch. That is not to say that there weren’t a few scary moments.   On the Monday prior to the wedding, the weather reports cited an 80% chance of heavy rain, complete with lightening and thunder.  But by Friday, there was not a cloud to be found.   They say it was Kelly’s grandmother’s wedding present!

As the story goes, Kelly wonderful grandmother passed a way a couple years ago.   Before she died, she told her family that she was going to become the Angel of Weather.   Well, most of us turned into believers that weekend and think that Kelly’s grandmother gave her granddaughter the best wedding present either.

Here are just a couple “before” photos (from my iPhone) taken as we were setting up the tent on Bethany Beach during the days before the wedding.

Tenting by Party Center - Photo taken with Kendall's iPhone

Photo by Amy Deputy

I think I’ll just start posting photos and let the story unfold.  (All the rest of the are Amy Deputy’s.)

There's nothing quite like a wedding rehearsal on the sand.

On the morning of the wedding, Liam’s family were were playing in the water with delight.  It was the perfect beach day.

Even Lulu, Kelly & Liam’s fun-loving golden retriever was having the time of her life.   A totally calm Liam had a great time in the water playing with Lulu just hours before the ceremony.

While Liam and Lulu were playing on the beach, Kelly was up in the house getting ready.

Of course, eventually  Liam did come in from the ocean to get ready for his wedding. His boutonnière created by Beautiful Blooms was the great final touch to his perfectly chose attire as was his best man’s.

Then the moment came for Kelly & Liam to see each other for the first time.    Kelly grabbed her beautiful bouquet created by Beautiful Blooms – with her beloved late father’s class ring attached – and headed downstairs to see Liam for the first time.

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  This is a lovely shot of Kelly's bouquet (A hand-tied bouquet of white mini callas, white spray roses, white dahlias and an accent of soft blue delphinium) and Liams's great tie!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Kelly & Liam’s wedding.   We created a Quaker Meeting House ceremony on the beach.  It was absolutely beautiful!

With the expert and indispensible help of the Beautiful Blooms team, Eclatante worked with the Dolls at Two Paper Dolls to create our very first Celebrating in Style™ event at the Dolls’ studio in Wayne.   We transformed the Dolls’ office into a great event space, the goal of which was to demonstrate to the great hosts of the Philadelphia area how we can help them throw an amazing party anytime, anywhere – not just weddings and other large scale social events. We actually planned five parties in one for our guests — each of which could be a great home party — and each one with its own interactive element!

Take a look at some of the fabulous photos taken by Mike Kehr and Jana Bannan at Mike Kehr Photography!  Thank you so much Mike and Jana!!

First up:  our wine and cheese pairing and tasting!   The expertly chosen wine was provided Frank’s Wine Mart.   Carl (from Frank’s) gave our willing guests advice on how to choose wine and cheese for their next home party.   Beautiful Blooms created gorgeous florals in rustic wood boxes.  The wine was divine and the cheese, provided by Provence Catering was to die for.   I could have hung out there all night, but there was much more to come!

Then we designed a simply gorgeous holiday dinner party with more scrumptious delights provided by Provence Catering.  Eclatante sought out and provided the perfect table settings in compliment to the painted table at Two Paper Dolls Studio.   Beautiful Blooms created the long table arrangement —  perfectly suited for a dinner table where you want to talk easily across the table to your guests.

Outside of the holiday dinner party room, Beautiful Blooms demonstrated the art of creating beautiful arrangements for your home.   People just loved it!

Moving along, we created a warm and wonderful yellow and grey baby shower that featured a stunning baby photo printed on large piece of fabric and hung over the gift table.   Laura Novak is an extraordinarily gifted photographer of beautiful babies and has created magic with her innovative ways of giving new parents the gift of a lifetime.  Beautiful Blooms filled vintage milk glass containers from Donna’s personal stash with a variety of carefully chosen flowers.  Look at how pretty the presents look in coordinating colored paper from Two Paper Dolls.

Next door to the Baby Shower was a very interesting birthday party designed by Maya of Beautiful Blooms and Leila of Eclatante.  With all of the buzz around the Twilight and True Blood series, these two good friends created a very special party based on an “ageless creatures” theme. What a perfect way to celebrate a birthday!

Beautiful Blooms created arrangements in sleek black glass vases from red, burgundy and deep eggplant colored flowers.   Along the perimeter of the room, we placed black wrought iron candle stands with deep eggplant pillar candles.   We also chose perfectly coordinated linens and drapery.   And look at that cake — Provence Catering caught the vision perfectly when they came up with this rich red cake with black lace sugar icing.   Gorgeous!

Craig Neier Associates provided a mind reader that people are still talking about!   How the heck did he know that stuff?!?!?!

Craig Neier also provided a duo of musicians that were just wonderful,   We loved how they fit right in and helped create the perfect atmosphere for our very eclectic party!

Moving downstairs, we were able to give our guests quite a treat!   We created a fabulous 80’s-themed party as a great inspiration for a mitzvah or other fun celebrations of just about anything!

Craig Neier provided a super-fun 80’s trivia game that thrilled everyone for hours!

And there’s nothing quite like an 80’s theme photo shoot (by Mike Kehr Photography) to make a party a little on the crazy side.   Love that backdrop Taylor (of Eclatante) created for the occasion!

Finally, we come to the “Man Cave” where Scott from Two Paper Dolls showed our guests how the huge letterpress printer works.   Very very cool.

Then we had the greatest thing of all — Craig Neier Associates installed a real Craps table with real Craps dealers who taught everyone how the game is played and how to really have fun with it. That table was crowded all night long with people playing craps and having a fantastic time.

A truly GREAT time was had by all.   We just love love love a successful party!

Although we absolutely love them, Eclatante’s mission is not just about the major life events like weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs.   We grab every chance we can get to help people have wonderful, memorable and stressfree celebrations, small and large –from dinner parties to birthday parties to neighborhood supper clubs.   So, here’s our first Celebrating in Style Event at Two Paper Dolls Studio in Wayne, PA.   You should come!

When we moved into our new home here on the Walk, we asked Two Paper Dolls to create our new business cards with the idea that they should reflect what was going on in our world.  The result was absolutely perfect.  We love them so much, we just had to share them with you!

Our die-cut business card has a silk finish which adds richness to the feel and look of the card.  The logo is foil-stamped in gold, which makes it leap off the card, as you can see.   One of my favorite elements of our old cards was that there were two rounded corners and two squared corners imitating the curves and points of our logo design (also created by the Dolls).   So I had to keep that for our new cards.

GOTTA LOVE THOSE DOLLS!!!

I keep thinking that we’ll get caught up on our real weddings blog posts as soon as things mellow out a little around our studio.   Obviously, that’s not happening anytime soon, so I’m just going to have to steal some time to share these amazing photos by Mike Kehr of Ashlee & Jon’s incredible wedding at with you.  

As usual, Mike did one INCREDIBLE job of capturing all the beautiful elements of this wedding at Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Winterthur, Delaware.   As you’ll see later on, Winterthur is truly magnificent.  Working there was a pleasure, especially with Nicole Bailey of Restaurant Associates at the helm of of all things Winterthur.   We made new life-long friends with this wedding!

After their trip to the Sherif Zaki Salon and a day of getting ready at the Hotel Dupont, the wedding party and family headed out for Winterthur to take some incredible photographs.   As always, Mike and his team were great to work with and the results were perfection!  There are so many gorgeous photos and amazing elements to share with you that I couldn’t possibly get it all in one post, so I’ll post this great wedding in installments.  

First up the pre-ceremony, ceremony and cocktail photos.

Beautiful Blooms‘ florals were gorgeous.   Ashlee told us straight-up that her number one priority was flowers, so naturally, we walked her right over to Donna at Beautiful Blooms to make sure that her flowers were all that she wanted them to be. Take a look at this stunning bouquet!

I don’t really need to say much about this wedding.   The photos say it all!

On the grounds, Winterthur has an amazing classic car collection.   The photo op’s were once in a lifetime!

The Papery created the perfect printed pieces for every part of this wedding, from the invitations to the cocktail napkins!

The weather was, literally, perfect!   And the romantic ceremony at Winterthur’s reflecting pool was, too.

The ceremony music was expertly accomplished by the Rittenhouse String Quartet.

The guests were treated to yummy cocktails and scrumptious hors d’oeuvres by Restaurant Associates a few steps away from the reflecting pool in one of the estate’s gorgeous gardens!

Stay tuned for the next installment.   The reception was drop-dead amazing!

I love it when two (or more) things we really really love find each other.    It’s old news, I know, but I wanted to make sure I get my chance to say how happy I am that Loella Press has gone Etsy.    How cool is this?

Studio on Fire is the name of this amazing letterpress printing shop in Minneapolis — and man, they’re not kidding!  These STUNNING invitations were first designed by Priya Patel out of NYC (check out her awesome blog at  Love Made Visible), then printed by Studio on Fire in Minneapolis.

 Neerja, the sister of our Super-Go-To-Mac-Techno-Genius, Dheeraj Vasishta (After Five Real World Macintosh)  is getting married in July in Virginia.  She asked Priya to design her invites.  Once designed, Studio on Fire did a masterful job of creating invitations worthy of Priya’s art.

On their blog, Beast Pieces,  Studio on Fire gave Priya the opportunity to tell the background of her gorgeous design, then they explained how it all came together at their shop.   

Priya: The background for the design is that the couple are to be married in a botanical garden and the bride Neerja was really inspired by traditional Indian miniature paintings which often depict figures in natural settings. She wanted to incorporate a painting with her invitation so we printed one on vellum as a cover sheet for the invite.

Priya: We needed to design invitations for not only her wedding in Virginia, but also a reception the weekend after in Texas that is hosted by the groom Neel’s parents. We also wanted both events to be linked visually, thus the full color nature elements.

Studio on Fire:  Since the invite was sized for a large A10 envelope, that made for a very large 13 x 20 press sheet that incorporated all the wedding cards. In this wedding, there were two main invite cards – the brides invitation and the grooms invitation. Plus the other reply cards, direction cards and sangeet invitation. That’s a lot of letterpress! Producing multiple pieces on the same press sheet keeps the cost down.

Studio on Fire:  We produced the design from Priya with a combination of letterpress and digital printing. Digital printing is used for the vellum sheet and the back of the reception card. All of the navy text is letterpress printed. The paper stock is 111lb (300gsm) Canaletto Grana Grossa 20% cotton from Gruppo Cordenons. We also die cut the contrasting navy paper for the folding enclosure using French Papers Nightshift Blue and mixed our printing ink to cordinate with the navy paper. The minimal typography and ornamental detail of this design were perfectly suited for letterpress printing and produced a beautiful sculptural impression.

Aimee at CreativeMontage.com creates really fun invitations, monograms, and other paper stuff that we just adore.  

She also, somehow, keeps a truly fun wedding blog called Creative Odds n’ Ends.

Here’s another great Aimee-concept.   She’s running a contest to find the most romantic proposal.  

I totally love this idea.  And I get to be a judge!   Tell anyone whose recently become engaged to submit their proposal story.  I can’t wait to see them!

I just discovered a little fun website that creates word splashes in geometric patterns and great colors. Off the top of my head, I can think of a hundred applications for this. (Like I need something else to play with!)
Check out http://wordle.net and let us see what you come up with!

For a while now, people have been daring to send blank response cards in their invitations.

Just like fill-in response cards, blank response cards are coordinated beautifully with the invitation. They, too, say something like kindly respond by such -&-such-a-date across the top or the bottom. They’re even tucked in nicely under the flap of the self-addressed, stamped return envelope. Nothing could be easier.

But here’s where it all gets a little crazy. There’s nothing else — no______________ , no menu choices, no box to check whether you accept with pleasure or regretfully decline. Nothing. Just a blank card.

Now What?

Response cards by Two Paper Dolls

Card by The Papery of Philadelphia

Do you remember the first time you got one of these? I do.

I consider myself to be a pretty well educated woman, but for a short time after receiving my first blank response card, I was completely stymied. I turned the card over and over and searched the invitation for another card. After discussing it with friends, I finally came to the inevitable conclusion that there really is only one option. I was supposed to actually respond in my own words to the invitation. In other words “be clever”

So, here’s the important question:
What happens in reality?
I asked stationery professionals and couples who have used the blank cards and here’s what I found out.

Are couples happy about their decision to use a blank response card?
Absolutely! So fun to get them!! Personal messages were so much better (I thought) than the fill-in. Karen

the blank cards were wonderful. I got wonderful “letters” written to us that I will cherish forever! I have them all in a scrapbook on black paper – makes them pop and looks fantastic. Tara

We’ve got poems and drawings and all kinds of silliness. Ah. Yes. I can’t recommend blank RSVP cards highly enough. The entertainment value alone is worth any possible mix-ups. Anon Blogger

They wrote about how they’d known us since we were little, or about how they were related…just to give some context for the wedding. We’ve got them all saved in a scrap book, Lauren & Josh

I think it really revealed a cool level of creativity from some folks, but confused others, If I had it to do over again, i’d probably put something on them to make sure that we got all the information we needed (name, number of attendees, steak/veggie, etc.)….It’s a Mixed bag. Dustin

What do the Professionals think?

Its the most old fashioned way to send an rsvp card. It’s also so much fun to read the great notes and messages people will send back in regard to their excitement about your upcoming event. my personal feeling is, unless you have to have check boxes, leaving a blank space for people to respond and be creative is exciting! Vanessa, Owner Two Paper Dolls

The notes couples receive on blank response cards create a great keepsake. I have brides who are reluctant at first, but love the outcome. It’s such a way to combine the old and the new. People can respond with traditional responses or they respond with fun greetings. Years and years later, the couple can look at those cards and really remember the people at their wedding. Carolyn, Owner Papery of Philadelphia

Some of our favorites

Here’s one from Laura Novak’s blog.

Very touching
The wedding will be a beautiful and wonderful day! Our wishes for you both are for love, oy and friendship always. Be kind to one another — that will see you through any trying time. Remember how you felt the day of your wedding…. It is an honor to be part of such a wonderful event, for two very special people. Tara & Scott

Great Story
My sister had a friend from college with whom she had a running joke about pizza delivery. On his response, he wrote that he wanted “Dominoes”. So she had a pizza delivered to his table during dinner. Karen

I’m so confused!

Problem: the not-helpful response card:
One guest replied very simply with (not another word) — the bride had to track him down to identify him. Other guests may not think to sign their names!

Solution: itsy bitsy numbers on the back of the card in a bottom corner. Each corresponds to the number of the line on the excel spreadsheet where the guests information resides. Voila!

Problem: Friends call:
Some people will contact the couple and will ask questions about how to respond:
A few people (mostly my friends) called to say, “Umm….we’re not sure how to respond to the wedding. What do we put on this card? “ Josh

Solution: When the phone rings, say hello to your friends and answer their questions. It’s fun to communicate with people about the wedding!

Tell us what you think of blank response cards!