Special thanks to Ruby the Fox and Sugar Chic Designs for helping to make everything extra beautiful!

~ Martin Luther King, Jr

Thank you for your leadership and courage Dr. King.

It is always good to welcome a new year by reflecting on the previous one … So here are some of our favorite memories from 2011 including weddings we have coordinated as well as events we have participated in within the wedding industry.  It was hard to narrow them down and they appear in no particular order.  I hope you enjoy taking a walk down memory lane with us  (and you can always look back through the blog for more details about each event!).

A special thanks to the following photographers for the above images: Amanda Hein Photography, Bellissima Photography, Danielle Aquiline Photography, David Wolfe Photography, Fred Fox Photography, Gerber + Scarpelli Wedding Photography, Jennifer Kathryn Photography, Jeremy Lawson Photography, Megan W Photography, Simply Jessie Photography.

Picking the month, date and location for your wedding is an important factor in deciding how you want the rest of your wedding to look and feel.  It’s also important to consider what is going on in your city over your preferred dates.  In Chicago we find that the months of September and October are the busiest wedding months, however, planning a November wedding can offer you cost savings and a plethora of venue options. Once you enter December you will fight holiday parties for event space, so it’s best to be a little flexible on your dates.

Use your wedding date and season as inspiration for your location.  If you are planning a fall wedding look into parks, orchards, vineyards, farms or ranches. Fall seems to call for an outdoor or rustic, yet elegant, setting.

A winter themed wedding is ideal in a ski or mountain lodge or a small inn. These venues will provide the small intimate cozy setting that’s fitting for a winter wedding. If you choose to have your wedding at a lodge, you may be fortunate to have a snowy mountain as a natural back drop. There are some beautiful destination spots within a few short hours from Chicago. Or take this an entirely different direction and embrace the beauty of the city during the holidays – the sparkling lights and decorated store windows. How about transporting your guests via a carriage ride down Michigan Avenue or State Street?!

Selecting a color palette guided by the holidays is the perfect way to begin. It can be fun to get a little non-traditional! Consider, earthy green and brown in November or silver and blue in December.  You may also need to consider the type of decor your venue will have in place for the holidays.  If you are in a hotel or club they may have permanent holiday decor that could influence your own design. Take advantage of the natural beauty of the season as well and include it in your decor.

Build your menu around the season as well.  We always encourage you to use locally sourced food items and the best way to do that is to serve what is in season at the time of your wedding.  Consider the way the food will appear on the plate and how it is served.  Remember that food styling is as much a part of your overall look as anything else.  Everyone can appreciate a beautifully arranged plate! Specialty cocktails can be especially fun this time of year, consider spiced apple cider or wine (with a stick of cinnamon inside), eggnog or hot buttered rum! Give gingerbread cookies as late night snacks and hot chocolate as guest favors.

Dress the part!  Don’t forget to cover up when outside.  Beautiful faux fur shrugs or shawls can keep you warm and are beautiful in pictures.  These can also be great bridesmaids gifts for your wedding party. If you are brave enough, consider a short outside ceremony in the snow and provide blankets to warm your guests!

Lastly, remember to have some fun with your pictures!  Photographers love doing out-of-the-box shots to incorporate your personalities and the season, so get creative!

Here are a few other little details that may help inspire your holiday themed wedding.

Featured images are from the following:

Document The Day Photography

Heather Parker Photography

The Boho Wedding Blog

Ashley Bride Guide

Libby James

The Plunge Project

Visual Photo’s

NYCity Weddings

DM Wedding Rentals

Bow ties and Bliss

Beau Coup

United With Love

Macarons, smore’s or  pecan pie tarts, oh my!!

We love sweets!!

Designing creative dessert stations is one of the best parts of our job and it’s especially fun when we get to work with the talented crew from Luscious Layers Bakery on Damen.  That’s why we have teamed up with them to create this delicious little giveaway for one lucky Chicagoland reader!

Tell us just how much you love sweets by designing the most extraordinary sweets table concept and telling us all about it on our facebook page, then have all your friends “like” your comment and the person with the most creative design concept (and “likes”) will win a mini sweets table from Luscious Layers perfect for a shower, bachelorette party, birthday or any smaller celebration. The winner will select select one pastry, one cookie or macaron and one flavor of mini cupcake for 10-15 guests.  The options are seemingly endless but here are just a few of the delightful desserts available.

~mousse cups

~mini eclairs

~cream puffs

~mini tartelettes

~mini brownies

~whoopie pies

~lemon squares

~oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

~snickerdoodle cookies

~peanut butter cookies

~macarons in flavors like blackberry, chai, rose, earl grey or espresso

~Mini cupcakes in flavors such as champagne and dark chocolate

Can you say yummy?!

Jennifer was kind enough to share some engagement pictures she took of our clients Lesley and Matt.  These pictures are so much fun and just go to show that you can really get creative with your engagement shots.  Why make them borning and stuffy when you can get out and have a blast!

I cannot wait to see what Jennifer produces in September!

Kelly was featured in this weeks Time Out Chicago.  The article is below but you can check it out here as well.  Great job Kelly!!

Kelly Marie Uus, shop owner
(pictured right)
On out-of-the-ordinary requests…
“Every now and then we have that one person who wants black roses. We joke and call that ‘the bouquet for your inner vampire.’ It’s a rose called Black Baccara [which Fleur carries], and it’s like a deep burgundy. We’ll throw in white ostrich feathers.”

For the fellas…
“We just started carrying adorable cross-stitches that are handmade in Logan Square. Some have a specific Valentine’s Day theme, like the word kiss or [the phrase] ‘I left my heart in Chicago.’”

Caleb Yono, store employee
On out-of-the-ordinary requests…
“This lady asked me to make a bouquet for a guy [whose house] she’d left her panty hose at. She brought a new pair of panty hose and asked me to tie the bouquet with them.”

For the fellas…
“Woodsy things like branches and hearty things like thistle or some viney things like berries. Also tropicals like orchids.”

Caitlin Kerr, store employee
On personal favorites…
“I’m into more monotone [arrangements]. You don’t want the eye to go crazy when you’re looking at something. I [like] when they’re wildflowery, like when it’s bunched together and a Ranuncula is sticking up. More organic asymmetrical. Sometimes I like smaller vases with larger arrangements. It can look like it’s floating.”

Fleur is located at 3149 W Logan Blvd (773-395-2770).

And just for fun here are two picture of the amazing work Kelly did for Amanda and Mike, the winners of the eleven eleven WEDDING this past November!!

Photographs provided by Amanda Hein Photography.

This is a really wonderful article.  We hope that Nick and Bahar’s story will continue to inspire people to believe in love and hope and to never, ever give up.

I have cut and pasted the article here but encourage you to go directly on The Huffington Post’s site.  Thank you Laura, for such an inspiring piece.

Since co-founding Stand Up To Cancer in 2008, and because of my own bouts with the disease, I have spent many nights reading informative articles on things like translational research, immunotherapy, and gene pathways. For all those heady scientific journals on possibilities, it’s the personal stories, like Chicago Tribune reporter Duaa Eldeib’s moving portrait of Nick Schmidt and Bahar Mallah that are the loudest drumbeat, in the war against cancer.

Nick was already diagnosed with cancer when he met Bahar at a bar one cold Chicago night. She noticed he wasn’t drinking. “I have cancer, but I’ll buy you a drink,” Nick said. “That’s your line?” Bahar replied. “That’s a horrible, horrible line.”

And so began their journey as a couple, “blissfully in love.” He was the patient. She was a pharmaceutical rep who could change his IVs and manage his ports. Save for the cancer, their lives were similar to all those other “blissful couples” who were just beginning a life together in 2008. But we all know cancer complicates everything, even falling in love.

What is so striking about the piece is that in learning about the courage of this couple (in Nick’s case, his willingness to experience love in spite of his disease, and Bahar’s willingness to risk loving someone whose life would likely be cut short) we are forced to ask ourselves, “Would I marry someone I knew was terminal?”

If there is one ultimate dividing line in our collective being, it is a line between those who take risks and those who play it safe. How many of us, on hearing the word “cancer” in a pick-up line, would bow out gracefully? How many would have not returned a phone call, or declined an invitation from a handsome man going through chemo? How many of us would have said, “She’ll never be interested in me, why bother?”

Bahar told the Tribune: “There are people who beat this… why can’t he be one of them? Every new treatment he was on didn’t exist when he was on the treatment before that. There will come a time when science is going to catch up, so (we) should keep trying.”

In that one sentence, Bahar embodies everything that is right with the cancer movement. And we, the risk-takers, who know that 51 days spent with the love of your life is better than a lifetime of never experiencing love at all — we are the ones who must stand on the frontlines of this fight to end cancer. We are the only hope to end it.

The first step is embracing the spirit that inspired Bahar Mallah — go forward despite the odds. We must put aside our cynicism and hopelessness, and embrace the risk-taker in science, in love, in art, in life, in ourselves.

Sir Richard Branson understands this intuitively. It’s why he’s had all the wild success he’s achieved. Recently, Branson’s Virgin America struck up a novel partnership with Stand Up To Cancer. As you fly Virgin America and enjoy their in-flight entertainment system, you can now donate to Stand Up To Cancer right from your seat. Virgin America has also initiated a series of online promotions to encourage donations from the ground.

I mention this because as we kicked around Branson’s idea, there were those on our team who thought the public wouldn’t be interested. Why donate to cancer just because an airline asks you to? Yet, since September, we have received tens of thousands of dollars for innovative cancer research projects from passengers, crew and Virgin America “teammates” who have engaged in Virgin America’s pledge to fight cancer. This is just the start of Sir Richard’s plans to combat cancer from 35,000 feet — he wants to name planes, donate portions of sales, and maybe host benefits from the sky. He has an idea a minute, and they are usually extraordinary.

Sir Richard’s effort is one small example of an individual rethinking what’s possible vis-à-vis cancer. I could name hundreds. But it’s not enough. It will take all of us, risking big and small. Stand Up To Cancer, along with many other organizations, is working to change the dynamic in the field of cancer research. Believe it or not, that’s the easy part. The harder part is moving the public to take action, to reinvest, and restore its faith in the 40-plus-year war on cancer. There are many credible and rational reasons why this is. But like Bahar discovered, sometimes a risk is worth it, despite the odds, and the naysayers.

I would be remiss not to mention my friend, and tireless health care advocate, Elizabeth Edwards. She lived her life to the fullest despite her disease. Elizabeth said in recent years, “I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces — my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined. The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.”

The connection between Elizabeth Edwards and Bahar Mallah runs deeper than just two people affected by cancer. They are two people who bravely stood up against cancer, whose lives weren’t defined by it, and who believed life was worth living even when you are forced to play an impossible hand.