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Vibrant & Colorful Fruit Wedding Inspiration

You may know that in addition to my interior design business, I also am the co-founder of The Bloom Workshop. We travel the country equipping women in creative industries! I wanted to let you know about an upcoming workshop in Michigan + show you last year's workshop that was just like it. Hopefully you find some styling, color, and event inspiration!


 We are currently gearing up for our September workshop, The Styled Wedding Shoot workshop. We thought since this is coming up quick, we'd show you our styled shoots from LAST year's styled shoot workshop. Styled inspiration photo shoots are a wonderful tool to use to hone your photography and design skills, as well as creating something beautiful to add to your portfolio, in order to attract your ideal client. If you want to spend a day focused on honing your photography and styling skills, this workshop is for you! We have special teaching sessions on how to create and execute a styled shoot, photography tips, shot list guides, how to get published + what editors look for in publications, plus a few breakout sessions on client experience, flat lay styling and a portfolio review. We set aside an hour and a half for our styled shoot portion of the workshop, which will feature 3 separate styled vignettes, each with their own models, paper goods, tablescapes, and other beautiful details like blooms, rings, and gorgeous gowns!

Check out the details on Bloom's website, but first...feast your eyes on this beautiful vignette from last year's workshop at The Felt Mansion. I still can't get over the gorgeous florals, vibrant colors and insane dessert bar.












Photography: Ashley Slater Photography, Florals: BLOOM Floral Design, Invitation Suite: Sable & Gray, Furniture Vignette: The Found Cottage with arches by Feather & Birch, Bar: West Michigan Rental Company, Venue: Felt Mansion, Ribbon for styling: Adorn Company, Ring Box: The Mrs. Box, Bridal Ring: Susie Saltzman, Bridal Gown and Jewelry: Spring Sweet, Cakes & Desserts: Holland Cakery


We always love collaborating with such talented artists for our shoots. Creating beauty together is one of our biggest joys and reasons we love The Bloom Workshop. This colorful vignette will hopefully give you, as a bride, courage to go in a more colorful direction if that's what you love. The results are always stunning! As a photographer or event planner, or even interior designer, we hope you can see our styled shoots and gather inspiration to create your very own! If you don't know how to do that, we'd love to meet you at The Styled Wedding Shoot where we'll teach you everything you need to know.

Have a wonderful day!
xoxo


interior design website / services / portfolio
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Bridal Inspiration


Happy Thursday, friends! You might notice things look a little different around here. I'm so excited to show you the new look, designed by my friend and super talented graphic designer, Lindsey! You can now find the topics and categories you're most interested in by hovering over the drop down menus at the top up there. Just click on the category and then you'll pull up the posts with that topic! Hopefully it's super easy to navigate for you and more reader-friendly :)

Stay tuned for next week, as I'm going to be hosting some super fun giveaways on the blog to celebrate my 7 years of blogging + the new blog and website design! I can't wait to show you more.

Today I had to share this fun styled bridal shoot I did for my friend Ashley while at Holman Ranch (my wedding venue!) a few months ago teaching The Bloom Workshop. After we set up for the workshop, I slipped into this stunning gown and got to hold some gorgeoussss florals by Christine Cater while Ashley worked her magic. Sort of fun to be in front of the camera, especially at this magical place :)











Photos: Ashley Slater Photography / Florals: Christine Cater  / Venue:  Holman Ranch / Gown: Kinsley James Bridal / Rings: Susie Saltzman / 

Isn't this just the most romantic setting?! I still can't believe we got married there.

Don't forget to enter the giveaway to win $50 to Nordstrom here! It ends tomorrow night.



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17 Ways to Save Money on Your Wedding

Wedding season is upon us, and I know I have a lot of readers planning weddings, so I thought a post laying out some budget friendly wedding tips would be helpful for you! Read on for my best tips (some of which I wish I used when planning my own wedding!) and let me know what you think...


1. Choose flowers that are in season. Also choose a florist who is really knowledgable in these things and can help you save money! A florist who doesn't have minimums is also a great way to save money. To be sure you're getting the most for your money, be sure to ask if the vases your flowers will be in will be yours to keep, or if you're renting them from your florist. I was so happy we got to keep ours! My mom passed them out to family and friends at the end of the night.


2. Instead of large arrangements for centerpieces, try budvases. You'll end up using a whole lot less flowers with budvases. You can usually find beautiful, unique budvases are Goodwill or Salvation Army for a steal.

3. Use a lot of greenery instead of premium florals. Perhaps a greenery runner down your table will be more cost effective than two medium arrangements needed to fill out your 8' table.

4. Choose a venue with nice wood tables that don't need linens. Also be sure your venue has chairs included in the venue cost!

5. Buy a wedding dress that almost fits "off the rack", so your alterations will be minimal. Even though my gown came in almost fitting me, we had to tweak a lot of areas to make sure it was perfect, which quickly added up. All those little tweaks plus the cost of hemming a lace gown added up to be $450. You can imagine my dad's shock...haha ;)

6. Look for veils and jewelry (and lots of other things!) on Etsy. We found our guest book, bean bags for a lawn game, our cake topper, and our ring bearer bowties and suspenders on Etsy. I also found some great veils and jewelry that were way cheaper than in the bridal stores.

7. Find a venue that doesn't have an additional service fee or corkage fees. I found that our venue, though more expensive for the day rate to hold a wedding, was LESS expensive overall than other venues who's day rate was less, but also had a service fee. Look for hidden fees, friends! I liked another venue that was a couple thousand dollars less than our venue, but because they charged for chairs and alcohol PER PERSON, it ended up being more expensive in the long run.

8. Hold your wedding on a Friday or Sunday. We had a Sunday wedding and I absolutely LOVED it! In my opinion, it's the same travel situation as a Saturday. Either way, out of town guests will still have to take a day off work.

9. Forgo a favor. Unless your favor is edible, guests usually just throw them away or forget them anyways! We did happen to find really inexpensive jams that only cost us $144 total for 120 jars of mini jam. They were delicious!


10. Lower your guest count. By far the number one way to significantly save money is to cut the guest list, because every person adds to your catering bill. Our family loves the movie Father of the Bride, so we watched it before our wedding together (so fun!!) and we cracked up harder than usual because a lot of George Bank's sentiments on wedding planning hit home while planning ours ;) The superfluous buns scene is one of my favorites!

Sometimes the guest count will impact the venue cost. Some venues will give an additional discounted rental rate with wedding guest counts under 100, so be sure to ask about that! Lowering guest count also reduces the number of invitations you'll be sending (along with postage costs), your favors if you're doing them, wedding programs, and so much more.

11. Forgo the champagne toast and do "drink of choice" instead. This means your guests can toast with whatever drink they want and probably already have, rather than spending extra cash on champagne that everyone will probably just take one sip of. We did this for our wedding! We just had the caterers go around and pour wine before our toasts, to be sure everyone had something in their glasses.

12. Limit your bridal party numbers. The more friends in your wedding party, the more gifts you have to buy for them, the more flower bouquets and boutonnieres you have to order, and honestly, I feel like the more stress you'll endure. I've been in a wedding with 12 bridesmaids and with 4 bridesmaids, and the bride with a smaller bridal party was happier, more stress-free, and spent a lot less on everything. When our wedding came around, I knew I wanted to keep it smaller. I had 6 girls. Each of them means so much to me. They are all sweet and encouraging and made our morning getting ready together really lovely.


13. Offer beer, wine and a signature cocktail or two, instead of a full bar.

14. Go with a DJ instead of a band. We absolutely loved our DJ!

15. Opt for a small cake for pictures and cake cutting and have delicious sheet cake served for the guests. We did this and our sheet cake was only $25 for 25 pieces. If we had done a huge cake that served 120 people, it would have been around $600!!

16. Only pay for the liquor you drink. Thankfully we had an awesome wedding planner who helped us find a great liquor guy. He supplied the beer and our signature cocktail ingredients. He brings more than he thinks you'll need, and whatever isn't gone at the end of the night goes back to his store and you don't get charged for it. We only paid for the alcohol we consumed. I've never heard of this before, but I thought it was genius!

17. Hold your ceremony and reception at the same venue. This cuts on travel time for vendors and you only have to pay for ONE venue.
All photos by Danielle Poff Photography

There you have it! 17 ways to save money for your wedding. Did I miss anything?! Fill me in on what you did to be budget conscience.

When I told my husband I was going to write this post for my blog, he said "maybe you should have written this BEFORE our wedding so you could have used a few more of your own tips!" Ha! ;)

Hope this was helpful!

Happy Tuesday:)

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Colorful, Bohemian Wedding Inspiration




Most of you know that in addition to being an interior designer, I'm also the co-founder of The Bloom Workshop. Each of our two day workshops finish with a beautiful styled wedding shoot for our guests (usually event planners, bloggers, stylists, florists, photographers and other creatives) get to practice their new skills. They then get to use the photos from the shoot for their portfolios! We take on all the hard work that goes into planning a styled inspiration shoot away, so they can just enjoy styling and photographing it.

The shoot I'm sharing with you today comes from our last workshop of 2016, in San Clemente, CA. My business partner, Ashley, and I agree this is one of our favorite shoots we've designed for a workshop! Just look at the bright, cheery and rich color palette!! Those flowers were so ridiculously amazing I could hardly stand it. It was featured on Style Me Pretty last week, so we can finally share it with you today! Hopefully it provides some inspiration for your spring and summer gatherings :)










Often bright color palettes are overlooked, favoring the soft pastels which we also adore. But for this styled shoot, we wanted the palette to be vibrant and energizing; fresh and fun. Bright pinks, oranges, corals, lots of greenery and even hints of lavender and soft pink were our hues. Accented by pops of dark blue and copper, the tablescape exudes warmth, togetherness, and drips in romance.

With a bit of a bohemian twist, we created a casual yet sophisticated tablescape, complete with comfy royal blue end chairs from Found Vintage Rentals and a simple copper garden chair to give the setting a touch of metallic. Playing with texture was one of our goals, so we mixed different wood tones with copper details, such as the Moscow mule mugs and chairs, brass candlesticks, silver flatware, gold etching in our champagne flutes, many different types of flowers and greenery, varied surfaces such as marble and wood, and made sure to incorporate textured details into our gorgeous bridal gowns seen in the beading and sleeves.

A few fun details were added to make the look even more unique, including our signature cocktail illustration, the rich colored fruits dripping off the floral centerpiece and onto the table, our delectable dessert bar and the agate stone coasters doubling as place cards.















Photography: Ashley Slater Photography / Planning & Design: Michaela Noelle Designs / Venue: The Casino / Florals: Amy Osaba Designs / Invitation Suite & Signage: Molly Jacques / Wedding Dress: BHLDN / Rings: Susie Saltzman / Rentals: Found Rentals / Cake: MCakes / Hair & Makeup: Blush by M. Marie / Geode Coasters: LandiDesigns


Hope you enjoyed seeing peek into the shoot! If you are interested in attending a workshop this year, head to Bloom's website and hover over the "register" tab to find a city near you :)

Happy Monday!
xoxo
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