Real Wedding: Caroline & Michael

Have I already told you how one of my favorite parts of this job is getting to share wonderfully talented photographers with you? Well it really is, and today I get to share a new favorite - Bonnie Tsang! Her work is just lovely, and then on top of it, this is a beautiful wedding, at once classically timeless and modernly chic.

Caroline and Michael live in New York's East Village, and decided that they wanted a venue in their neighborhood. They narrowed it down to three hotels in the area, and even though it was only partially completed when they went to visit, they knew that the The Cooper Square Hotel was perfect for them as soon as they saw the view of the city from the top of the building. Their wedding was actually the first wedding to take place in the hotel! As Caroline says, "There's just something about the view from he top of the Cooper... we've seen a lot of different rooftops in NYC, but this one has the best view. We had a lot of people traveling from out of town, including Dubai, London, New Zealand, and all over the US, so we thought it would be perfect for them to have this view of our fair city. I think it is fair to say our inspiration was the Big Apple - our home."


Gown by Christos, purchased at Kleinfeld.


Shoes from Nine West.


Flowers by Elizabeth Ryan Floral Design. Caroline says, "It was important for us to keep everything in the East Village neighborhood. We wanted to support the local mom and pop type vendors."




Porcelain ring bowl by Paloma's Nest. Groom's custom suit from Michael Andrews Bespoke.


Caroline shares this story about the bridesmaid dresses: Originally I was only have on bridesmaid, and I told her she could wear whatever she wanted. She works as a fashion stylist at British Vogue and borrowed an incredible dress by Alexander McQueen. However, only three or four days prior to the wedding, I asked another best friend to also be my bridesmaid. So, the day before the wedding we had to go shopping to find them matching dresses. Luckily the dresses we found at J.Crew were perfect!








Some guests admire Caroline's something blue: At the end of the rehearsal dinner, my wonderful husband-to-be gave me a present. When we were at our jeweler a month or so ago, picking out our wedding rings, I was eying the most beautiful ring - a big sapphire with diamonds surrounding it. I told him that when we had our first child, he had to get me a ring like that - but then at the dinner, he gave me the ring. I was completely blown away!






Guests enjoyed a cocktail reception with hors d'oeuvres catered by The Cooper Square Hotel, including shrimp cocktail with gazpacho, steak tartar with quail egg, truffled macaroni and cheese, sliders, gougeres, and cheese platters. Dessert was cupcakes from Butter Lane, the couple's favorite New York cupcakes.


Goody bags were filled with things from Wisconsin (where the groom grew up), Australia (where the bride is from), and New York (their home together).




One of Caroline's favorite parts of the evening came after the reception ended: At the end of the night when we retired to our room, we were so exhausted and hungry, as we hadn't eaten all night, so we ordered a pizza from our favorite place, and sat on our hotel room floor and ate pizza and drank Champagne!

Congratulations Caroline and Michael - here's to a lifetime of happiness! And a big thank you to the talented Bonnie Tsang - I know we'll be seeing lots more from you. You can check out more of Bonnie's work on her blog.

Real Wedding: Brooke & Raf

Brooke and Raf wanted a wedding that had a down-home feel and was full of thoughtful, handmade details, and that's just the day they created. Ken Kienow sent over these beautiful photos (wait until you see the sunset shots at the end), and I'm so happy to share them with you today.


Brooke, her mother and her sister have been interested in card making for several years, and even host Card Clubs with friends and co-workers in their respective home towns, and they even get together for an annual holiday card making weekend over Veteran's Day every year... so it made perfect sense that they would make Brooke and Raf's wedding stationery.




Brooke's bouquet was made by April at April Flowers in San Luis Obispo.


Brooke wore Pronovias' Oceano dress, and her shoes were from the BP collection at Nordstrom. The bridesmaids wore dresses from Anthropologie (Brooke says she's still bitter that she didn't buy one for herself).


The guys all wore ties from Geoffrey Beene.


Brooke and Raf found their wedding venue, Flying Caballos, while searching on VRBO. It's a renovated farm property that really had the feel they wanted for the day, and they were able to come in and start setting things up two days in advance!


Brooke's veil, purchased from Etsy vendor Bella Bridal Veils, was blowing everywhere during the ceremony. Brooke says one of her favorite parts of the day was "my un-tamable veil during the ceremony and the way it magically eased our tension with genuine laughter."


Aside from Brooke's bouquet, all of the flowers were purchased at Skyline Flowers, a local farm, and arranged by the bride's best friend, Nena, in bottles collected by family and friends. Brooke says the idea for the burlap table runner came straight from Snippet & Ink!


Brooke was able to get in touch with another bride whose wedding was to take place at Flying Caballos the following weekend. They were able to share the mismatched plates that Brooke's family thrifted and the vintage silverware that the other bride's mother found on eBay. What a great way to be both economical and eco-friendly!


Brooke has a habit of buying postcards whenever she travels and then never sending them, so instead of a guest book, she pre-addressed and stamped postcards from all over the world, and asked guests to take one and write notes on them, and then mail them to the couple. Brooke says, "It's been so fun to read them as they start rolling in!"


Brooke and Raf enlisted friends to help with desserts. Six friends each baked two dozen cupcakes, choosing their own recipes, and even holding taste tests with their own families!


For Brooke's birthday last year, Raf took her to a cold-process soap making class, so one of the favors they made for their guests were hand made bars of soap wrapped in burlap, jute, and scraps of the same fabric used in the invitations.


Says Brooke, "My favorite time spent with Raf is slow dancing in the kitchen while we're cooking, so we compiled a little mix with lots of our favorite kitchen dancing songs, and others that have memories from the past six years attached to them. I bought the blank CD holders from Stumptown Printers, and my mom came up with a stamp design for the cover. We had the whole family in assembly mode putting them together a few days before the wedding."







Thank you so much to Brooke and Raf for sharing this beautiful day with us - I just loved learning about all of these sweet and personal details about your wedding. Congratulations to you both! And of course, thank you to Ken Kienow for sending over these lovely photos - aren't those sunset shots just to die for?!

Real Wedding: Mel & Nick

Another beautiful wedding shot by Jonas Peterson for you today! Mel, the bride, was kind enough to share some details with us about the day...


The venue for our ceremony was an old homestead in Milford, an area with rolling hills and gorgeous scenery about 15 minutes from Boonah in Queensland, Australia. The only way out to the ceremony venue was via a dirt road, so we elected to hire a bus for our guests, which brought guests between their local hotels to the ceremony and reception venue, before returning them to their hotels at the close of the night. We wanted to maintain a sense of mystery and adventure, so we referred to the ceremony venue as the 'secret location' on invitations, only providing details of the bus pick-up times and reception venue.




The dress was an original gown from the 1950s which I purchased a week and a half before the wedding. Basically, when I had begun looking for a dress, I had my heart set on something vintage. I couldn't find what I was after, and ended up ordering a new gown elsewhere. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, I discovered the bridal store had experienced a problem with ordering the dress, and it wasn't apparent if the dress would end up making it to me on time or not. In desperation, I took the afternoon off work and went searching, driving aimlessly; I came by a vintage store I'd never seen before, went in and discovered this amazing gown that fit me perfectly - and the rest is history! I couldn't help but think that it was all meant to be. I adored the gown and my only regret is the fact that I won't have another chance to wear it!




Our friend Liz did a fantastic reading for us during the ceremony: A Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton, which she read from the book and displayed pictures as she went. Nick's lovely Aunt Bernice married us with vows we'd written. The weather ended up being perfect: 25 degrees Celcius [77 degrees Fahrenheit], blue skies and a very slight breeze.










I think the best advice for other brides that I can give is to take your time to enjoy every aspect of the day. Take time to look around and absorb it all. A lot of people had told me to expect the day to go very fast, and of course, to some extent it did - but being relaxed afforded me with a great memory of everything, as I was able to take it all in and just enjoy the great big celebration we had planned.










My lovely fiance (now husband!) designed all of our invitations and seating cards. Having a fiance who is also an artist is very handy! We wanted everything to reflect the nature of the town of Boonah; all of our details were simple, most handmade, and had a very earthy feel. We gave small herbs in port glasses collected from thrift stores as favours. Our centerpieces featured a square of pianola roll love songs placed underneath candles and mismatched vases that contained native Australian wildflowers collected from Boonah on the morning of the wedding.


There were no strangers in our wedding: our celebrant was Nick's aunt, our DJs were both friends (Tom Lowndes who played earlier in the evening, and my brother Nick Faulkner during the later part of the night), our photographer and his wife are also friends of ours, and my mother made our cake.









It's always so fun to be able to share a wedding day story in the couple's own words - thank you so much to Mel and Nick for sharing this beautiful day with us, and all of these wonderful details. Best wishes to you both for a lifetime of happiness! And thank you, too, to Jonas Peterson for kindly sharing these incredible photos - always a delight having you here on Snippet & Ink.