Every wedding vendor team is created a little differently. In this series we explore how and why each couple selected the right wedding vendor team for their wedding day.
Emily and Susie got engaged in Miami Beach in April of 2019, and wasted no time planning a wedding for the following May. They initially considered Miami and Los Cabos, Mexico, as potential wedding locations, and decided to move forward with the latter, but the world had other plans due to the pandemic. They postponed several times until it proved it was going to be too difficult to travel internationally by the start of 2021. That’s when they set their sights on their home state of California.
Although they live in Palm Springs, the couple had spent a weekend celebrating Susie’s birthday in Montecito and loved how it felt like nowhere else in the state. So they decided to return for another celebration, booking their venue, Rosewood Miramar Beach, as the first step in their stateside soirée.
The couple had already booked Lukas G Photography and Rach V. Morales Beauty for the Cabo iteration of their nuptials, and were able to keep them on their vendor team for the new date and location.
After that, Emily and Susie knew pretty clearly what they wanted, using many of the design elements from the wedding they had initially planned for Cabo. But without knowing who to look to in order to pull it off in California or how to translate their desert tropical vision to suit the new setting, they needed the guidance of a planner. Enter Eileen Murphy of E Events Co.
“We really trusted Eileen [of E Events Co.] and her recommendations on who was the right fit, as far as vendors to bring our vision to life. It was so exciting to see it come to life, from a mood board, to our in-person design mock-up, to walking into our wedding the day of and seeing the final project. It was so magical and we wouldn’t change any of it!” —Emily, bride
“Both Emily and Susie have amazing taste and they absolutely love color and design. They were both very hands-on during the design process. It was so fun to really get to lean into all that color and do something out of the box, as it’s not every day that clients want to lean into so much color and layers and layers of pattern and texture.” –Eileen Murphy, planner/designer
With a tight timeline to work in, Eileen jumped right in to book all of the remaining vendors, starting with one that would be instrumental in executing Emily and Susie’s desired aesthetic: the floral designer. Inessa Nichols Design came to mind and was available for the California celebration.
“We had seen a wedding that Inessa did in Southern California with a beautiful arch covered in multiple shades of bougainvillea, and that image was what the mood board was built off of. It felt only fitting to reach out to her and see if she was available and we were so thankful that she was!” —Eileen Murphy, planner/designer
The next move was to round out the design of the day, which took the couple’s home décor into account (Eileen considered pieces they’d actually want in their homes), the modern Mexican-meets-tropical inspiration, and Emily’s colorful wedding day blazers—both of which she designed through her bespoke womenswear experience, Emily Meyer. Eileen knew exactly what plates and linens she wanted to set the tables with off the bat, so the tablescapes evolved from there in the selection of pieces from Theoni Collection and BBJ La Tavola Specialty Linen.
It was around the same time that Emily came across the jazz musicians that she and Susie would hire to play during the wedding—The Dennis Berger Trio.
Then it was time to move on to the final elements: paper goods, lighting, and the cake (which, like the rest of the wedding, was all about color).
Pigment and Parchment designed paper goods with a tinge of tropical flair, with illustrated palms and blooms paired with a modern, capitalized typeface. Just as colorful and personalized, Lelé Pâtisserie baked a small, two-tier cake that was covered in a gradient of orange buttercream and a cascade of orchids, ranunculus, and calla lilies. And Encore Global illuminated the outdoor reception so that even after sunset, it all glowed.
