Month: August 2019

Thinking of hiring vendors from beyond Charlottesville to help put together your big day? Maybe you want to source some Victorian furniture from Richmond-based Paisley & Jade, for example. Or maybe, like one of Adam Donovan-Groves’ former clients, you just happen to know a great photographer from Ireland.

This artist, remembers Donovan-Groves, “had worked at the client’s sister’s wedding, and everyone loved the style that he had.” Donovan-Groves, a wedding planner, admits he wouldn’t have crossed the Atlantic looking for a photographer: “It was a little surprising to me. The clients had to pay travel expenses and everything else.”

A bump in cost can be one of the main drawbacks to hiring non-local vendors, Donovan-Groves says. “If we need somebody on Friday, they have to get here on Thursday,” he says. “It’s hotels, meals, it’s transportation; if they’re flying you also have to rent cars. It does add a decent amount of money.”

On the other hand, if you’ve chosen your out-of-town vendor because you have a personal relationship, you may be getting a discounted rate, points out local planner Jennifer Hamlin from Events with Panache. She’s also had clients—themselves coming from outside Charlottesville—who bring vendors with them based on a recommendation from a friend or family member back home.

Consider the issue of communication with vendors during the planning process. Texting and emailing may not be the best way to convey your personal vision for, say, exactly the right flavor of ceremony music. Hiring out-of-towners may send you to Skype to attempt those crucial conversations, and ups the ante for coordination between your planner and other vendors. As a planner, says Hamlin, “I always have a conversation via email and phone before the wedding, sending them all the details the client and I have worked out. I typically walk [out-of-town vendors] through the venue verbally and give insight before the weekend of the wedding. Usually that vendor will never have been to the venue before.”

Some types of vendors may be easier to seamlessly incorporate than others even if coming from afar. Hamlin says photographers are the vendors most commonly hired from elsewhere, while Donovan-Groves has seen clients hire out-of-town bands. Caterers and florists, on the other hand, seldom make long trips with their perishable wares. And, Hamlin points out, “If it is a caterer, they have travel expenses for the full staff that day.”

Donovan-Groves stresses that not only are local vendors familiar with Charlottesville’s wedding infrastructure, they’re on par in quality with anyone in the country. “Charlottesville is special when it comes to weddings,” he says. “This is not the norm for any other city in the U.S. to have this much strong talent concentrated in an area. We’re built for weddings.”

Some out-of-town vendors are easier to work with than others, says planner Adam Donovan-Groves. Rental company Paisley & Jade, based in Richmond, is a popular choice in our area for its selection of beautiful furniture.

Talk about happy accidents: Seven years ago, Jeannine Lalonde Smith got the notion to learn how to make curtains. She didn’t expect it would go beyond that.

“I never thought of myself as especially crafty,” she says, “but this untapped creative side of me came roaring out when I looked at a combination sewing and embroidery machine!”

She started researching techniques and was drawn to heirloom designs (characterized by their similarity to hand-stitching). Eventually, wedding industry friends caught on to her new hobby and asked her to help with details for photo shoots and weddings. “Then, through the magic of Instagram, I connected with other creatives in the area,” Smith says. Her hobby had blossomed into a business. She named it Beloved Thread.

She’s stitched table linens, robes, pajamas, handkerchiefs, tote bags, and ribbons, but one of Smith’s favorite projects is monogramming wedding gown labels.

“I embroider a small piece of silk or satin with the bride’s monogram and date in blue thread,” she says. “The label can be sewn into the wedding gown as a ‘something blue’ and removed later as a keepsake or left in as a reminder if the dress is passed down in the family.”

The design process starts from scratch with every couple, and Smith says part of the joy for her is hunting down the perfect color to match a wedding palette or creating a handful of mockups to get the design just right.

“Most of the items I embroider for weddings are going to have a life after the big day, so I love thinking that my stitches will remind newlyweds of their happy day in the future,” Smith says.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but if all you’re doing is copying the last couple, how do you, well, do you? Here are some unique dessert-related details we’re digging this season. Steal at your own risk.

Front and center

If you’re like us and cake ranks as one of your top three favorite things about weddings (this editor nixed dinner altogether and served 18 different versions at her own), you might also agree with Laura and Stephen, who saw fit to give their cake a place of prominence—complete with a spotlight—thanks to the vision of their planner, Adam Donovan Groves.

Hole in one

On the flip side, if cake just isn’t your thing…get outta here! We kid. Don’t feel obligated to offer the standard tiered number. There’s always pie or—better yet!—donuts, which can be displayed any number of ways and, thanks to sprinkles, look super fun in pictures. Bonus: They’re portable on their own, so they can do double duty as wedding favors.

Cheers! 

Cake and cocktails is a classic combo to be sure, but what about when the cocktail is inside the cake? That was the request Laura and JC made to Maliha Creations’ Anita Gupta: Make a cake that incorporates their favorite cocktail, the old fashioned. Gupta came up with an orange-flecked cake with cherry jam schmear and Blanton’s bourbon buttercream.

Peace Frogs Travel owner Julie Arbelaez says that, when it comes to honeymoon spots, California’s Napa and Sonoma valleys are popular right now. But where else might you travel once you’ve said your I Dos? Here are some other spots Arbelaez says the newly betrothed are flocking to lately.

St. Lucia

“It has some wonderful, luxurious, and romantic properties, like Jade Mountain and Ti Kaye.”

Kauai

“A perennial favorite for honeymooners, with its dramatic coastline and low population.”

St. Paul de Vence or St. Remy

“Small French villages like these have charming inns and hotels with gorgeous countryside and incredible cuisine.”

Bora Bora

“For exclusive, over-the-water beach huts.”

It’s not hard to see why a ceremony backdrop is a key visual element for your wedding. If you’re on the hunt for a truly unique photo op at the moment of that crucial kiss, perhaps a custom-made backdrop is in order. Local artists and makers will create one just for your day—whether it’s a crisp and modern look you’re after, or something softer and romantic.

Window and Wing (above)

Artist Brielle Duflon is the creative force behind this local business, and she is seriously into color and texture. Other wedding backdrops she’s created have used beautiful fabrics to construct a bohemian, handmade look for her clients. “I tend to use a lot of reclaimed fabric, but am happy to buy specialty fabrics or work with other textures such as paper, organic material, paint, etc.,” she says.

Most often, says Duflon, couples contact her at least four months ahead of the date—this leaves time to talk through ideas together and for Duflon to make color drawings for her clients’ approval. “I make at least one trip to the wedding venue before the wedding to get a feel for the space, the direction of the light and the airflow of the space,” she says. She sends process photos along the way, too.

Pricing for backdrops starts at $1,000 and varies depending on materials and whether you want to keep the piece after the wedding. One cool option: Duflon can turn part of your backdrop into a piece you’ll permanently display in your home.

Sweet Pear Paper

Camberly Pearson, based in Richmond, builds backdrops from three-dimensional paper sculptures—most often flowers. “I currently have four different rental backdrop options that can be rented as-is or customized,” she says. The most popular choice? The Magnolia Wall, white paper flowers on a white backdrop. “Sometimes clients will add custom flowers or colored flowers to match their wedding colors,” she explains, adding that all the flowers are designed, handmade, and hand-painted by her. If you have a totally different idea in mind, lay it on her: she’s not limited to flowers.

To rent something customized from Sweet Pear, you should contact Pearson at least a month in advance, though she’d rather hear from you sooner. Pricing starts at $270-500 and goes up depending on custom elements and travel.

Hedge Fine Blooms

We can’t forget the fresh flower option. Karen Walker and her team at Hedge are used to hearing from clients who want a floral backdrop, usually bringing photos to help explain what they’re after. “We brainstorm to come up with ways to make it personal for them,” says Walker. Start with a structure—be it a metal or wood frame, or a potted tree (which you can source from various local nurseries), and the Hedge team will figure out how to add fresh flowers. “Our designer Wynne worked with a client at Pippin Hill to create a carnation backdrop that was wonderful and had some movement to it,” says Walker.

Eric Kelley graduated from UVA in 2006, founded his own photography business in 2008, and in 2018 was named one of the 40 best wedding photographers in the world by Harper’s Bazaar magazine. Kelley attributes his meteoric rise in part to the generous help of established photographers when he was just starting out.

“The biggest thing I’ve been trying to do since college is to cultivate community,” says Kelley. “My dad always told me, everybody should have a mentor and everybody should be a mentee to someone else.”

Toward that end, Kelley’s latest project is Referral.Network, an online community of photographers intended to create a more efficient market for their services. “I’m building a network of professionals who share their day-by-day availability,” he says. “So if I’m contacted about a job and I’m not available, I can easily find others who are, and who are in the right price range for the job, and who I can endorse and refer to the client.”

For a stressed-out bride or harried wedding planner, a reliable referral can be a godsend. “The client is happy that I could save them a bunch of time and a lot of emailing around to find a photographer for their event,” says Kelley, “and at the same time, I can quickly identify a friend or colleague who can do the job.”

Kelley is always mindful of wedding budgets, and although he charges an average of $30,000 for his own jobs these days, the professionals in his network span a range of prices. A suggested referral fee of 3-5 percent for a successful booking encourages more popular photographers to actively participate in the community.

“Very rarely does anybody have exactly the right amount of work,” he says, “and this network is meant to address that problem in a way that I don’t see happening with other apps or tools.”

With a broad social network to build from, including 26,000 followers on his personal Instagram alone, Kelley’s new service has taken off. “I did a soft launch in September [2018] and started with a network of 165 people,” he says. “At this point it’s 10 times that—1,670 people—and growing. I’m trying to build a scalable model here, and I see a lot of other businesses that could benefit from a service like this.”

Choosing the big date? Don’t forget to consider Charlottesville’s busy calendar of events, which can mean local lodgings are in short supply at certain times of the year. You might want to work around…

Virginia Festival of the Book: March 18-22, 2020

Charlottesville Ten Miler: Date TBA, but usually held in late March

Tom Tom Festival: April 13-19, 2020

Taste of Monticello Wine Trail Festival: Date TBA, but usually held in late April/early May

UVA commencement weekend: May 15-17, 2020

LOCKN’ Festival: August 22-25, 2019; dates for 2020 TBA

Virginia Film Festival: October 23-27, 2019; dates for 2020 TBA

UVA football weekends: Home games for 2019 are September 6, 14, 21; October 19; November 9, 23, 29; dates for 2020 will be announced in January or February

UVA family weekend: October 18-20, 2019; dates for 2020 TBA