In April, I wanted to orchestrate and plan a styled shoot or a fake wedding with some vendors to show off what you can do to have your wedding wrap in your personality into your wedding day and make it unique to you as a couple. I thought it would be fun to go through the thought process and what it looks like to plan something like this! If you’d like to jump ahead and watch the video that our lovely videographers at DiMaggio Productions made, you can follow this link by clicking here.

Here are some highlights:

To start, we had to go with a theme and idea. This was before I wrapped in many vendors - it was for the planning first! I knew I was looking to have a “couple” that had met in a fun way or have a fun hobby together. I went through a list of hobbies and knew that art was general enough that everyone could appreciate the nods to the personality they had! I then had known immediately that I would want a live painter to bring that part of their personality to life at their wedding day.

Figuring out the overarching themes and colors took some time. I originally planned for everything that was primary colors, but our florist said that adding in some peaches would bring some warm, earthier feelings for the day. I knew that the artists would be more modern and that was going to be shown in their wedding as well. By this point, we had pretty much all of the vendors selected and it was a matter of making sure we knew the specifics!

Lacuna Lofts literally was the perfect venue for this shoot. The loft-y feeling brought in the modern elements to me, but the unique features of actual art throughout the building really sold me. I knew that this one-of-a-kind venue would be an amazing place to showcase a unique part of a couple’s personality.

We had the couple getting ready while we were doing the setup. The photos of the couple were amazing because we had all the time in the world!

When we went dress shopping, I really wanted something simple, modern, and sleek. I wanted an intentional contrast of the “artistic side” of their personality and I thought that this dress was the perfect amount of modern and sleek with this incredible beading that really made it stand out! I still did want some more texture to really make the bride stand out and with a textured veil I thought that that would make the whole look.

The stationery had the perfect mix of modern and artsy. I definitely could see the intention with all of the pieces of the invitation suite to really show who the couple really was! We had Amanda do our custom stationery throughout the whole wedding, and she knew exactly how to capture our theme for the day.

When planning the timeline of the day, I wanted to have an officiant to show what a ceremony would look like realistically rather than just posed. Clara did an amazing job and brought a script to really bring our video together!

We had to make sure to get models that had chemistry but still were good with being posed. Danielle and Craig did an amazing job bringing this vision of this couple to life! Having a shoot instead of an actual wedding day also allows for time to really get some lovely shots. Maria really took her style and ran with it for some photos that really felt modern and from a magazine!

Signature cocktails are common, but I also wanted to feature some signature mocktails for your friends and family that don’t drink and the full guest experience is extra special. In a real wedding you can totally talk to your catering team about these kinds of options that are available to you for your wedding day. One of the things I love seeing is a photo of the drink so guests know exactly what they will be getting, so I was really glad that Amanda was able to do this for both of the signature drink signs! We also put them on little wooden easels to really drive home that “piece of art” theme.

With our tables, I definitely wanted to add some of our last touch points of the modern and artist themes. I think that Leah’s colors of the flowers really bring in the beauty and artistry of the day as well as the painted table numbers that Amanda made! There were also some dinner menus that matched the style of the signature drink signs that guests could see the dinner, dessert, and late night snack options that would later be provided during the “evening”.

We also figured that an artist would love a good charcuterie board!! Kirstin did an amazing job using the extra bar table and creating a masterpiece. This was one of those vendors that was non-negotiable to me for making this theme work.

One other non-negotiable vendor to make this shoot make sense was having a live painter. It only makes sense that artists would want to show off a piece from their own wedding day! One of my favorite parts is to see the real painting come to life. We made sure to have a reaction from the couple as well, as that is always one of the best moments of the night when couples have a live painter. Komal did a spectacular job bringing this shoot together!

I knew one final piece that I wanted for our shoot was to have a cake cutting. I figured, the more desserts, the merrier! When Nadiya shows me her vision of painting the cake with similar brush strokes to a painting, I thought that would look amazing. And it was one of the few times that I actually ended up eating the desserts and it was delicious, too! When I saw the cake stand that we were going to use, I went and found all of the other gold/mirrored pieces to match and really bring in that modern feeling.