If you’ve been reading What Junebug Loves! for a while now, you probably know that I loooove a good beauty product, and more specifically I’m just a tiny bit obsessed with cleansing and exfoliating. So when I received one of these amazingly cute blue Mia Sonic Skin Cleansing Systems from Clarisonic to try out I was in beauty heaven! The combination of the super soft bristles with the sonic vibrations gives you a deep, deep clean with no harshness what so ever, and leaves you with the smoothest skin that moisturizer and make-up glide over easily. I am officially hooked, and I’m so grateful to Clarisonic for offering one of their new “Something Blue” Mias to a lucky Junebug reader for today’s giveaway! Thank you Clarisonic!
To enter to win, just leave us a comment here telling us about your own skin care routine, your favorite tips, tricks and products, and why the Mia would be a great tool to help you reach your skin care goals. With your wedding day coming up, it’s a great time to revisit your skin care routine to be sure it’s delivering for you, and adding in the the Mia Sonic Skin Cleansing System can really boost the effectiveness of the products you’re using. We’ll accept entries all week long and choose a winner next Monday, October 11th.
Good luck everyone! I can’t wait to read all your entries!
Today’s Real Wedding of Shiva and Brett includes so many special and meaningful details that there’s no possible way we can share them all with you, but with these wonderful images from Alisha + Brook Photographers, you can certainly feel the love and great joy that these two newlyweds shared on their wedding day!
The Goals: For Shiva and Brett, every part of their wedding planning was hugely important to them, and even though they planned the entire event from 3,000 miles away and in just six months, their wedding day was everything they dreamed of. It was elegant and beautiful yet most importantly relaxed and fun for all of their loved ones. “We knew that no matter where we chose to have our wedding, many of our guests would have to travel a long distance to be there and it was vital to welcome them with hospitality.”
After numerous trips to California from New York and a number of rather stressful moments, Shiva and Brett decided on the beautiful Holman Ranch in Carmel Valley as their wedding location. It’s beauty, privacy and spectacular outdoor spaces won their hearts and they just knew it was the right place for their 220 person wedding. They also chose to work with Amy and her team from Amy Nichols Special Events, which, looking back, turned out to be the very best decision they made. “For a little while in the beginning, I thought that I could do everything myself, but I couldn’t have been more wrong! Amy and her team were an invaluable support not only on our actual wedding day but during the course of the 5 months when we were making decisions and setting the plans in motion. With her extensive experience, Amy helped organize what we had to do; she kept us on track about which decisions we had to make and at what time. She was always a voice of reason and always there as a friends during the moments when I was overwhelmed. The wedding day itself went so smoothly that Brett and I ended up really enjoying our time with guests. We completely forgot about all the worries that we had, and we couldn’t have experienced that without Amy and her team.”
The Design: Shiva and Brett chose a wedding color palette of “French” blue, a gray-ish brown and sage green with accents of amber, orange and ivory that complimented the natural beauty of the Holman Ranch and didn’t overwhelm their modern and simple personal style tastes. Shiva and her mother found linens from La Tavola andamber glasses at Classic Party Rentals that led their color selections and the rest grew organically from there.
Amy and Shiva worked together to create a great flow for the wedding so that all areas of the Holman Ranch would be used throughout the night. The ceremony was at the edge of a cliff on the ceremony lawn, the cocktail hour was on the Rose patio, dinner was served on the main grounds and dancing took place in the carriage house. The grounds were so lovely that there weren’t a lot of decorations needed, but some of the outstanding visual elements from the day were the Sofreh (or Iranian ceremony spread) that was lovingly created by Shiva’s mother, the chuppah that they were married under, and the table arrangements for their family-style dinner. All of these were unified through the floral arrangements in tones of white, off white light green and orange, as well as the use of the french blue and brown colors. But even with all of that, Shiva says, “Great music and great food were probably the best unifying theme for the whole day.”
The letterpress wedding invitations and paper goods were designed by Shiva herself (a textile designer by trade), “Art Directed” by Brett who is good at editing and encouraging a “less is more” approach, and calligraphed by the talented Jenna Hein. They loved colaborating on this project!
For wedding favors, Shiva’s dear friend and Miami pastry chef Angela of Lovely Daze Desserts baked, froze and flew to California tiny French macaroons which they then packaged in little pyramid shaped boxes from So Inviting! on Etsy.com. The wedding cake was made by another friend, Nicola and her husband of Fleur de Cocoa, and it was a delicious creation of white chocolate mousse with brandied raspberries, ladyfinger sponge cake and Italian meringue. Wow!
The Look: Shiva’s personal style is usually fairly simple and understated, and she really wanted to look and feel like herself on her wedding day. The most important fashion detail for this textile designer (of course!) was to have a wedding dress made with beautiful and high quality fabric. During a special weekend while her mom was visiting New York, Shiva found her dream dress during a trunk show at the beautiful Mark Ingram Atelier. It was a light and comfortable gown by Junko Yoshioka, made with lace and ribbon embroidery, and perfect for the outdoor celebration.
The bridesmaids (who ranged from a sixteen year old cousin to the maid-of-honor who was pregnant with twins!) wore blue dresses from the Jenny Yoo Collection, and they all looked wonderful. The groomsmen wore their own black suits with white shirts and were given matching blue ties to coordinate with the weddings color scheme. Brett’s suit was by Prada.
The Moments: Because Shiva was born Muslim and Brett was born Jewish, they decided to have two ceremonies that incorporated their families’ faiths and cultural traditions while still feeling current and representitive of their lives. The slightly shortened traditional Persian ceremony was performed privately in front of just their immediate families and closest friends, and the more Western Jewish ceremony took place among all of their wedding guest and included the moment when the couple exchanged their rings.
The reception included a seated three-course dinner and three distinctly different live music performances by Platinum Status, The Petrojvic Blasting Company and The Ebrahimi Brothers. The meal was important as Shiva and Brett love the meaning and value of a shared meal with those you love, and the music represented and celebrated all parts of their cultural backgrounds.
There were tears and emotions and sweet family involvement throughout this wonderful wedding day, and it was certainly an event that no one in attendance would ever forget!
The Pros: To learn more about the many wedding professionals who worked so hard on this wedding day, be sure to visit our Real Weddings section.
For anyone planning a wedding in Seattle, this event is for you! The lovely Urban Unveiled is coming up in just a couple of weeks, and we’re excited to be a sponsor again this year. This boutique show is full of stylish ideas from some of the best wedding businesses in town, and its chic cocktail party atmosphere within the beautiful Benaroya Hall makes for a great night out with your sweetie or your girlfriends! To be sure you get in, buy your tickets today, or stay tuned for a ticket giveaway here on Junebug next week!
Urban Unveiled Thursday, October 14, 2010 6pm – 9pm Benaroya Hall 200 University St., Seattle, WA
Get Hitched Give Hope is an annual event that we absolutely adore! The team of volunteers behind this night of fun works tirelessly every year to raise money for The Making Memories Foundation in order to grant wishes to stage 4 breast cancer patients – a truly worthwhile cause! At this swanky party there are raffles and live and silent auctions that give you the chance to get gorgeous goods for your wedding day while by giving back to those in need. Don’t miss it – we’ll see you there!
This November the one and only Ms. Mindy Weiss is back with her second annual Most Ridiculous Wedding Event Ever! and once again we are thrilled to be the exclusive bloggers on site. Hooray! Come join us for a super fun day of wedding planning boot camp with experts in the industry, and learn about topics from cakes, to flowers, to seating, to music, as well as all those special touches that Mindy and her team are famous for. Last year the event was filled to the brim with great music, gorgeous inspiration, huge energy and loads of treats and surprises, and we had a blast!
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