Wrightsville Beach Magazine

This spread is featured this month in Wrightsville Beach Magazine for the holiday table scape article. We set up this table on the waterway at Wrightsville Beach. Christmas does not have to be red and white, especially for a beachy Christmas!

A WRITER'S WEDDING

It has been a long while since this shoot with Millie, but I realized there were a few of the themes that I had not yet blogged. This one, the writer's wedding, I was particularly drawn to. My own background in creative writing makes it especially delightful to work on a wedding for writers or artists or academics. I would love to do a wedding for writers or a literary couple that incorporated fun word-oriented items, like Scrabble, cross-words, a type writer, mini journal favors, and story book programs!

BRIDAL EXPO

The best thing about this job is that with every client I am forced to think outside of my own box. Of course, I have my favorite colors combinations, flower choices and event concepts, but with every client who hires me, I have to stretch outside of these favorites. And often the result is one that I am surprised by and delighted with. For the Cape Fear Bridal Expo, we based our entire booth around an upcoming event I am working on. The colors-- red, yellow, and pecan-- are not colors I would typically place together, but I ended up loving the results. The event will take place on an old farm, where the bride was raised, and she hoped to incorporate the feel of a rustic farm setting, while still capturing the elegance of a sophisticated wedding. Thanks to Millie Holloman for snapping these shots in the few moments when her own booth was not packed with potential clients.

A YEAR OF GROWTH

Salt Harbor has grown faster and more than we could have imagined. This fall set new records for the number and intricacy of events, and we have been so excited with the results. The photos from this fall are just starting to trickle in, and we will be sure to update the blog as they do.

The intense fall season has kept us from blogging regularly, but we hope to fix that. There will be lots of exciting things happening here at Salt Harbor in the coming months.

• Our BRAND NEW website should debut in the next month or so. We have been working hard to get it ready and can't wait to show it to you!
• We have implemented a new logo that will appear on all of our promotional and web items. Hillary at Hot Wilmington is our new graphic guru, and we just love how well she is capturing Salt Harbor.
• We've been designing spaces for local magazines like Wrightsville Beach Magazine, so watch the blog for updates when they are published!
• We will be doing a company photo shoot of our GREAT employees soon. There are some people here at Salt Harbor that work quietly behind the scenes, but without whom, we could never do it! Millie will be shooting images of everyone for our website, and we'll make sure to do a feature on the blog, letting you meet everyone!
• We have established some discounts with other local vendors we LOVE! Ask and we'll tell you about it!
• This winter, we'll be blogging the design process with some of our brides. Stay tuned for more!

SIGNATURE MAGAZINE SHOOT

The holiday issue of Signature Magazine came out this week, and we are so excited! One of my favorite things to do is to create sets for magazine photo shoots, especially when I get to work with phenomenal photographers, like Millie and Whitebox !! When Signature Magazine approached us to decorate two venues for an article on event spaces, we jumped at the chance. The first venue was a great space in Greensboro, Revolution Mill. The space was amazing. Every detail, down to a little brass monkey toilet paper holders, was perfect. It was an a stunning canvas on which to create this 20's-inspired layout. Whitebox shot these wonderful images, and added a great vintage effect to the shots.

The second venue was the City Club in Wilmington. The venue has an abundance of interesting spaces to and we utilized several of them! These images by the ever-talented Millie Holloman . You can find the magazine in the local book stores to see more photos of these great spaces!

GRAFFITI

When we sat down to brainstorm for this photo shoot, graffiti was the one idea that I was not sure about. Most of our work is natural, organic, subtle. So we decided a challenge would be good for us. It was definitely the concept that my two college-aged assistants were most excited about. They chipped in, bringing old records to act as chargers and choosing the loud color scheme. Photography by Millie Holloman.

I thought some Jackson-Pollock- inspired paintings were necessary for the walls and the paint-your-message guest book seemed appropriate.

Party Suppliers has a new ability to do removable art for walls and windows, so we ordered some graffiti for the front window.

Laura from Knotical Weddings and her boyfriend kindly modeled for us and supplied the fabulous clothes! They also let us use the great bikes.

CUSTOM SPACES

A lot of what we do here at Salt Harbor involves creating spaces rather than just flower arrangements or tablescapes. Seating areas and interesting design pieces create great intimate spaces at events, and we are constantly incorporating them. But to do that, we often need things that we cannot find at local party rental stores. So we create them. Luckily, I have a talented husband and father who are always up to the challenges I give them!

We debuted these serpentine benches at the recent open house for the Balcony on Dock. They have so many possibilities--circles, half-circles, s-shapes.

I wanted to hang artwork made of flowers from the tent, so my husband built these boxes and rigged them so that they would hang from the tent over the benches.

We have been doing a lot of vintage-inspired work lately and could not find rental furniture in that style, so we purchased some wooden benches to work with.

While chandeliers and hanging arrangements are not always appropriate for events, they are a great way to create interest in a space. Here, we made a natural chandelier by suspending a round rod iron piece, adding a Plexiglas circle, some candles, greenery, and hanging votives.

Thanks to Millie Holloman for all the great photos.

ROUDABUSH SEED STORE

There is a wonderful new venue in Wilmington-- The Roudabush Room. All of the locals know it as the former Roudabush Seed Store. For much of the 1900's is was the place where most people went to purchase bulbs, seeds, and fresh flowers. I thought it was the perfect theme for a wedding, so we did a rustic vintage approach to the seed store. Photos by the ever amazing Millie Holloman.

We filled apothecary jars with different types of seeds and bulbs and had little paper bags printed that said Roudabush Seed Store.

We filled old product tins and boxes with millet, craspedia, solidego and star of Bethlehem for a wildflower look.

Laura from Knotical Weddings convinced her boyfriend Ryan to model with her. They are an amazing couple with a phenomenal sense of style! While we borrowed the dress from A Carolina Wedding, all of Ryan's clothes were from his own closet.

Photo Shoot--Travel

For this one, we set up a 1940's travel theme on the rooftop bar of level 5. Millie got some amazing shots overlooking the city-- those coming soon!