Beautiful Wedding Flowers
Filling your wedding venue with a sea of beautiful flowers may be part of your dream wedding vision, perhaps a vision you’ve had for a very long time. After viewing so many inspiring images of flower-filled wedding banquet halls on bridal blogs, wedding websites and Pinterest, you’re likely very excited to start planning your own floral décor and wedding bouquet designs.
In order to choose the perfect flowers for your wedding, you must first think about what your wedding floral style is. Do you prefer a grand, opulent look with thousands of flowers arranged all throughout your wedding ballroom, with oversized floral centerpieces, florals draped at ceiling height and flowers arranged on the bar and all throughout the setting? Or is your style more subdued with preferences for a smaller number of beautiful, exotic flowers that make a big impression in smaller numbers, such as in low-set centerpieces? For your garden wedding, do you wish to add more florals to the already-bloomed garden wedding setting?
Some brides are very inspired by the luxe colors and textures of fabric, such as on their guest tables and draped throughout the ballroom, with flowers playing a smaller role in their wedding décor. They may want just a modest number of florals, with crystals draped around the displays to capture the lighting in the wedding ballroom. Read more…
Wedding Day Shoes
Today’s glamorous designer wedding shoes are true works of art, with some of the biggest shoe designers like Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik, and Christian Louboutin lighting up the world of wedding fashion. Many of our New Jersey and New York City brides say they buy their designer wedding shoes before they buy their wedding dresses, since it’s such a big part of their wedding dream to wear fabulous wedding heels made by their favorite or dream designer. The passion for wedding shoes is as big as the passion for a dream wedding dress.
To choose the perfect wedding shoes for your big day, you have to know what they’ll face at your wedding venue. Will you have an outdoor garden ceremony? If so, don’t count out the designer heels. You can wear pretty, stylish flats to walk down a soft, grassy aisle in your outdoor garden ceremony site, and then change into your fashion-forward, glittery designer heels afterward, for the indoor reception.
Choose thicker heels for your wedding shoes if you would like to wear them for the ceremony, since wider heels don’t sink into grass as easily as thin stiletto heels, and thicker heels can also give you a more protected stride when walking on cobblestone driveways, marble terraces and down staircases. Read more…
Outdoor Ceremony Vs Indoor Ceremony
While some brides have always dreamed of having an outdoor garden wedding, and some have known since they were little girls that they would have their weddings in an elegant ballroom venue, other brides are struggling to decide on their perfect style and location of wedding.
If you’re among those brides weighing both indoor wedding and outdoor wedding options, here are some of the top considerations of each type of wedding venue:
Outdoor Weddings:
- Outdoor garden wedding venues are already decorated in beautiful splendor, with lush trees and gorgeous, flower-filled gardens…providing an already-bloomed venue that you don’t have to spend a large portion of your wedding budget to decorate. Master landscape artists and gardeners have created a magical garden wedding venue featuring beautiful seasonal blooms, as the setting of an outdoor wedding ceremony. Read more…
New Jersey Wedding Venue
Your perfect, dream wedding comes to life when you select the best wedding venue suiting your personal wedding style – from an outdoor garden wedding venue to a classic wedding venue indoors – and entrust the details of your big day to the best wedding vendors in every category from floral designer to lighting specialists, invitation designer to dress shop stylist. A gorgeous wedding comprises countless beautiful details, all created to your personalized wishes.
The key to a great wedding, and an enjoyable wedding planning experience is finding the best wedding vendors in every area of your wedding plans. They are, after all, the experts who bring your wedding vision to life through their network of wedding item suppliers, superior organization, skilled staff members, top-notch high-tech equipment and mastery of performance at your wedding.
With so many companies out there, it’s an important task to find the most experienced professionals specializing in your style of wedding. While we offer the top wedding experts at our New Jersey wedding venues, we have the top wedding tips to help you find, interview and book additional vendors in other categories for your big day: Read more…
Big Wedding
When you’re planning your wedding, one of the first questions you’ll ask yourself – which has an enormous impact on everything from your wedding budget to your choice of wedding venue – is “How big do we want the wedding to be?” For every bride and groom, the issue of a wedding’s size is very subjective – you might think a 150 guest wedding is big, or a 400+ guest wedding is your definition of a big wedding. The number you come up with will form many of your wedding decisions, and factor into your wedding’s style. Read more…
Wedding Flowers
If your dream wedding design features thousands of flowers, in full bloom and creating spectacular décor for your ceremony and reception, you can get an even more dramatic floral effect on a budget by following these top tips:
- Always buy flowers that will be in-season at the time of your wedding. In-season flowers are more plentiful and therefore cost less.
- Choose more locally-grown flowers. Your wedding floral designer can show you images of terrific, unique flowers and wildflowers grown native to our area, which will often cost a lot less than flowers that have to be imported from exotic areas.
- Choose non-bridal flowers that may cost less. Some flowers are considered more ‘bridal’ than others – such as white roses, gardenias, calla lilies, stephanotis, and others – and at certain times of the year may cost more. Instead, look at unique flowers such as zinnia, ranunculus, and especially the top trend peony for beautiful effect on a budget.
- Loosely-bunched wedding bouquets are in for a more romantic look, which means fewer flowers may be needed. Read more…
Garden Wedding
An outdoor wedding brings your wedding ceremony, and perhaps your reception as well, out into the open air. A garden wedding is, naturally, an outdoor wedding taking place in a garden setting – surrounding you with beautiful landscaping, ponds and fountains that add a romantic quality to your big day.
With all the natural beauty of a garden wedding setting around you, you won’t have to do (nor spend) very much to complete your dream wedding scene. But there are a few top trends for garden weddings that may inspire you: Read more…
Wedding Signs
Personalized weddings feature décor touches that bring the bride and groom’s personalities and the style of the wedding into your Big Day, so consider a new top wedding idea: decorating with signs. Here are some of the top ways that you can design and display signs all around your wedding location:
- A large sign at the entrance to your wedding ceremony or reception ballroom can feature your custom monogram
- A large sign at your entrance can feature not just your names, but a romantic quote you’ve chosen as an inspiration for your day
- Signs can direct guests to your garden ceremony area, to your reception room, to your cocktail party or other areas
- A sign can direct guests to your smoking section at the far end of your venue
- Use framed signs on your guest book table, again featuring your monogram or a romantic quote
- If you’re using an alternative to the guest book, such as cards on which guests write their wedding wishes, your sign instructs them as to how to use the cards Read more…
Gown and Accessory Trends
Inspired by celebrity wedding trends, today’s brides wear not one wedding dress, but two or more, changing from a ceremony dress into a chic, stylish dress for the reception. At our wedding venue, we’ve seen brides wear cultural wedding dresses for the ceremony, then change into either a traditional wedding dress or shorter, sleeker dress for the reception.
Here are some additional 2nd-Looks for your wedding reception, garden wedding, or cocktail party wedding:
- Go romantic and lacy with your first wedding dress, then change into a sparkly dress suitable for the nighttime reception lighting.
- Wear a sleek, fitted wedding dress for the ceremony, then change into a dress that’s easier to dance in for the reception.
- Wear a traditional white wedding dress for the ceremony, then change into a colorful dress for the reception.
- Wear a traditional wedding headpiece and veil for the ceremony, then remove it and change into a tiara or jeweled hairclips for the reception Read more…
First Impressions
When guests arrive at your wedding ceremony venue, they’ll be taken by the beauty of the site, and a celebratory tone is set immediately by the smiling, friendly greeters standing at the entrance. It’s a new trend to ask close relatives or friends to serve as your official welcome party, greeting the guests and pointing them toward the inside or garden wedding location. They may hand out your wedding programs and also let guests know where champagne is being served – in the case of a garden wedding taking place on-site – or even where small children may be taken for sitter service during the ceremony.
The immediate recognition of greeters puts guests at ease, eliminating the ‘where do we go?’ concerns that some guests may have when they arrive at a sprawling wedding location. With the guidance of your greeters, guests enter the wedding site ready to enjoy themselves, soon met inside by banquet site staff members bearing drinks for their refreshment.
How to Select Your Greeters
Choose at least three special friends or relatives, ideally from your and your groom’s sides so that someone at the wedding venue entrance can recognize arriving guests. If you have an extremely large guest list, choose four greeters to eliminate a line forming at the door.
Choose guests who are naturally friendly, upbeat and good conversationalists who have no anxieties about talking to strangers.
Instructions for Greeters
Ask greeters to stand just outside of the wedding venue entrance, on the steps or at the base of steps, so that they’re immediately seen by arriving guests. At an outdoor wedding, they might stand at a point where the pathway leading to the ceremony begins.
Make it a firm rule that greeters are not to text, check their iPhones, or be distracted by their dates. Their full focus must be on their greeting tasks.
Ask guests to dress in accordance with the wedding’s formality. Since these are representatives of your wedding, it is perfectly okay to set a dress code, such as cocktail-length dress or suit.
Let greeters know how many wedding programs to give out, such as one program per couple, or one program per guest. If your wedding budget is limited, or if you’re having a green wedding, this top wedding idea eliminates waste.
If you expect guests who do not speak English, it’s smart to choose a greeter who speaks, for instance, Spanish or Italian for a welcome greeting guests appreciate.
Give greeters full information on where essentials are, such as the coat check, restrooms, handicap access to the ceremony site, so that they may instruct guests who request these locations.
Remember to give greeters information on directions to the reception site, if it is different from the ceremony location. Having a stack of printed driving directions is always a smart wedding idea, even if guests decide to just program the reception address into their GPS or smartphone as they exit your ceremony location.
Wedding greeters should remain at the entrance to your wedding venue until the last possible minute before your wedding ceremony or reception begin, so that late-arriving guests are welcomed and directed.
Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Chateau
