Utterly Engaged } The 1st Online Wedding Magazine. Inspiring Budget Savvy Brides with Style.

Bella Figura offers absolutely beautiful letterpress invitations and save-the-date announcements, designed/created by some of the best letterpress designers in the country. In keeping with our modern theme for issue 08, I have picked a few of their more modern pieces to share:

All of their creations are created with a lot of love, passion, and attention to detail.

I especially love visiting their blog, which is updated regularly to share inspiration, custom designs, and sneak peeks!

I love how their use of color makes the lines just pop off the page!

[Images via Bella Figura]

A wedding show that you don’t want to miss this weekend!

HOTEL MAYA HOSTS WEDDING VENDOR SHOW

Premiere Long Beach Destination Hotel Offers Brides-To-Be A Vendor Event On March 14, 2010

Long Beach, Calif. – February 8, 2010 – On March 14, 2010, Hotel Maya in Long Beach, Calif., will offer Southern California brides-to-be and wedding planners a four-hour event showcasing Joie de Vivre’s Southern California properties, two bridal fashion shows, and approximately 75 regional wedding vendors.  With its prime waterfront location and variety of unique indoor and outdoor event spaces, Hotel Maya is the perfect property for a Southern California wedding, rehearsal dinner, bridal shower, honeymoon, and anniversary celebration.

“We are excited to host a wedding event at Hotel Maya,” said Director of Marketing Leah Corradino.  “This is the first event of its kind at our recently renovated hotel and we look forward to highlighting the array of beautiful wedding spaces we offer at Hotel Maya and our other Southern California Joie de Vivre properties.”

The event will host approximately 75 wedding vendors, including entertainment, photography, flowers, and more.  The Joie de Vivre Southern California properties will be in attendance to provide information on weddings and their event spaces of all sizes from Laguna Beach to Los Angeles at Hotel Maya, Hotel Erwin, Shorebreak Hotel, Hotel Angeleno, and Pacific Edge (a Joie de Vivre affiliate managed hotel).  Tray-passed bites will be offered from the hotels’ restaurants, including Fuego, Hash, West, and Zimzala respectively.

Hotel Maya boasts 20,000 square feet of indoor-outdoor event space, and features fifteen event areas—many of which have waterfront views. With its festive atmosphere and romantic, secluded location on the water, Hotel Maya is a superb site for weddings, honeymoons, anniversaries and other bridal celebrations. A paradise that evokes the tropics without having to take an international flight, Hotel Maya offers Southern Californians an oasis right in their own backyard.  Outdoor venues such as the waterfront Jardin de Palmeras and Esplanade provide beautiful backdrops for ceremonies, while receptions may be hosted indoors or outdoors with spectacular views of the water and the skyline of downtown Long Beach.

The Hotel Maya is an inviting space for newly weds to stay and linger, with a full-size heated lap pool, Jacuzzi, and a unique water canal that supports five private floating cabanas. The property also offers a wealth of recreational activities from a 24-hour fitness center with cardio and weight-training equipment, to salsa dancing lessons on the Esplanade, as well as waterfront tennis, volleyball, and basketball courts. Guests who want to see more of the surrounding area can rent Segways or beach-cruiser bicycles to explore the Long Beach community via a system of bike paths. Additionally, the nearby Harbor Light Yacht Club & Marina charters fishing boats and offers sailing lessons, and the hotel can help guests organize any number of day trips, including jaunts to Catalina Island as well as to the nearby Queen Mary, Aquarium of the Pacific, and Museum of Latin American Art.

The Wedding Vendor event at Hotel Maya will be held from 11am to 3pm on March 14, 2010.  Tickets are $10 a piece or two for $15.  Vendor prices are available upon request. Please contact the catering department at 562-481-3914 or MayaCatering@jdvhotels.com.

About Hotel Maya

Hotel Maya in Long Beach is a stunning 11-acre waterfront property, which has undergone a $20 million renovation. It features 195 guest rooms on lush tropical grounds, and offers guests an urban oasis for rejuvenation and inspiration. The hotel is a resort-style complex with five separate buildings that sit amid a landscape of tropical flowers and over 400 palm trees, and includes newly refurbished guest rooms, dining, entertainment, Sunday brunch, daily activities for guests, meeting facilities, and more.

We’re starting a new, weekly feature here on the blog where we’ll post some of our favorite finds of the week from around the blogosphere.  They’ll mostly be wedding related, but we’ll sprinkle some fashion and home decor finds here and there — whatever we find inspiring for the week!

DIY: A Garden Rose Bouquet - Chelsea Fuss of {frolic!} for Project Wedding

Bonjour, Paris - a little Parisian fashion inspiration, perfect for spring!

Add a little succulent love to your big day.

Spring is almost here! These floral pieces make us eager to go outside and play.

Beautiful clay flowers by Estilo Weddings + DK Designs

Starting today, we’re going to be featuring all the tables that were part of our Utterly Spankin’ New Year Party. We were so impressed by all the designs that we thought they deserve a little highlight of their own. You’re going to love it because every table is so unique, inspiring and really creative. We’re going to give you the inside scoop of their inspiration and the breakdown to how you can even do it for your own wedding. If you’re curious a little about the rules you can take a look here.

Let’s start with our Design Challenge Winners!

DESIGN TEAM :

Katy Carrier, Katy Carrier Events
Wendy Ramos, Just Wenderful
Melinda Piligian, CAKEgoodness

INSPIRATION :

A fusion of modern and classic materials, repurposed and re-imagined to achieve a contemporary take on a glamorous garden party tablescape.  The bold pattern and vibrant colors of the Adele Lamour napkins (by BBJ Linen) set the palette of purples, pinks, black, grey and ivory.  Tall wrought iron candleholders now serve as the base for a custom Plexiglas box (built by hand by Melinda) to form a chandelier of sorts with hanging crystals, brightly colored paper medallions (made from paint color chips from the hardware store) and scattered flowers hanging on clear thread.  The place card for each guest is also suspended from the Plexiglas box.  Each place setting, featuring a miniature cake, sits atop a black granite tile charger (also found at the hardware store). A cerise table runner with layered multicolored ribbons over a graphite grey crinkle tablecloth serves as the base for small custom-built Plexiglas boxes holding miniature treats like cupcakes and cake pops. A few small floral arrangements interspersed between the desserts echo the bright colors of the linens.

Special thanks to Kimberly Currin and BBJ Linen!
THE TABLE :

CENTERPIECE BUDGET BREAKDOWN :

• Two tall wrought iron pillar candleholders, $12.99 each at Marshalls = $25.98
• Clear Plexiglas sheets, 1/4″ thick, $7.50 per square foot; approximately 8 square feet used to make one large box and four small boxes = $60.00
• Acrylic bond glue: $5.00
• Crystal beads, from a deconstructed Jamali Garden candleholder = $4.00
• Paper: paint color chips from the hardware store = free
• Clear thread: $2.00
• Flowers from the LA Flower Market: $25.00
• Small glass cube vases, purchased online; 3 at $2.75 each = $8.25
• Various ribbons: $10.00

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Total: $140.23

I think one of the features that defines a “modern” wedding is the use of non-traditional color combinations: turquoise and red, grey and yellow, purple and tangerine…

I would have never thought to consider combining purple and tangerine, but Leslie from A Creative Mint has done a beautiful job of putting together a beautiful spread that is perfect for spring and summer.

Are you planning to use modern color combinations for your big day? If so, what colors did you choose and what was your inspiration?

[Images via A Creative Mint]