Rooftop + Picnic

Summer picnic on a rooftop. As you do.

Source: From Me To You

Studio tour.

Kate Maxwell paid a visit to The English Dept. and my design studio, and took some very nice photos. Thanks, Kate! More here.

Thanks...

...for all your supportive comments re: BHLDN and their well-known "design" practices. As a former law student, I do know that there's very little legal protection for clothing designers. I've studied the arguments on both sides regarding whether fashion design deserves such protection, and there's merit to both arguments (although I'm sure you can guess where I stand). I don't usually get in a lather over copying incidents--designers (like all creative people) draw inspiration from many sources, and that inspiration flows in all directions. What bothers me is a very studied practice of ripping off smaller designers' work as a business model. Consumers need to know that Anthro's cute "designs" come straight from uncredited, uncompensated sources. That's how they roll.

Besides being unethical and exploitive, it's just so boring! Way to take the creativity out of fashion. So I did that post. For that reason, and to show solidarity with my good friend Myra, who is wearing herself out trying to protect her work.

Luckily, we small designers have what big companies can never fake, no matter how they try--the urge to create for its own sake, the honest joy of new ideas.

Wedding Tuesday - Cocktail Hour

Hurrah! Its Wedding Day Tuesday again. I gotta say, I'm really enjoying sharing all these pics with you! Have you enjoyed the past posts? This week we're talking about cocktail hour. Once everyone arrived at our reception venue - the fabulous White Pavilion at Nielson Park, we had cocktails for an hour or so on the lawn. The venue is so great that it was an easy decision to do this.

I'm such a fan of DIY so making the space feel special was lots of fun - we dotted tissue paper pom poms through out the trees surrounding the grounds as well as in the Pavilion. Next, we dotted little african violet bushes wrapped in craft paper and ribbon to give the day a quaint feel. White picnic rugs were set under the trees and a retro gelato cart was ready to start serving ice cream. Next up, we made some really cute food flags to go through the serving trays and drinks flags for the mixers as well as an art montage to sit behind the bar to give the space a customised feel.

My super duper talented mum made drapery to hang from the doorways to give a bit of height and drama while my aunty made some fabulous bunting to anchor the deck. We customised some white weather balloons with fun signs saying "Hurrah We Are Married". Cute huh?

Well that's it for this week. Of course you can check out any of the past Wedding Tuesday Posts here or here or here.

Source: Welsh Photography

Candy Bars and Chaos!

I have had to edit this post slightly but one day, when old and retired I will publish a book about our weddings here in Spain and our funny renditions. It is already in the making and I think will outsell the Driving over Lemons about life in the sometimes not so real part of Andalucia, the famous Marbella!

We have had an extraordinary start to 2011 with some beautiful weddings which we will blog as soon as we get the photos but also a chaotic time as well as we headed into our busiest time of year. Our wings have been flapping frantically and our magic wands have been waved to death as we suffered one disaster after another.

Firstly a not so old car of mine decides to die, apparently it needs a new engine and is now gracefully retired, we hope in Guaro with Mick the Mechanic. So I am going to become a proud white van man now and am planning on a pimp the van shortly with fairy wings and glitter dust :)

Lo and behold, things come in threes and Marbella decides in it's full glory before the summer starts to have the most horrendous storm I have ever seen here, deluge is putting it mildly, but the unfortunate thing for me is I live with a Frank Spencer, for those of you that are too young to remember this character you need to google him.

So in the middle of the night at 2am last week, with 12 inches of icy water against our upstairs terrace doors, he decides to open them?! Needless to say a mini tsunami swept through our house, I don't think I have ever seen so much water apart from on the beach, so many mops, buckets of water and towels later at 4am in the morning I left him to it and went to bed as we had a wedding the next day.

Reeling from tiredness, but excited, we swept off to our storeroom to load up everything and guess what, another flood, our store room was full of brown muddy water, 20cm high and raining down on our parasols, fabrics, you name it, it was soaked. But weddings cannot wait so off we went to the Hacienda San Jose to create a lovely wedding but back that evening to start cleaning up. We had three more weddings last week and I had a house and garden completely full of parasols being cleaned, fabrics drying out, wet cardboard boxes, you name it and it was hell for me being such a clean organised freak!

Anycase all normality has been restored with much wand waving and very helpful parents :)

We loved our candy bar this week we set up in the Cortijo Bravo, I drove past Elviria this weekend to see another one of our weddings in full swing which was a lovely feeling and we created a fabulous shabby chic wedding for Sarah with some die for centrepieces filled with peonies and pink hydrangeas.

The Fairy Godmother of the Costa Del Sol has certainly been up against it this past week but the magic has finally been restored as we move forwards into June to create some spectacular weddings so watch this space :)!

Lilac Season

I am having a bit of a flower moment these past couple of weeks - I think its because its so cold here that the flowers at the local market are pretty average. Well on the other side of the world Life In the Fun Lane is lucky enough to have warm weather and warm weather brings lilac season! I'm loving the combination of mason jars in a wire frame basket to give the flowers a bit of structure and industrial interest. If only lilacs were in season here!

Source: Life In The Fun Lane

Jetting off: Napa

We can barely contain our excitement! Tomorrow we are headed off for a weekend in Napa for Danette + Doug's big day!!! They are getting married at the breath takingly beautiful Beaulieu Gardens! Here is a sneak peek at the inspiration behind the big day... there will be touches of glamour, gorgeous peonies, a color palette of coral pink with pops of cheery yellow and elegant accents in greige. Ooh and tons of macaroons! Should be nothing short of fabulous- especially since shooting the wedding is the fabulous Tec Petaja!

A Duffy Style Dress You'll Love

Its the Big A's graduation today so I've been thinking about what to wear. How about this? With a sharp black overcoat and black opaques I think this could look cute right?

Source: Juliette Hogan via Eat Drink Chic

The Cutest Most Happiest 1920's Inspired Couple

Don't this 1920's inspired couple just look the cutest? I love seeing people happy, especially if a bow tie is involved.

Source: Fazackarley via Portobello Bride

Fun Begins on the Costa Del Sol!

I have to confess I love weddings, now there is a surprise! The fun and silly season is here on the Costa Del Sol and has begun in earnest, which is hugely exciting.

We have got off to a wonderful start with some fabulous weddings, photos to come, and all our new ideas that we have all been working hard on all winter are now coming into fruition.

I just had to share this photo with you though, from Jeremy's new photo booth which BTW was supposed to be a 5 minute pop up job, but having watched Jeremy and Jenni on Sunday, I am sure it took at least 10 minutes of wrestling but sure it will be a sleek job within the next month ;)

But well worth the 10 minute wait as the photos are brilliant and such fun, you must check out the link http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeremy-Standley-Photography/54532672389 to see what fun was had with this photo booth, a must now I think for any wedding here!

We also created a fabulous candy bar, amongst many other things, and did make the hotel staff, I am sure quite alarmed when we started jumping and clapping excitedly as we switched the fairy lights on, it was a bit like the Oxford street Christmas lights, perhaps not quite the same but we were thrilled.

I have to also mention whilst on this blog subject, that this wedding was at the Cortijo Bravo in Velez Malaga, the staff at this hotel were absolutely charming and helpful.

Our thanks to Moira at Perfect Spanish Weddings for being a huge supporter of our wedding styling, flowers and decoration service and to Rob the DJ for constantly and tirelessly keeping our weddings on their feet, in fact I have yet to meet a man that can eat so many liquorice allsorts in one night along with Jeremy ;) That is a feat believe me!

Beautiful Inspiration

Beautiful pops of white, green and yellow.

Source: Poppytalk

Wedding Tuesday - Part 2: The Church

Its Wedding Tuesday so welcome to part two of our wedding - The Ceremony!!! We were married at St Peters Anglican Church in Watson's Bay. Its a tiny little sandstone building atop a hill overlooking Sydney Harbour. The church has an organ once owned by Napoleon and the interior has a slightly gothic feel with needlepoint emblem pillows and a gold eagle pulpit. Better yet, it has a bell in its spire so as we all walked out of the church that bell was a ringin. Magical.

Walking down the aisle was amazing - I felt like I wanted to laugh, cry and perhaps do cartwheels all at the same time. Aaron was really sweet and was on the verge of tears the whole ceremony, whereas I on the other hand couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Afterwards we had drinks on the lawn and group photos.

To see any more of the wedding click here or here. Next week we'll be checking out Cocktail Hour.

Source: Welsch Photography

Musings in Femininity

My darlings, I've been spending a bit of time on Tumblr lately and I have to tell you of the visual feast that it is. Take for example Musings in Femininity - beautiful snippets of fashion and beauty. Well worth a view.

Source: Musings in Femininity

Just saying.

Left: Elizabeth Dye 2010.

Right: BHLDN 2011.

Engaging: Jamie + Ryan

We can not be any more excited to be working with this adorable couple! They seriously are knock your socks off sweet. Lucky us, we get to work with them for a whole year on their summer 2012 wedding!!

Such a beautiful shot of Jamie! We seriously get so lucky that all of our brides are such models in front of the camera!

Love this one too! Irish Grzanich did a superb job capturing the couple in such precious moments. Head over to her blog to see even more shots of these two!

Congrats Jamie and Ryan! We are so excited to be a part of your big day-- we can't wait for your Darlington House wedding next summer!

An English Garden Wedding

English Garden weddings always get me. A-L-W-A-Y-S. And the reception dress? Spesh!!!!

Source: 100 Layer Cake