Ahead of the Curve

I love to see items in magazines after we use them!

I was just flipping through the Christmas pages of LONNY Magazine (one of our favorites) and spotted two of the items that we recently used in a renovation project!

We used the pull on the bottom left in a master bathroom and the monogrammed on the far right in a custom study.  I’ll be posting before and after photos of those spaces soon!

All items are from one of our favorite cabinet hardware lines – Hamilton Sinkler.

xo Christi

The Reception – Part II

You didn’t think that I could just leave you hangin’ without showing you the best man/maid of honor embarrassing speeches, bouquet toss, funny dancing photos and a good time being had by all, did ya??  I am going to let these pictures speak for themselves.  I hope that these make you awwww,  laugh and possibly even tear up like they do every time I look at them.

What was YOUR favorite part of your wedding or another wedding that you have attended??  Was it the ceremony?  Reception?

-MRS Brianne Verstat

The Reception – Part I

The celebration…….the party……. The RECEPTION!!  For some people the reception is the main reason to go to weddings.  Where else can you dance with good lookin’ wedding guest, drink for free, dance with your tie around your head (this happened…..well it all happened!) and make a fool of yourself in front of out of town guest that you will probably never see again?!?

Floral centerpieces.

We wanted to make sure that all of our guest had A LOT of FUN!!  One of these little beauties sat on every table.  The back of the tag said “Sip and Share with your table!”  Once a table finished theirs…..

this happened…..

and this happened.  Until everyone was finished.  It was definitely a FUN way to start a reception.  Our guest are still talking about it!   The next day we noticed that Facebook was covered with pictures of these jars by friends and family.

Dinner Menu.  Our menu was completely personalized.

I grew up in Maryland and Ryan grew up outside of Chicago so our menu was full of our favorite foods. I wish that there was a photo of the sweet message that we had on the back for our guest.

To be continued……

The Ceremony

Two people who met each other and fell in love, brought to the most intimate and special part of their day.  The Ceremony.  When two people join there lives together.  Walking together through the journey of life.  Hand in hand.

Although the barn loft at the WinMock was filled with our family and friends, it felt like we were the only ones there during our vows.  This was OUR moment.  Just the two of us……and 140 of our closest family and friends.

Upon entering the WinMock guest first stop at our Wedding Tree Guest Book.

Candles in mason jars filled with dried split peas lead guest upstairs to the barn loft.

The moss covered B & R that I spent countless hours gluing moss on.

Our wedding program that I designed just day before the wedding.

Bright green granny smith apples lined the aisle.

Ryan, his bestman/younger brother Brandon and our officiant Holly Marion.  If you or anyone you know is looking for someone to officiate your wedding we highly recommend Holly.  She is very kind and took the time to meet with us and get to know us.  She personally writes all vows for couples.  We loved this about her.  Our ceremony was 100% about us.

Headed upstairs to head down the aisle.

Doors closed for the big reveal!

The moment we’ve waited for our entire lives!

The hand off

I love how our photographer  Lauren and her photographer hubby Dave captured sweet moments like this.

Our Vows.

Making sure his ring fits and stays put!

Ryan grew up in Illinois and I grew up in Maryland.  For our unity ceremony we wanted something that was a little different.  Most people light candles or combined sand.  We got soil from our home states and combined it together.  We will be using the soil to plant a tree  in the future when we build our forever home.

The KISS!!

YAY!!

This photo was taken by a family friend so the quality is not as fabulous as Lauren’s but we love it!

Onto the cocktail hour and reception!

We are very thankful that Ryan’s aunt video-ed parts of our ceremony.  It flew by so quickly and love having that to look back on.

-MRS Brianne Verstat

Behind the Scenes ~ A wedding to remember {part II}

Finally got it to load!  Enjoy…….

To recap from earlier this week:  the office turned into a flower cooler and we loaded box after box into my truck to transport them over to WinMock. 

I left off explaining our friend Sami Price from  Just Priceless met us bright and early to load (more) flowers for the wedding party.  The next four or five hours were a complete blur.  We arrived at the “barn” just after 9:00 a.m. and jumped right in!  It was important that we stay true to Bri’s vision so her “binder” was our guide throughout the day.

When we arrived – we had a pretty blank canvas.  Ok.  Well, it felt actually empty.  How on earth would we ever get this looking like a dream wedding??

We unpacked box after box of mason jars – yes that’s right, mason jars – that had been painted in chalk gray.

and there were more….

Did I say lots of jars?

And I really did mean mason jars. 

Here we are – I think we might actually be counting….  “Hey Kelley!  Did someone sneak more of these things in the back door??“

There were all kinds of other goodies in our boxes – what a bag of tricks!

The inspiration for many things came from the wedding invitation.   The letters B & R were used throughout:

Our mason jars turned into fun, simple floral vases with all white and green flowers.  Granny Smith apples were a nice pop of green on the table linens.  Family and Friends were assigned a table number for dinner.

In the end (many nail biting, curse murmuring) hours later ~ we were pretty pleased with the result.  Bri won’t let me share all the pretty photos – yet – you will have to check back to see the completed end result but suffice it to say it was pretty magical.

We left exhausted and exhilarated.   We ran back to the hotel room to shower, change and make a toast to Bri and Ryan and were back at WinMock just a short hour later!

Our talented friend and photographer did a fantastic job catching the entire night.  Stay tuned for those images!

xo Christi

The Ladies and Gents

We are having a few issues with getting Christi’s Part II of the set up to post. Soooo….  We are posting out of order.  Enjoy!!  There are a few more postings coming later today!

One of the most important parts of a wedding other than the bride/groom and parents is the wedding party!  Our family and closest friends.  The people that have been there through the good times and bad.  The people that know us better than anyone else.  The people that know all of our secrets and still love us anyways.

Ryan and I both agreed that we wanted to have our siblings and very best friends as our wedding party.  We both have a brother and a sister so we obviously included them and then asked our two very best friends.  We are so thankful for them and the time (and money) spent being a huge part of our special day.  I invite you to meet the most important people in our lives…….

LOVE my momma!!

My handsome hubby and my new father-in-law.

Ryan’s Grandma and my new mother-in-law.

My dad and I before we walked down the aisle!

The guys getting pumped for the walk down the aisle.

My ladies and I before the ceremony.

YAY!!!  We finally did it!

Two families brought together by LOVE.

Everybody get SILLY!!

Ladies posed pretty.
Our beautiful bouquets by Just Priceless.

Tough guys

Although we have said it many times before…..THANK YOU to all of our family and friends!!!

How many people were in your bridal party?  Did you have a big wedding or a small intimate  affair?  Please do tell.  We would love to hear from you!

-MRS Brianne Verstat

Behind the Scenes ~ A wedding to remember {part I}

Anytime we have lots of flowers in the office its a pretty special day.  But when those flowers are for one of your very own – it takes your game to an entirely new level.

The day Bri told us she was getting married was probably one of the happiest days our office has seen.  You can imagine lots of gals – all of whom consider themselves like older sisters – whooping and squealing with delight over this good news.  Needless to say it was never a question or discussion of WHO was going to handle the wedding; it was simply a matter of HOW.  Bri had a very clear vision of what she wanted {note: we love to have clients who have clear vision of their likes/dislikes} and that made it easy because she knew what she wanted and didn’t mind the time and effort it required to create it.

Our job was pretty simple:  support and show up.  The rest just worked itself out.  Now don’t get me wrong:  on wedding day there were lots of – shall we say – superlatives used (and not the kind your grammar teacher taught you) to go along with the pounding hearts, racing time clock and stressed out team.  This is when a video crew rather than a few photos for a blog would have been priceless.  But not for why you might think.  The moments of  pyscho-holy-crap-are-we-ever-gonna-get-this-done kind of crazy minutes throughout the day were not from lack of direction or design; we simply wanted it to be perfect, and just the way Brianne imagined. So you could say it was a labor of love.  Literally.

Our Wedding Day Setup began weeks before with “The Event” meetings.  Brianne went over her notebook and the orders she placed, we brainstormed about ideas on what could be done and how to pull it off in the time we had to do it and we made suggestions on things to get or how to do it for less.

Next stop:  Logistics.

The day before the wedding we started with transporting the large floral delivery from our office over to WinMock to see the space inside {I knew I would sleep better after knowing what I was facing!}  We had been by a couple of times while they were renovating but I have to admit – when we pulled up and all the landscaping was complete, the flowers planted, the fresh new paint….my breath was taken away.  This was going to be nothing short of spectacular.

If you know Bri you know she loves GREEN so it was no surprise her flowers were all green and white.  Here is our handcart with the fresh flower delivery ready to be taken to my car:

(sorry for the bad iphone photos!)

You can’t go wrong with Maggie B’s sweets – a large delivery was exactly what we needed to get the party started!

Maggie B’s cute packaging {I’m convinced} is what sold Bri first, then one bite and she discovered heaven on earth!

After loading my car the next step was to head to WinMock.  The staff there was incredibly friendly and helped us unload my car and safely store all the flowers and other wedding goodies.

The next morning my first stop was our friend Sami Price at Just Priceless.  She was in charge of the boutonnieres, corsages and bouquets {thank goodness}!

Sami was kind enough to meet me very early {it’s so nice to have friends – it makes the world a better place} and even help me load the car!

Having just loaded my car we evaluate the situation and decide the box is pretty accurate!

Stay tuned – wedding day set up to come!

xo Christi

Photo credits:

All really crappy iphone photos I will proudly claim.  All the lovely professional images from WinMock came from their website photo page which you can find here.

Same Girl. New Name.

Hi.  Remember me?  The girl that recently got married that promised in our OUTSIDE OF THE BOX blog to share lots of pictures with you?  The girl that has been M.I.A. from the blog for a few months?  Remember?  I sure hope so!  Because I’m back and have a treat for you!  Not only will I be sharing professional wedding photographs taken by the talented Lauren Clark but Christi B will also be posting about the fun day of setting up everything for the wedding.  Get ready for several blogs full of WEDDING!!  If you are lucky I might even throw in a post about the honeymoon!

I was so lucky to have the girls on our team  to spend the day turning my dreams and ideas to reality.  They spent the day putting together the floral centerpieces in the mason jars that I had collected from friends and painted, hanging the banners that were created thanks to Christi S’s daughter’s Cricut and gently hanging the over-sized moss letters and ampersand that I spent hours gluing reindeer moss on.  The months of planning, creating and DIY-ing almost every detail had come down to this big day.  With my team on my side I was able to spend time with my bridesmaids and mom getting our makeup and hair done without a worry.  Lauren Clark said that she couldn’t believe how calm I was.  I told her, “If you had a team like mine you would be calm too.”  My mind set from day one was that if we could pull off furniture market showrooms in a few days that this wedding would be a piece of cake!

I started the planning of our wedding just like I do in the office, with a binder!  It quickly started being referred to as THE binder.  That binder became my bible and went everywhere with me.  Lauren made sure to snap several photos of it while we were getting ready.

THE Binder!

Getting ready to put my dress on!

Check back tomorrow to see all of the details of the day!!

-Mrs. Brianne Verstat

BLOW ME AWAY The Dry Bar

Great design suckers me in everytime:  add a fun creative element and good hair to the mix and I am hooked.

The first time I was exposed to the DRYBAR we were walking along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.  I was immediately drawn to it – took a photo – and posted the fun find in my Beverly Hills Window Shopping.

I just came across some really great photos on DDI of The Dry Bar’s NYC studio and thought I would share:

I love the personal ipod docking station so you can charge your iphone and listen to music while you wait.

This wall reminds me of the tufted design by modular arts.  You can find it here.

This is what caught my eye in Hollywood – a blow dryer chandelier.  Genius.

I am digging that while the rest of the space is soft, serene and lightly colored – the bathroom is dramatic with punches of that bold yellow.

Who wouldn’t want to stop by this cleverly designed spot?  The next time I am in NYC I’ll be looking for the team at The Dry Bar to blow me away….literally.
Photos were found at ddi online and list Paul Rivera and Clark Dugger as photographers. You can click here to see all their images.

xo Christi

Spoonflower

I know you are thinking….what the…. Spoonflower?  No, it’s not a new hybrid flower or a crazy spoon like a spork but a fabulously fun fabric website where get this…you can design your own fabric!  Not feeling super creative?  You can purchase designs made by others.  The best part?  There is no minimum!  Plus the cost per yard is very reasonable and you can have your design printed on a variety of background fabrics.  Just to warn you not all of the designs submitted by others on there are great.  Some are definite “DON’Ts”  but there are quite a few DOs!!

Here are a few of my favorites:

How cute is this mod orange and white elephant fabric??  It would be so cute in a nursery!

This bird fabric would make cute pillows or even window panels.

This neutral chevron pattern would look fabulous as pillows, window treatments, an upholstered chair or a tote bag!

For fun I took the *mark* from our logo and made a BSD fabric.

This post is not sponsored by Spoonflower.  We just love sharing fun finds with you!!  Barbour Spangle Design can not endorse the quality because we have not ordered from them yet.  But we are tempted to!!

Have you ever ordered from Spoonflower?  Are you tempted to like we are??  Check it out and let us know what you think!!

-Brianne