WENDY + ERWIN'S WEDDING IN ELLE MAGAZINE

What a way to close out our year! One of our all time favorite weddings at the De Young Museum is featured in the newest issue of ELLE WEDDINGS in Hong Kong! As much as we love all the fabulous blogs out there, there is still a special place in our hearts for the beautiful print magazines that still exist. It is such an honor to be in a magazine like ELLE, and we know it wouldn't have been possible without an amazing team that worked tirelessly on this wedding. Congratulations to Wendy, Erwin, and everyone who took part in this! You can see more photos of Wendy and Erwin's modern wedding here.

Cheers,

WENDY + ERWIN'S MODERN MUSEUM WEDDING

Wendy and Erwin, a stylish, fun-loving couple from New Jersey, hosted the most swanky soiree for their destination wedding at the De Young museum in San Francisco. It was extraordinarily beautiful and over the top extravagant, yet there were so many personal touches that also made it relaxed and heartfelt.

They exchanged their vows in the modern, urban sculpture garden at the museum. Tall, sandblasted manzanita branches filled with orchids anchored the front and back of the ceremony. The aisle was lined with acrylic boxes filled with water and floating orchids. A white baby grand piano was the perfect touch for the enchanted and sweet ceremony.

Their adorable Yorkshire, named Muffin, was their "baby", so they brought him all the way from Jersey to be the ring bearer for the wedding. We even designed a custom pillow, set on top of a tall acrylic kiosk, just for Muffin to rest on during the ceremony next to Wendy and Erwin! 

Wendy loved stark colors-- black, white/ivory, and dark grey, which was partly what drew her to the De Young. The style of one of her favorite designers, Alexander McQueen, became an inspiration for the urban ethereal wedding that Gloria designed for her. The overall design was dark, but dreamy, juxtaposing clean sleek with old vintage, hrough a modern avant garde filter. 

Guests enjoyed a 360 degree view of San Francisco from Hamon Tower at the top of the De Young museum during cocktail hour, before entering the gorgeous Wilsey Court that was enclosed by custom wall flats with laser cut wooden panels. The dinner tables were dressed in layers of custom tulle by Wildflower Linens, and tall branches of orchids filled the room.

After the bridal party made their grand entrance into Wilsey Court, guests feasted on a sumptuous dinner menu by Paula Le DucFine Catering before dancing the night away. Desserts were presented on acrylic swings hung on one of the laser cut panels, and a fun flipbook both was open all night for guests' entertainment. Towards the end of the evening, Wendy changed into a stunning black Alexander McQueen dress and then again in a peacock colored Vera Wang evening gown for her send off.

A truly amazing wedding for an amazing couple, and as always, we couldn't have done it without a stellar team!

Event Planning + Production: Jubilee Lau Events
Event Design + Styling: Gloria Wong Design
Venue: De Young Museum
Caterer: Paula Le Duc Fine Catering
Photography: Augie Chang Photography
Cinematography: Kevin Chin Cinematography
Floral Design: Asiel Design
Pianist: Bay Music Entertainment
DJ: Ron Grandia
Lighting: Enhanced Lighting
Custom Wall Flats, Cake Pedestal, Acrylic High Boys, Chargers : Blueprint Studio
Ghost Chairs, Furniture, Tabletop Rentals: Hartmann Studio
Custom Multi-layered Tulle Linens: Wildflower Linen
Graphics and Paper Goods: Aria Stationery
Flipbook Booth: FlipFiesta
Makeup/Hair: Mimi & Taylor
Transportation: Pure Luxury Transportation
Wedding Cake: Studio Cake

All photos above by Augie Chang Photography

Behind the Scenes for Weddings

Like many of you, I love looking at beautiful things. It's a blessing to be in the wedding industry because a big part of my job is to look at beautiful things, and to make things beautiful. What most people outside of the industry don't realize though, is that behind the beautiful photos on blogs, magazines, and pinterest is a whole lot of sweat and tears from very talented and hard working people striving to bring a vision to reality.

Over the fourth of July weekend, our team worked on a rather complex and large production wedding at the De Young museum in San Francisco. It took over 300 design and planning hours between my team and Gloria Wong Design's team to create the extraordinary blueprint for over 60 staff members to execute on the wedding day.

It's hard to describe to clients the level of detail and precision that an event requires, particularly at museums. Even for an event design that is more simple, a lot of thought has to be put into the production, to be sure it executes correctly. Everything can look perfect on paper, but execution is key, and that is exactly what our team thrives on! We love the challenge of working at non-traditional venues, and helping our clients to create extraordinary events at the most unusual places.

Here, I'd like to share some behind the scenes photo from our recent wedding at the De Young museum....the parts that clients and guests never get to see on the wedding day!

With an open garden like the Sculpture Garden at De Young museum, the exact orientation of the ceremony set up can take some time to work out, and precision is important so we always have our measuring tape with us!

Gloria Wong Design's team measuring to be sure each acrylic tray has the same distance from one another, ensuring that the aisle width is straight and consistent

Loading in at a museum is much more than just removing things from a truck. A detailed production schedule gives each vendor a specific window of time to use the loading dock to load in and it takes a lot of manpower to unload, roll everything up a ramp, and properly staged in the designated area


Unwrapping all the plexi trays also requires a lot of TLC to be sure that fingerprints wouldn't get left on the trays


Getting water into the plexi trays took hours of effort, starting months before where we had to jump through a few hurdles to get approval from the Parks & Rec department. A 100' hose was prepared ahead of time for this mission, and Asiel Design's team took hours to properly remove all the water following the ceremony, to be sure it was disposed correctly. One seemingly simple idea took many hours and manpower to execute!


Chair placement is also no easy task in a space like this, and when the vision is to do a semi-circle ceremony. Here, Ginger is instructing the staff from the rental company on precise placement of each row of chair


Asiel Design's team working hard to get the floral arches just right, while ensuring that there would absolutely no risk of the trees toppling over in the wind.


After about 5 hours of hard work and team effort, the results were absolutely stunning....

Asiel Design's team spent hours glue dotting sprayed leaves onto the custom wall flat panels from Blueprint Studio

Blueprint Studio's team carefully placing each custom, laser cut panels into the wall flats

Ginger working with Julene of Paula Le Duc Fine Catering on placement of the custom charges from Blueprint Studio and the napkin fold for each place setting

All the vendors staged and lined up, waiting for the museum security's green light to roll everything into the museum

Getting the baby grand piano onto the lawn required using wooden planks to ensure that the weight and wheels wouldn't damage the garden's grass

Amanda helping to dog-sit for a few minutes during the wedding party portrait session. Yes, our hospitality team on the wedding day would happily do all kinds of things for our clients! :)

The catering team rolling all the dinner tables into Wilsey Court. With only 2 hours to set up, it was all hands on deck!

Enhanced Lighting's team adjusting the washes on each dinner table

Check out the beautiful photos of this wedding taken by Augie Chang here!