I love vintage bird cages! They are one of those items that encapsulates so many things: vintage, contemporary, romantic, chic, feminine, country garden. I have often sat and wondered how I would use them in an Alice Spectacular. What’s a really cool, wow-factor-kind-a-way that’s unique and that complements and not overtakes the wedding style? Well, I think I’ve found it!
Imagine my little eyes when I was trawling through You&Your Wedding magazine and came across this pic. So romantic, the Bride and Groom (Kelly and Chris) look like you want to run up and cuddle them with masses of congratulatory kisses. They just look so beautiful and I already have a sense of who they are by this picture.
Photo from You & Your Wedding Magazine
What I love most about this picture is how it encapsulates our entire ethos here at Alice In Weddingland. It demonstrates just how styling your wedding and paying lots of attention to detail tells your story – without words.
Looking at the dress, Kelly’s jewellery, her hair style, Chris’s suit with the Breast Cancer badge pinned on it. The bird cages, the crystals hanging from them….it all tells a story. Their story.
Kelly and Chris are framed effortlessly by the cages in this photo (it so appeals to my romantic side). The detail in what’s inside the cages and what’s draping outside the cages catches your eye while mimicking the romance of the weeping willow in the background. This is clever eye for detail! Imagine that same pic without the cages behind them…it’s just not the same.
But beware! Birdcages can have a tendency to overwhelm if they aren’t styled right. It’s a delicate affair between the amount of cages you use (depending on the style of your Alice Spectacular of course) and what’s inside them. The styling and the photography work so well.
I love photography (I am an amateur with a dream, I confess), and this pic taken by Polly Alexandre oozes the sense of style that I would dream of creating! Clever, clever Polly.
The bird cage idea was “inspired after walking past a Louis Vuitton window” Wedding Planner Penny says in You&Your Wedding mag. Penny Cullen of Tiger Lilly Weddings was the wedding planner for Kelly and Chris and as she so succinctly puts it “A design should look like it’s meant to be there to the point that you feel like you couldn’t imagine the room looking any other way”. Such words of wisdom Penny, I love them because life is in the detail (me getting all Dali Lama on you) and in particular, your wedding!
When designing your Alice Spectacular detail should be your focal point. Choosing a style or theme comes a lot easier as you already know what you like and what you don’t. It’s an adventure mixing up and picking themes and style, however finding the little-iddy-bits that create the wow, those little details that tell your story, is your Alice challenge.
Fill them with pearls, crystals, flowers, put doilies in the bottom, tart them up with colour, paint the cage the colour of your wedding, string butterflies on the outside, hang them, put them on tables, put them on the floor, group them or not or maybe sit one on your cake table but most of all drape them in love and of course…detail.
Zarn ?
