Welcome to my blog! I am a wedding and event planner in Northern Virginia and I am slowly but surely working on my Masters in Interior Design. I love creating Southern Charm and Elegance in interiors and events. I blog about anything and everything from weddings, design and cooking and my generally awkward and embarrassing life. I am Liz Lemon incarnate.
Follow me on Twitter @thejuliedaniel or my company @splashofeleganc.
All posts are my own and don't represent any organization. Copyright Julie Daniel 2008-2012.
New Domain!
My new domain is here! The blog is now viewable at http://thejuliedaniel.com/. The old URLs juliedanieldesign.wordpress.com and juliedanieldesign.com will still work for the time being.
If you are ever in the Leesburg or Occoquan areas of Virginia you need to make it a point to stop by Mom’s Apple Pie Company. Kinda like if you are near a drive thru Krispy Kreme, you are morally obligated to stop and get a dozen and eat them immediately. Anyways, they have the most amazing pies. They are constantly written up in Southern Living and I recently (and by recently I mean summer 2011) had the opportunity to try some of their pies at a wedding where I was the assistant planner. They were to die for.
All photos credit Photography by Mandi White (who is by the way an amazing photographer. Book her for your wedding).
I’m a huge fan of calligraphy for wedding invitations, place cards, wherever either done by hand or letter pressed. Just wanted to share some photos I’ve found online recently of calligraphy I love.
I think this example is my favorite- from Designs by Robyn Love. Everything of her’s is drool worthy.
I coordinated a wedding recently in Virginia’s beautiful wine country. Here are a few iPhone shots from the day…
A cat lives on the property of the winery and found his way into the reception… I had to yank him off the barrel before he pawed at the cake. Reason # 2,476 to hire a wedding planner.
Our company, A Splash of Elegance recently had a bridal forum at Soliloquy Bridal Couture, a newly opened couture bridal salon in Herndon, Virginia. The forum was great- my boss, the owner of Splash, Victoria spoke on ‘How to Plan the Perfect Wedding.’ The shop though was just beautiful- I wanted to share some photos I snapped. If you are in the area make sure to check out their store!
Here are some photos I snapped of a table I designed for a bridal show at Airlie Conference Center in Warrenton, Virginia. The table. By the way, Airlie is an absolutely beautiful venue if you are looking for a reception or ceremony location. It was a soft fall theme with colors of peach, yellow and green. The floral centerpieces were done in gourds and made by the lovely Shelley of Shelley’s Floral Enterprise. The linens were donated by Gala Cloths. Please disregard that I have the soup spoon and tea spoon in the wrong order. I think it just looks better that way.
At the Association of Bridal Consultants annual conference I got to meet Mark Kingsforf from Queen of Hearts Wedding Consultants in Philly. He’s on ‘Who’s Wedding is it Anyway’ a lot on the Style network, so as a connoisseur of reality TV and weddings I was excited to meet him and attend a few of his break out sessions.
I’m so tired I can barely stand up… I just got back from the Association of Bridal Consultants annual meeting. It was absolutely phenomenal and I haven’t had any time to process it because I am taking over planning a wedding this weekend for a colleague who is ill and can’t plan her wedding. I just found out yesterday (Tuesday) and the wedding is Saturday. So I am in the throes of that. Meanwhile I am trying to recover from the above photo. My company coordinated this breakfast at the ABC meeting- the event design was done by an absolutely brilliant designer, Drew Vanlandingham. We planned and executed it- setting up a breakfast for 350 is no small task. We started at 5:30 pm the night before and were done at 2:00 am the next morning with just an hour break for dinner. I can’t wait to post more pictures of the breakfast it was absolutely beautiful.
Until Sunday- After my second to last wedding of the season- not counting a random January one-
I was interviewed recently by the local DC ABC 7 news about the competitiveness of the wedding market. They story is, they called my boss asking if it was true that women booked venues for their weddings years in advance, not even being engaged. So they wanted to talk to her to see if this really did happen. Yes and no it does and does not happen, but to make a long story short she did agree to be interviewed but did say that one of her wedding planners (me) was not even dating anyone but already had her whole wedding planned out. We were interviewed for about 10-15 minutes and as you can see a majority of it got cut and what was left is… just me.
Let me defend myself. I am not a freak. I am a wedding planner. A planner. I see pretty things I like. All the time. In my job. So I write them down. Over time this has accumulated to a google document titled “My Wedding” which you see me flipping though in the segment. I really don’t think I’m any different than any other girl who has certain ideas or visions of her wedding in her head…. right?
This is a follow up to this post, Wedding Invitation Stamps because I just learned about this great company, The Paper Nickel Stamp Company that sells awesome vintage stamps. Loves it for wedding invitations…. although rather pricey…. $2.00 for .45 cents worth of stamps. So love the look though.
God Bless you Southern Weddings magazine for awesome finds like this.
My mother was a gourmet trained cook at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and living in France when she met my dad. Here are a few french cakes from their wedding, one is a croquembouche, Lord knows I have no idea what that contraption is, if anyone can enlighten me please let me know:
