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Based in Calgary, AB, I am the Director of Sweet Stylings Weddings & Events: a wedding planning & design company specializing in modern, sophisticated weddings and sweet table design. I love weddings, design & fashion, colour and pattern, and apple pie. -
Category Archives: Behind the scenes
Calgary wedding planning & design: Before & After
I am giving you a look into transforming spaces to make your wedding more unique to your wedding vision. Our clients had booked a Hall that was significant to them for their Calgary wedding reception venue, but they were looking for help with dressing up the space to match their sophisticated tastes.
Working with OneWest Event Design & Rentals, we created a space that would allow plenty of room for guests to enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and an evening of non-stop Greek dancing.
Here’s a glimpse at the “Before” and “After” of the space. More photos from Sharon Litchfield Photography in a full blog post about this elegant Greek/Francophone Calgary wedding to come this week!
Thanks for reading,
Calgary Wedding Planner and Designer
Calgary Dessert Table Designer
Calgary dessert table design: DIY s’mores-on-a-stick instructions
As I’m writing this post, I can’t help but think about all of the things I still need to do before I’m full “ready” for Christmas celebrations with my family these next few days. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling the crunch of the to-do lists before all of the Holiday festivities begin, but why don’t we take a fun break and you can read my instructions on how to make my DIY S’Mores on a Stick? Sounds good, right?
Here’s what you need:
- large marshmallows
- chocolate melting wafers (or chocolate chips)
- graham crumbs
- shish kebab or caramel apple wooden sticks or dowels (available by the apples in the fresh produce section of Safeway)
Spear the marshmallows onto the wooden dowel or stick:
Melt the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl, a small amount at a time in increments of 30 seconds (trust me, be patient. Chocolate burns easily!). If you are using chocolate chips, mix a few non-melted chips in with the melted chocolate to “temper” the chocolate — it should be a smoother consistency. Dip the tip of the marshmallow into the chocolate, spinning the whole stick a little bit for even coverage.
Place the hot chocolate immediately into the graham crumbs to coat. (I forgot to take this photo…whoops!)
To make the chocolate drizzle, place a very small handful of chocolate into a Ziplock bag and place into the microwave to melt the chocolate. Again, please heat the chocolate up at increments of 30s and mush the chocolate around to encourage melting — careful, it will probably be quite hot.
Once melted, cut a very small amount off of the bag’s corner.
Squeeze the chocolate out and move back and forth quickly to create the drizzle
…and dip immediately into the graham crumbs
Enjoy!
There you have it, it’s as simple as that! This is a super easy and cute way to add a little sweetness to your Holiday party (or a cozy New Year’s Eve in with hot chocolate), so I hope you try it.
Let me know how it goes and feel free to pass this post along to others — comments, Twitter and Facebook comments as well as Pinterest posts are always appreciated.
I am signing off for a few days to spend Christmas with my family, so…
Wishing you the best for the Holiday season,
Calgary Wedding Planner and Designer
Calgary Dessert Table Designer
Also posted in Inspiration
Tagged Calgary dessert table design, Calgary wedding planner, diy smores, smores bar
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Lauren and Eric: Custom Sugar Bar
When Lauren first contacted me, she was looking for a macaron-based sweet table for her June 18th wedding. After browsing through my work, she decided that she really wanted custom sugar cookies too to include her two, very adorable Boston Terrier dogs in the wedding (including whimsical items like that make me so happy!). She also wanted to recognize some close family members who would be celebrating birthdays around the same time as the wedding, so we included some simple cakes; it was a very thoughtful gesture.
We met to discuss some ideas and so that I could get a feel for her wedding details to make sure her custom Sugar Bar would reflect her concept: Classic, a little bit vintage inspired with some touches of whimsy. Since her wedding decor was predominantly white and gold, she really wanted the Sugar Bar to pop with colour too…and pop, it did!
Check out some of the lovely images of Lauren and Eric’s custom Sugar Bar taken by Chelsea at Shutterbird Photography:
Setting up and styling…
Lauren loves photography and had the idea of taking photos of the dessert flavours — it was a great idea, and I created some stationery for these photos to tie in her vintage-inspired gold and white wedding.
I worked very closely with Yann from Yann’s Haute Patisserie, and he created these super cute pink, heart-shaped marshmallows for some extra whimsy:
I’m so glad we incoporated the custom Boston Terrier cookies into the design — they were a huge hit! Katie at Cakery Bakery did an awesome job.
Lauren and Eric’s custom Sugar Bar was a blast to design and create. Lauren has a great sense of style (you should have seen her wedding dress! Knocked. Me. Out.) so it was easy for me to take her concept and tie it into a fabulous Sugar Bar for her guests to enjoy. Thank you for allowing me to share in your wonderful day, Lauren and Eric, and congratulations!
If you would like a custom, luxurious Sugar Bar experience, email us for your complimentary initial meeting or fill out our contact form.
Sweet wedded bliss,
Calgary Wedding Planner and Designer
Calgary Sweet Table Specialist
Also posted in Real weddings
Tagged calgary dessert table, Calgary dessert table design, colourful Calgary wedding, Glencoe Club wedding
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Calgary winter wedding photo shoot
I am so excited to be able to share these photos with you!
Back in March, I was contacted by Shelley Weber from As I See It Photography to create a sweet table for her styled winter wedding photo shoot. This photo shoot’s inspiration came from gorgeous, fabric flowers in pretty shades of teals, blues, grey and ivory and had a rustic, vintage feel with glamourous details.
I designed a small sweet table, as I knew there would be many elements involved in this shoot and did not want to overwhelm the concept. We did both an in-studio shoot as well as an outdoor shoot taking place just outside of Calgary.
The artful cupcakes, cake pops and cake were made by Katie at Cakery Bakery. She is so wonderful at interpreting any designs I give her! The perfectly blue macarons were custom-made for this shoot by M for Macaron.
Teaming up with Sarah of Sarah Mayerson Design for some interesting vases and flowers, I was able to put the finishing touches to capture a simple, vintage inspired sweet table.
Special thanks to our good lookin’ couple Ashley and Tyler who were so patient with us while we were setting up and perfecting the nit-picky details!
The way the colours of this table design work together with the rustic, winter weather scenery is divine. I love hot weather, but there is just something special about the combination of crisp white snow and birch trees.
This shoot was really fun, and Calgary’s weather was more than coorperative (surprise!) to give us a beautiful warm day. I had a great time putting this together with other talented wedding industry peeps. Thank you, Shelley, for inviting me to join in this beautiful project. I hope you all enjoyed these photos!
Also posted in Inspiration
Tagged blue dessert table, calgary blue wedding details, calgary winter wedding
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This weekend’s project: a custom wedding cupcake table!
I’m baking away and working on some custom wedding cupcakes for a friend’s wedding reception this weekend…the amount of confectioner’s sugar and butter in our home right now is a little insane! I don’t usually bake the goodies on my dessert tables but this is a gift to a friend and their venue doesn’t mind at all; I must admit, it is a lot of work and it reaffirms my decision to leave the baking to the Pros so I can concentrate on the design and set-up aspect.
With that said, I will be a tad busy preparing and setting things up all this Thanksgiving Long Weekend, but I am going to try and Tweet as many comments and photos as I can so you can follow along this weekend (don’t worry if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can read my tweets and look at the photos without registering).
Follow me on Twitter by clicking on the Twitter Bird and don’t forget to “Like” Sweet Stylings Event Design on Facebook too!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Behind-the-scenes in dessert table set-up, Part 2
And we’re back with Part 2 of some behind-the-scene photos! After setting up vessels and determining a layout that is aesthetically pleasing as well as easy to access, I have to consider the dessert layout. The dessert layout gets a little trickier because you have to consider the colour balance of the overall table design as well as the actual size and shape of the dessert. The cake pops, for example, are taller due to the sticks and cannot be placed in front of the decorated cookies because they would simply cover them…kind of common sense, but not everyone thinks like that. The colour balance is tricky too, because when you’re dealing with a table with a larger colour palette (like this one is), you have to be careful not to put all of your “reds” in the same area of the table (unless you’re colour-blocking) all while maintaining the balance of the shape and size of the dessert too. Most of the time, you end up shifting and re-arranging your vessels and changing what sweet goes in what vessel.
This is a way for me to figure out how to balance out the colours:
Aside from the mock-up, here are some photos from the desserts involved in this particular photo shoot! Behold, my go-to cake pops:
…and here’s some of the packaged macarons I worked on:
While dessert tables are certainly lovely to look at and good fun to eat, there is also quite a bit of good old fashioned manual labour involved. I don’t have photos to document everything involved in packing and moving my supplies and food, but this is a photo of one of the large tote boxes used for this table:
It takes a lot of packing know-how to ensure that none of the vessels nor desserts break during transportation and it’s very handy to know exactly what is going in each tote box…hence the list of items in each box!
Below, all of the boxes and my collapsible table stuffed into the backseat of the car (there is also a steamer in the trunk to steam out linens on site):
Doesn’t look like much, you say? Well, that is thanks to packing know-how and a little bit of “oh, maybe this tote is heavier than it should be…”. And don’t forget, these photos don’t show the actual moving and lugging of boxes and supplies — these suckers are heavy and awkward to carry!
I hope you have enjoyed these behind-the-scenes posts — I’m hoping to get more up once I get a little more time. As always, let me know what you think!
Behind-the-scenes in dessert table set-up, Part 1
My latest Sugar Bar dessert table creation was a lot of fun to design, and it all started with this:
I had set out to do a photoshoot with Shelley from As I See It Photography because she has an awesome studio and all of this fancy, professional lighting which would totally showcase the desserts and design of Sweet Stylings’ signature dessert tables.
“What colours are you going to be using?”, she asked.
“Um, I don’t know. I haven’t thought of the design yet!”
Haha! I really had no idea what I was going to do for a design and desserts at the time; I just knew that I wanted to do a shoot and do it with a short lead time so that I had no reason to keep pushing it back.
A lot of people may not fully understand the amount of work and time it takes to design a dessert table — it’s not just a matter of finding some coloured sweets and placing it on a table, there is a lot of thought put into each specific dessert design, what kinds of sweets to have, where to source everything (from the actual dessert to supplies for personal touches) as well as colour and design balance for the display. There’s also practicality factor for guests too: certain jars and plates may look pretty, but you don’t want awkward shaped vessels that would make it hard for people to scoop candy. It’s a lot to think about, but all of these elements are what makes a Sugar Bar so special!
Once I find my source of inspiration for a Sugar Bar, I usually start sketching designs right away:
I also roughly outline what vessels I am using based on the kinds of sweets I select and the balance of how everything looks on the table. This outline usually happens in my head until I start playing with the actual vessels and can alter the arrangement until it looks just right!
Please ignore the mess in the background of this photo: we were also in the middle of installing laminate flooring in our condo while I was trying to do this…insanity? Yes, a little bit.
I also place sticky-notes on each vessel so I remember what dessert goes where…
Unfortunately, that’s all you get for now! Part 2 of this behind-the-scenes look will be coming soon!
