If you've never had anything calligraphed before, I have to say, it's a lot of fun! My parents celebrated their wedding anniversary recently and I was inspired by olive branches and black-and-white striped grosjean ribbon, to create this pretty classic invitation to a small dinner party that my brother and I held for their friends at a lovely French restaurant.
The calligrapher whom I found online, Hillary King, did a wonderful job with these invitations, thank you labels and a really complex dinner menu, the guests were so impressed with her beautiful work and working with her online was such a cinch. One of the family friends took an invite back to show her daughter who is getting married soon. I really love classic calligraphy on wedding cards, it's so rarely done nowadays and is so chic and yet simple. She can also do different types of fonts, like a Manhatten sophiticate, or New Orleans jazz.
I put together some arrangements for dinner. I wanted to keep it simple, as the restaurant had wonderful soft lighting and was one of those white tablecloths and candle light places. The menu was also simple, salads and lobster bisque to start and risotto or duck confit for entrees, with two sides of caramelised onion cote de bouef to share. For the flowers, I stuck to wedding-neutral shades of whites and pale pinks, using white and fair pink peonies, blush tulips and large-bulbed white and peach Indian roses to create a petally, feminine look that I knew my mom would love. At the end of dinner, we had guests take the flowers home.
I didn't manage to get good pictures at the dinner itself but we gave away macaron favours (chocolate and raspberry flavours) in clear acrylic tubes tied with the same black and white ribbon and Eileen of ETA Sweets made a most magnificent 4 inch pale blush passionfruit swiss meringue buttercream and raspberry cake which we served for dessert. The cake's smooth pinkish hue was flecked with white swiss dots and festooned on the top of the tier with similar flowers, then wrapped at the base with the black and white grosjean.
