The Bride's Guide Blog

1 Carolyn, our art director, sketched out the story before our shoot. This helps us choose background colors and keep the pacing of the story.

2 Some bits and bobs on the board to signify it was for the metallic color palette shoot.

3 This is some of our ribbon we used, just as we wheeled it into the studio.

4 Athena set up a little work station by the window and crafted the finishing touches for our escort card display.

5 This is the tape used for the escort cards and favor boxes. I love the different widths and finishes.

6 The escort card display in the works.

7 Diva from LINEA CARTA calligraphed our escort cards.

8 This is our black floor. We have a whole hallway of floor boards and they roll them into the studio on a cart to assemble in front of our set.

9 Here's the floor in place, in front of our lighter wall.

10 "The ladies" on set.

11 This Jenny Packham cuff even came in metallic tissue paper! I love both the bracelet and the patterned tissue.

12 Sherri found all of these shimmery stunners for us to work with for our bridesmaid dress shot. One of my faves is the gold one in the middle from Marchesa.

13 I wish I could say that all of this is from my personal collection, but sadly it's all on loan from various jewelers.

14 A collection of awesome headbands.

15 And more headbands.

16 Silver and gold handbags in every shape, shade, and texture.

17 Some darker hued bags. The oblong ones are from Anya Hindmarch.

18 Again, wish I could claim these as my own, but Sherri borrowed these shoes for our shoot and it was sad to see them go back at the end of the day.

19 Marc Jacobs' sparkly Mary Janes.

20 Loved the detail down the back of this pair from Steve Madden.

21 It's hard to put in words how pretty this Marchesa clutch is in person.

22 We all loved this dress, and it reminded us a bit of the Chrysler building. The dress is Rafael Cennamo.

23 Sherri loved this necklace from Kara Ross.

24 Katie LOVED this bracelet from Paolo Costagli.

25 Daniel loved it too.

26 Sherri reminded them they couldn't have it and promptly ended their Cinderella moments so the bracelet could go back.

27 When you buy mums they come individually protected in little mesh sleeves. They're really fun to remove and then watch the flowers pop to life.

28 Forgive the flash on this one! Here are the mums and the dusty miller leaves.

29 Flowers are beautiful enough on their own, but when sprayed with metallic floral spray, they get a bit jazzed up.

30 The glitter, luster dust, and spray we used for the bouquet. We put down kraft paper first, which we recommend as it makes clean up much easier.

31 Some of the bedazzled blooms.

32 Katie sets the table.

33 ForYourParty.com also made three color combos for the cloth cocktail napkins. Copper on white, silver on black, and gold on white. Hard to choose!

34 We got some great finds from Midori ribbon and I thought they looked pretty when lined up next to each other.

35 Yummy Paris Caramels from Crossings French Foods.

36 ForYourParty.com printed four color combos for our gift tags: silver foil on white, gold foil on white, silver foil on copper, and copper foil on white.

37 We had two different sized books from Graphic Image's metallic leather series. If you don't see a size you like on their website, they will custom make one for you!

38 This soft, shimmery book is from Cursive, which is located in ABC Carpet & Home. It has nice touches of silver AND gold.

39 Here's a black album from Smythson. Note the elegantly gilded edges on the pages.

40 A rose gold pen from Cross.

41 A slender classic from Cross. Nice pens are not only great for guests to use to sign their well wishes, but also great gifts (you need something to write your thank-you notes with!).

42 This silver pen is by Cartier and is called the Santos de Cartier. It's screw motif is as classic as the jeweler's love bracelet.

43 Here's a black fountain pen from Cartier that we also loved.

44 Some of our polaroids. We tape them up as we go to help us visualize the entire story.

45 These are larger print outs from our imaging department. We had them print out the photos so we could make sure you could see all the different metallics okay.