If the dream of your wedding evokes the glamour of Old Hollywood starlets, perhaps I can give you some inspiration from this wedding I designed that took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel, in and of itself a bastion of Hollywood society. If the walls of this ballroom could speak, we’d have enough stories to fill a volume of gossip columns! —Colin Cowie
See more of Colin Cowie's extraordinary weddings.When you start thinking about your celebration, take into account that location plays a big role in creating your ambience. For this wedding, iced blues and silvers made up our color scheme, starting with the invitation and threading its way to the linens, the lights, the table fabrics, and the flowers. Blues, silvers, and whites are all colors reminiscent of the Art Deco era, which is exactly what the bride and groom wanted.
The bride wore an extremely elegant dress with a single embellishment; a beautiful 1940s David Webb diamond pin. The look was simple; a creamy white silk satin cowl neck in the front and a low cowl in the back, complete with opera-length ivory satin gloves. Complimenting the look, the bride carried a tight pomander of creamy white spray roses.
When we moved on to the ceremony area, rather than using the traditional set-up seen so many times before at the Beverly Hills Hotel, I chose to reinvent the ceremony area by creating two intersecting aisle ways, with a ceremony in the middle of the aisles and guests seated all around. The focal point of the ceremony being a square center arbor decorated with a cuff of Vendela roses and backed with a fringe of hanging lime green amaranth, created a very tailored Art Deco look.
The reception carried the theme of glamour way into the night. To start, we laid down a powder blue carpet to create an understated demure look. Then I added a white lacquer dance floor with the bride's and groom's initials projected onto the middle. To add texture and keep it interesting, I used four different interpretations of a theme of flowers on the tables. Additionally, we topped some of the tables with mirrors and added satin and silk blue bengaline linens to others. The chairs were all elegant silver charivaris covered with ice blue crushed satin cushions. Satin and bengaline fabrics were used throughout the reception room, along with the cool blues and silvers similar to what was used right from the very beginning, with the invitations. The look was sophisticated and elegant and it took you way back to a time long gone but not forgotten.
And of course, the wedding cake was the pièce de résistance of this extraordinary wedding. Powder blue icing quilted with pearls graced every other layer. A draped white chocolate pearlized icing was used on the layers in between. On top was one single beautiful over-scaled gardenia, the quintessential flower of the 1940s. For added drama, the cake was placed on a mirrored pedestal, adding to the room's glamorous ambience.
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