Stunning September Weddings in Marbella

I have just realised we are almost at the end of September and I have not created one blog post since August so hugest apologies to all our followers.

Working in the Destination Wedding Industry here in Marbella, we do have incredibly busy months, predominently May, June, July and September. Needless to say September has whizzed past leaving little time for me to indulge in my blogging.

We have been frantically waving our famous magic wands over Andalucia and have some fabulous weddings to share with you over the next few months plus some very exciting news, so do keep an eye out for our announcements coming shortly.

We have been thrilled to again receive many testimonials from our brides and would like to share this one with you received tonight for a wedding we planned, executed and designed at the beginning of September.

I think the importance of this email is that our lovely bride works for one of the largest event companies in London so we were up against a real test of our planning and decoration skills with this fabulous wedding set in a stunning monastery in the hills behind Sotogrande.

Hi Laura and Carla

We really wanted to thank you guys for you amazing hard work and commitment to make the wedding so beautiful and such a success. We absolutely loved every minute of it and are both still on a total high from it all and buzzing.

Every detail was perfect and when we arrived at the both the church and the venue we were really blown away by how fantastic they looked and all those months of work and deliberating had delivered something beyond what we expected.

All our guests remarked on how stunning the venue looked and how fab everything was from the food/drink to the disco and laser lights were, people really felt this was something unique and special and the wedding of all weddings!

Sad that it is all over but we have such fantastic memories and cannot wait to see the photos and videos which we will of course pass onto you.

Thank you for making it such a memorable day.

Very Best Danielle and Ed

Our thanks to Danielle and Ed for choosing us and allowing us to plan, design, decorate and manage this fabulous wedding and we thoroughly enjoyed working with them and their lovely family and wish them a future filled with fun and happy times.

Mediterranean Wedding Colours at Hacienda San Jose in Mijas

Louise and Adam contacted us last year to help them organise their wedding here in Spain.



After our first meeting with Louise and her parents, we were hired and Louise fell in love with the gorgeous Hacienda San Jose for her wedding venue.



Louise looked stunning and we personally were completely smitten with the lovely little bridesmaids :) They were all beautifully behaved and loved being part of this intimate family wedding. It was a hugely fun and relaxed day for all involved.



I personally love the photo of Louise´s parents, it sums up for me the emotions at weddings which are always lovely and make people connect in a way they would never do at another event.



The colour scheme for this wedding was chosen by Louise with a stunning combination of bright pinks and turquoise and being a very hands on bride, had raided Ikea to create the centrepieces, we are still wondering what she did with all those candles!



Our thanks to Heather and her wonderful team at Fiestasol for the fantastic catering, I have to mention I went to the food tasting and it was divine, and to Jennifer Jane Photography for allowing us to share these images with you.



Here is our lovely testimonial from Louise



Dear Carla and Laura



My apologies for not getting in touch sooner to thank you for making our wedding day so special.



I really appreciate the hard work that goes into organising such an event.



The venue looked stunning and certainly impressed all our guests.



It was an amazing day that I will cherish forever and thanks to you guys for making my dreams come true. Carla having you there on the day was such a relief knowing you had everything under control, you are a true professional.



It has been a real pleasure knowing you and working with you both this past year. Good luck with all your future endeavours, you are both amazing at what you do.



Lou xxx

Reviva Rock!

What can I say about this wedding, it was beautiful, understated, utterly charming and stylish and for me certainly one of our favorite weddings this year, definitely a Reviva Wedding!

I think these photos certainly portray how beautiful this wedding was and always I am indebited to Jeremy for allowing me to publish these beautiful photographs and share them with you. It was actually quite a story as to how this wedding came into fruition which I would like to share with you.

Natalie´s parents had already booked Los Monteros as a venue for their daughter´s wedding to Scott, but realised that they needed help, they had the venue but nothing else.

They voiced this concern to James at The Arte Cafe in Elviria, so James immediately pointed to me and Anoulka who were sitting across the square enjoying a quiet cocktail after a busy day at a wedding.

Natalie´s parents came to join us and we chatted weddings, showed them our work and portfolios and a long story but having had out chat we were immediately booked to oversee and manage the rest of this fabulous day and put together the jigsaw puzzle for them.

We then quickly rang around and enlisted our A team, who amazingly were all available in the middle of June, and the rest was history.

I have to say this particular wedding for me was what the A team and Reviva are all about.

It was stylish, beautifully put together with some very special personal details. Natalie had a necklace made for her wedding with a gorgeous silver sea shell theme detail so we continued this into the overall wedding design with a very understated look by adding in tiny silver starfish to decorate the wedding fans to incorporating silver seashells into the centrepieces.

We decorated the event with pale pink peonies and lilies set around hurricane lanterns, created the bridal bouquets in pink dreamy peonies with silver details, scattered the tables with tiny silver shells, Anoulka designed wedding stationery using a pale pink and silver theme with small pearl and silver starfish details, the whole look was subtle, dreamy and divine for a beach side setting at the stunning setting of La Cabane Beach Club.

We organised Natalie´s hair and make up with the fabulous Kathryn Parr, Photography of course with Jeremy, the photographer god ;) Rob the DJ and the divine sea shell cake from Sweet Things by Fi.

We were thrilled with the results and Carla´s careful attention to details overseeing this wedding left no stone unturned and I love this photo of Carla, our head of planning, at the end showing her true dedication to the day, a very serene photo of our hugely organised planner!



Here is our testimonial from Natalie and Scott

Thank you Carla and the team at Reviva Weddings, I could not have organised my dream wedding in Spain without you! I only had to travel to Spain once to meet with the suppliers and Carla organised and managed the rest of the process on my behalf. A few emails went back and forth and when I arrived a week before the wedding it was all organised. Carla was with me from start to finish and offered help and advice in all areas. I really do feel we had the best Marbella had to offer, from Jeremy Standley the photographer, to Fiona and the cake, the standard was outstanding.

My wedding day was everything I wanted and went without a hitch, Carla was even there when the last person went home! I want to thank you all for for your hard work and effort to make my wedding day the most special day of my life.

Natalie xxx

Reviva Weddings Planning Service

Reviva Weddings was set up by me at the end of 2007 and it filled a huge gap here in the market specialising in styling weddings and events offering a complete service including decorations, linens, flowers, stationery and all the lovely accessories it takes to make a special day perfect.

What makes us different? We are not florists that also do funerals and deliver flowers and leave, we specialise in weddings and events and are with you throughout your planning and helping you to create your individual style. No wedding is the same, every special day is unique to that couple and reflects their personalities, their dreams and of course their union as a couple which is a very special moment.

It is this high level of service that lead Reviva onto planning weddings, and it all started with the Los Monteros hotel shutting suddenly. Because I was working closely with some of our brides there to create their dream days it was me they turned to when this disaster happened asking me to find them new venues and desperate for help. I am a creative person and did not trust myself to become a ´planner´so I asked Carla, who is hugely organised and efficient to help me and the rest is history.

Carla took over the weddings and reorganised them all with a huge success and since this day she has been by my side eversince as the extremely organised and super efficient wedding planner managing many weddings for Reviva and I don´t think there is a better wedding planner on the coast here than Carla, albeit she can be quite bossy with me now and tells me off when I am slacking on the paperwork!

I know most of our suppliers here all say the same thing and rave about her which is lovely.

As this side of our business was launched two years ago, I think it confused some of our clients as we are of course still known as the wedding decorators, but to the delight of our suppliers and our very happy clients over the past two years, we are growing at a super fast rate and overseeing some lovely weddings with our planning and coordination services which Carla now heads up full time. We have even being booked to fly up to Barcelona to manage weddings there which has been interesting, very exciting and very successful.

Carla and I, together, are quite a formidable team and are completely devoted to creating our stunning weddings here with our fantastic team behind us and word is spreading fast! We both have extremely high standards and this is obvious in the weddings we create and manage.

We have received a lovely testimonial from Fady and Antonia who had organised most of their wedding here in Elviria at the end of May but just wanted a few loose ends tied up and someone there on the day. It was a stunning wedding set in a private villa with some fabulous suppliers such as Roberto Silvosa and these fabulous photos from Anna Gazda.

We do not tie our clients into any other services, including our decorations, and are happy to be the planners for the day, Fady and Antonia were already thrilled with their chosen florist and had all their details already organised, and seeing Roberto´s work and the result you have to agree was stunningly beautiful.

Here is their testimonial about Carla´s services for their day.

We are so glad we had Carla as our wedding planner, she is utterly reliable and dependable and always responding quickly and thoroughly to our requests. She has many contacts so finding a band or a photographer is trouble free. Most importantly she is really lovely and flexible, making organising our wedding hassle free, personal and as pleasant as possible! Even if you can manage without a wedding planner to help you organise your wedding, I would really recommend having someone like Carla there on the day itself, she took all the hassle out of being the host, from dealing with suppliers, managing timings and sorting out the inevitable unexpected issues. It meant we could just really enjoy our wedding day and not worry about a thing

A Lovely Testimonial As Our Weddings Start for 2011 in Marbella

Carla and Laura

Where do I start, I want to thank you both so much for a fantastic day, but not just that, also for a wonderful and enjoyable planning experience, which I must admit I am missing now it is all over!

From your ideas right through to your reassuring presence on the day, everything you did was efficient, discreet and our day passed off without a glitch. I smile when I think back and I am sorry it is all over, I would do it all again in a flash.

Both of you were super speedy with responses to my late night emails and whacky requests. You were in immediate contact from our arrival at Finca Maroc and a great support in the build up to the big day. Although I did not see you Laura on the Sunday- you definitely made your mark and when I came back from my beauty session the place looked almost as pretty as me :) !!

Carla, you were never far away, all day you were a supportive presence and I never had to think about anything that you had not already managed to perfection.

One of my favorite wedding moments was the look on your face, Carla, when a glass got broken on the table, my friends and I are still laughing about it as it was priceless!!! It was the only time you looked like you weren't in control all week - but so funny!!

Caroline and Karen made me look and feel beautiful, so beautiful in fact my own children did not recognise their mum! I appreciate their very hard work, their patience with our wacky requests and last minute extras - like Grandma's hair. They went so far to help me into my dress and a multitude of other jobs beyond the norm, so cool and calm and nothing was a problem.

Fiestasol were a big hit, everyone loved the food, all our guests savoured new things and enjoyed the perfectly mastered favourites. Heather and her staff looked great, again so cool and calm, informative about the food they were serving and so unobtrusive, even when they came to collect the tables the next day in what looked like an Aqua Park!

I will email the other suppliers, Natasha, Gary and Mijas Villas and copy you in and send some photos on when I get my act together :)

New Google for Weddings

How cool is this, I have just seen it on Facebook, Google have launched a new free wedding tool in time for Valentines Day, Simplifying Wedding Planning.

The creative designs throughout this fabulous new tool were created in collaboration with the reknowned wedding and event planner, Michelle Rago, one of my inspirational creative people I watch for trends and styles I love along with Preston!

You can create a website, use all the Google planning tools to collaborate with your wedding guests on schedules, guests lists, addresses and travel arrangements plus much more.

Access and edit your planning documents from anywhere and create online albums.

Well worth heading over to Google to check out this fantastic idea, a must for any bride to be and I think I will be playing around with this as well today to see what it can offer our brides and clients, that is yet another Sunday taken care of!

Reviva Planning and Coordination

As Reviva Weddings grow, we are delighted to be involved in more and more weddings, although we do carefully plan the logistics of the dates, the work required on each event and moving around Andalucia.

Here was a classic example of one of our rather busy days at the end of last August.

Me and my decoration team were in Seville and Carla was in Frigliana holding Julia and Jamie's hands and overseeing their fabulous wedding day.

We were decorating and overseeing a wedding and over two hours drive away Carla was booked as the wedding coordinator for Julia and Jamie's beautiful wedding in Frigiliana with a reception at the Cortijo Bravo in Velez Malaga.

I am now known as the fairy godmother of the Costa Del Sol which I love, but I do think Carla really deserves this title, along with many other planners I work with to be honest.

I like to think of Carla and I as the fairies in Sleeping Beauty (I have a 4 year old daughter !)

I change everything to pink and make it twinkle and then Carla comes along and changes it to blue, organises it and puts it down on paper!! Carla is the most organised and efficient person I have ever met and I am very honored to have her on my team, she is amazing.

Her attention to detail is unmatched and I have never met anyone like her, I do feel like one of her students when she tells me off!!

Carla also teaches hospitality and event management so you can see her standards are high.

I was at a lecture this week teaching the students about event design and decoration and she even told me off then for over running on time and talking too much :)

Carla was booked to organise the details of Julia and Jamie's wedding held at the pretty church in Frigliana, arrange the paperwork and work with Julia and Jamie to coordinate their day and oversee it so that everything ran smoothly.

Julia and Jamie had given Carla their list so far and we finalised it for them and checked all the details were in place and then Carla was present on the day. I love this set of photos as you will see Carla in her black dress, with Julia and Jamie at the beginning and then the last photo she is outside watching over the reception.

Whilst we did not become involved in the flowers or decorations for Julia and Jamie, we are delighted to see these fabulous photos from Jeremy and will find out the florist who worked with them for their day in order to recommend them to our brides who wish to work with a florist in this area, I thought the photos of the bouquets were stunning.