An Evening with Alice Waters......

A Savvy Event had the opportunity to work with the Center for Land Based Learning on an event with Alice Waters. The evening started at the McNamara Organic Farm with a Q&A with Alice Waters and delicious food from the Buckhorn Restaurant and Local Winters Wineries. After the Q&A 45 invited guest had a private dinner catered by Nugget Market's Head Chef Rachael Levine in the Backyard of the McNamara's home and Organic Walnut Orchard.
A Special Thank you guest out to LaTavola Fine Linens and Hartmann Stuidos for the rentals, Peculiar Pair Press for the Menus and Place cards and Amy Hayson for Michelle Walker Photography. It was so fun coordinating this fabulous event and getting to meet Alice Waters!

Alice Waters and the guest mingling
The Buckhorn Catering Pizza Oven


Q&A With Alice Waters and Craig McNamara
The Entrance to Dinner
The Menu by Peculiar Pair Press







Thank you again to all of our sponsors for such a successful event!

A Savvy Event*LaTavola Fine Linens*Hartmann Studios*Nugget Markets*Peculiar Pair Press*Michelle Walker Photography
and of course this fabulous event never would have happened if it weren't for the wonderful organization for Land Based Learning and Craig McNamara!!! We are looking forward to next year!

Engagement Session by BLR Life Photography-Lauren & Jason

We are so excited to be working with BLR Life Photography and the fabulous Brittany who is the lady behind the camera! Our couple Lauren and Jason who are getting married in October at The Sonoma Golf Club just had their engagement session and the photos are amazing! Brittany did a fabulous job capturing the personalities and love between them! Here are just a few that we had to share!!!



This is our Favorite! I love this one of them eating the ice cream cone! So cute!!!

engage!09 GRAND CAYMAN

I am so excited to share that this week I will be going to the Grand Cayman for engage!09. Last year I went to Orland to engage!08 and it was so much fun and such a great summit to learn all there is to know about the wedding industry from the BEST of the BEST! Engage!09 will be even better and I am so excited to be here! There are so many fabulous speakers this year and I have heard lots of surprises so this week will be so very informative and interesting! I won't have much time to blog but I will definitely share the experience with all of you! It is so nice to be back in Grand Cayman where I use to do weddings and call home a few years ago!

Have a wonderful week and I look forward to sharing more of enage!09 with all of you.

E~

Favorite Vendor Day 4-Peculiar Pair Press

Amy and Mary Beth are a pair of accomplished graphic designers who share a love for fine printing and are addicted to everything paper. Each earned their BFA in graphic design, and then independently decided to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area, Amy from the Lone Star State of Texas and Mary Beth from New York. eventually, their paths crossed while working in the same design department at a major corporation. as the years passed in corporate america and their creative genius became trapped, they realized a drastic change was needed, and fast! each afternoon, over their still favorite cups of earl grey tea, they imagined a better life in design. As luck would have it, the drastic change came in the form of downsizing, and they were soon free to build their dreams into a reality! With freedom came long drives up to Chandon and impromptu vacations to Mexico. On the plane back from Sayulita, Peculiar Pair Press was born.

Mary Beth has moved back home a few years ago to be closer to her ever growing Italian family so we are now officially bi-coastal and keeping the business flourishing.
With 7 years in the stationery business under our belts we enjoy getting our hands into many projects! We have several types of stationery lines that are all letterpress printed by hand – ours to be exact!! We’d thought you’d enjoy reading briefly about our distinct lines available and then seeing the entire printing process!

SIGNATURE COLLECTION - A collection of fourteen versatile styles appropriate for a bride’s fabulous ballroom extravaganza or a simple outdoor garden party. This line of invitations is available online at peculiarpairpress.com and at over 70 fine stationery stores across the nation.

EXCLUSIVELY ONLINE - Available only at peculiarpairpress.com these designs are perfect for bride’s planning a destination wedding. Invitations from this line accommodate any wedding day vision whether inspired by a private vineyard, an ocean estate or the love of travel, just to name a few. With thirteen beautiful designs to choose from, we are certain you will find the right style for your special day.

CUSTOM - Every custom invitation design starts with a piece of paper, a pencil and a conversation. We let the concept of the bride and groom’s wedding day guide us as we design the invitation suite specifically to their needs. Exquisitely unique and original, these invitations are always the most sought after.

BABY - Our simple & adorable baby announcements are perfect for every expecting couple. Fourteen different designs offer a wide variety wether they’re expecting a boy, girl or twins! Each design can be adjusted to accomodate a photograph of the new addition. Announcement collections are available online at peculiarpairpress.com or at one of our fine retailers.

STATIONERY - We offer a wide variety of everyday notecards for many occasions, single, blank, boxed or do it yourself! We have expanded our line over the years to include such luxuries as journals, wrapping paper and favor cones. Our partnership with Chronicle Books has also allowed us to establish an even wider fan club with our Paper Patisserie line featuring: gift wrap kit, enclosure cards, mini journal set, stationey box and an adorable box of labels.

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Now for the Process!
Letterpress is a form of relief printing that was invented in the 15th century. Individual letters were cast into lead, arranged into words, rolled with ink and then pressed into paper. The impression of each letter creates a distinct printed surface filled with beautiful texture. Peculiar Pair Press continues this tradition using photopolymer printing plates. Here is a brief explanation of our extensive printing process:
Creating digital artwork and film output:
After the initial stages of design are complete, we begin to develop your design on the computer. These digital images are separated by color and prepared for output onto a film negative which is used to create the photopolymer printing plate.(

Making the printing plate:
The film negative along with the “blank” printing plate are placed in an exposure unit. The outermost layer of these printing plates are covered with a light sensitive plastic. Light passes through the clear areas of the film negative and hardens the light sensitive material on the plate. Once it is done exposing, the plate goes into a wash out unit that brushes away all of the soft, non-exposed area leaving only the hardened relief surface. Now we’re ready to go to press!

Going to press:
The ink is placed on the inking cylinder and distributed evenly throughout the rollers-we only print with one color at a time, let’s say its blue. The printing plate is registered on the press so that it prints in the proper position on the page. All components to your job that require blue ink get printed while we have the ink on press-we simply change out the plate when necessary. If your piece is two color, the plate is removed, the press is cleaned of all ink residue and we start all over again with the new ink color and the new plates.

Once your piece is cut to size, you’re ready to go. Sounds like a lot of work, but the beauty in the resulting printed piece is unmatched!

Thanks for letting us educate you briefly on our company and how letterpress printing works. We hope you see the attention to detail needed for such exquisite work and will be drawn to the tactile quality and handmade feel of our lines.


Ready to Order?
When you would like to learn more about how we can can work together to create your letterpressed wedding stationery, please contact us for a consultation.

www.peculiarpairpress.com
www.peculiarpairpress.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/peculiarpair

Favorite Vendor Day 5- Cardgirl Custom Invitations

Well today is our last day of Favorite Vendors...and I am so excited about our 2 vendors today! I have loved stationary since I was a little girl and while most kids wanted toys for their birthdays and Christmas I always asked for "fun" stationary! So today we are highlighting two custom wedding stationary designers! They are both so fabulous and so talented! Every time I meet with both of them I get so excited to see what they are doing and what is new in the industry! Thank you all for stopping by this week to see the vendors we work with on all our fabulous events! So without further Adieu let me first welcome Nessa Sander for Cardgirl Invitations....

Hello! My name is Nessa Sander. I own Cardgirl Invitations and run the CardgirlDIY blog. Thank you so much to A Savvy Event for inviting me to guest blog today!
Cardgirl Invitations is a custom design studio, specializing in letterpress wedding invitations. Because we do all custom work, we are able to incorporate custom artwork, colors and calligraphy into your invitation design. This adds such a personal touch to the invitations, as it offers a true one-of-a-kind look.
After the invitations have been mailed, I often work with my clients to "complete the look & feel" with wedding programs, escort cards, thank you notes, stickers…just about anything created on paper. I am also not shy about passing along the artwork to my clients for some DIY projects…as I know it all starts adding up. I have also created a DIY site for those clients of mine.Here's a quick summary of my favorite trends for 2009 wedding invitations:
My favorite new color combinations for 2009Yellow & BlackEggplant & Ecru
Grass Green & Poppy Teal & Slate GreyMy favorite design elements for 2009The Damask (of course!)Pattern printing onto the backside of your invitation cards
Scroll DesignBlock lettering complemented by hand letteringPrint a design onto the front side of your envelopesCardstockCrane's 100% Cotton Extra Heavy Cardstock(amazing, heavy like a coaster, works beautifully with a letterpress printing…and eco-friendly!)I hope you will take the time to visit my DIY blog for more ideas & my invitation website. Thanks again to A Savvy Event for including me in your awesome blog!

Favorite Vendor Day 3- Michelle Walker

Our next oh so fabulous photographer is the very talented Michelle Walker! We are so excited that she is guest blogging on our week of Favorites as she truly is one of our most favorite photographers! Michelle has worked with us on so many weddings I can't even count them all and she was even my wedding photographer for my wedding! I could not have imagined my wedding without her! So without further Adieu....Let's Welcome Michelle Walker~




Hi! I’m Michelle Walker and I am a wedding, portrait, & travel photographer based in the SF/Bay Area (and I travel worldwide for gigs).
People never ask me how many weddings I’ve photographed – why is that? The answer is (drum roll, please)… 375. That’s A LOT of weddings! I love weddings and still get (absurdly) excited for each one (just ask my girlfriends). Weddings inspire and move me and I’ve cried every single one.
Instead of a boring old BLOG entry, I want to do something fun and tell you about my 3 very favorite things that I’ve seen at the weddings I’ve been to:
1. A few years ago at a wedding at Villa Montalvo (which is one of my very favorite places on the planet), a fabulous couple did a tango as their first dance. It was sexy, sassy, and totally unexpected given the formality of this wedding. I’ve never forgotten it.
2. A beautiful bride I photographed at her family ranch in San Juan Bautista wore her mom’s dress. I’ve often heard of this, but I had never seen it actually done. She had it retailored to a more modern style, but kept most of its original design. Mom cried, the bride cried, I cried. It was beautiful.
3. My bestest friend (Amy) and I have developed an addition to my photography package called SnapShot. Our tagline is, “Let Their True Personalities Shine”, and boy does it! We set-up a portable photo studio at your wedding. Not one of those photo booths, but a real portrait studio with lighting, umbrellas, custom backdrop, and everything you need to make sure your guests take fun, candid & whacky photographs of themselves. Your guests will LOVE it!
And I sometimes get asked, “What was the favorite part of YOUR wedding?” When I was married (on 2.2.02), a friend of ours serenaded us to “What a Wonderful World” - A Cappella. It was truly magical. Now my husband and I do this really cheesy thing… wherever we are in the world, whatever we’re doing, whatever time it is, we call each other when we hear that song. I’ve been in a smoky club in Havana, the desert in Northern India, and at many a wedding when I’ve called him. It connects us and reaffirms our feelings about each other.
I hope you can get some inspiration from the ideas above. In the years that I’ve been photographing weddings, the best are the ones that reflect the couples personalities & style – not something that a magazine or friend tells you to do. Follow your heart and you’ll never go wrong.
Michelle Walker
Michelle Walker Photography
http://www.michellewalker.com/
michelle@michellewalker.com
(415) 235-5400

Favorite Vendors Day 3-Kate Webber Photography

Greetings Readers!

I hope you are enjoying our week of Favorite Vendors just as much as we have enjoyed sharing them with you! Today we have two fabulous photographers we are highlighting and we love working with both of them so much! They are both so talented and both so much fun! They make the events we work on together a blast and they capture the images as the story is unfolding right before our eyes! I always tell our clients that if you are going to spend all this money on one day it is equally important to allocate money in your budget for a good photographer to capture the day for you to remember for many years!! So without further Adieu Lets welcome Kate Webber....


How wonderful to be included in A Savvy Event’s week of Guest Blogs!

In trying to think of what I’d hope for you to know, I suppose the biggest question I always have of a photographer is why they do what it is they do! So, it seems only appropriate to answer that myself. I think it is an important element to consider when looking for someone to document such an important day, such as a wedding!

I shoot weddings because it is very fulfilling for me as a keen observer of life and, in turn, it is incredibly meaningful to others.

Just this morning, I received an email from the mother of one of my brides which beautifully illustrates this point: “…I want you to know that I can't imagine a better or more artful capturing of the joy, pageantry, emotions and just plain fun of that day that was so important to our family history. We were in such good hands through your incredible eye.”

I love the images I captured and created! I love that they loved them…and will for years to come!

Weddings are an open opportunity to do what makes me happy—to create or capture a moment, and for it to be always new and changing with each unique story. In one day, or sometimes over several days, I am able to touch on all the things I am passionate about in my work— fleeting moments, engaging portraits, carefully planned details (oh, how I love the little details) and gorgeous surroundings, to name just a few. They are all there, in one, very personal event! Crafted together, they tell a story about a special moment in time.





I feel so fortunate that I am able to work with clients that let me “do what I do” – connecting with my imagery as well as my personality to let the day unfold naturally. When I go into a wedding, I aim to tell the story as fully, beautifully and kindly as possible. It is a real blend of my fine art and editorial backgrounds playing off one another. This true love of art and design paired with a desire to visually express a story is what drives me.

Commissioned both nationally and abroad, I work with clients from near and far to capture their special days. It is always an honor and always a new adventure!

Thank you so much Kate for stopping by A Savvy Event to share all of this with our readers! Please make sure you check out her website