Wedding Inspiration: Reception Dinnerware

I think details like tabletop decor and place settings make all the difference in a well-planned wedding. When guests sit down to their table at a reception venue, they'd better go "Oooh" and "Wow" or else you're not doing your job as a wedding planner! We tell our wedding planning students to pull out all the stops with creativity on the job, and in many cases, that involves encouraging your clients to put on their DIY hats and contribute something to the special look of their own wedding. Look at the setting above, for instance. The vintage dinner plate is paired with a salad plate that boasts gold-enscribed hearts and a "Just Married" message, with gold utensils completing the coordinated look.

I've chosen a few noteworthy dinnerware choices, and all you have to do is click on each photo to see more about the real-life weddings they came from.

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Wedding Alternative: Plan an Elopement

A popular alternative for some couples is having an elopement versus a traditional wedding. Wedding planners are still usually involved, so our wedding and event planning students don't have to worry about getting cut out of the picture.

Elopements usually have some kind of venue, albeit more informal, there are lodging accommodations for the couple and a small number of witnesses, arrangements to be made with the officiant performing the ceremony, and - drum roll, please - usually a large-scale reception for family, friends, and invited guests after the couple is formally married (that's when gifts are given, the registry is set up, and planners get involved to coordinate the catering, photography, venue, and so on).

Elopements suit couples who are less formal, want to dial down formal ceremonies, want to be less formal about dress and decor and protocol, and want their guests to focus on the reception food and party. Click on each photo to see inside different elopements, thanks to coverage from 100 Layer Cake.

Katie Berger, our Wedding and Event Planning student advisor, had these observations about elopements.

Don't let the laid back feel of the elopement fool you. While they are often more intimate in feel than a large affair, for the planner they can mean an increase in the amount of work leading up to the event. Planners become the go-to person for all vendors, the couple, friends, and family - even more so than in a regular wedding. The guest count may be small, but the workload is not! But with that being said, elopements are a wonderfully intimate way to say 'I do.'

Thanks to 100 Layer Cake for their beautiful photographs, posts, and wedding inspiration. 100 Layer Cake is a unique, comprehensive wedding planning resource for and by thoughtful, crafty modern women. Their vendors, projects, weddings, resources, sponsors, and marketplace are hand-picked and thoroughly researched with the hope that every single one is a truly unique addition to both your wedding and your planning process. Visit the 100 Layer Cake website today.

If you're interested in learning more about wedding planning, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

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Interior Design Inspiration: Gustav Klimt Decoration and Detail

As the book cover above shows, Gustav Klimt was way, way, way over the top when it came to design and decoration. This is an approach to style that our interior design students can take a cue from in their own work, and it's used by many successful designers working in residential design today. You'll see echoes of Klimt's minute attention to decoration when you read about interior designers who define their style as "More is more" or "It's all in the details." Klimt would agree. I was inspired by Tashen's sumptuous book, Gustav Klimt: The Complete Paintings. "Paintings" is a bit of a misnomer, however, as the cover work of art is from the spectacular Tree of Life frieze composed of Carrara marble, gold and silver mosaic, colored ceramics, enamel, mother-of-pearl, semi-precious stones, sheet metal, and gold leaf in the dining room (below) of Brussels' Palais Stoclet, probably one of the most beautiful homes ever designed (the overall design and architecture was by Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann, executed by Klimt and other artists and craftsmen from the famed Wiener Wekstatte or "Viennese Workshop"). Historic interiors great artists like Klimt inspire us to create a more detailed and layered room scheme. The marble walls, the glassy surfaces in Klimt's mosaics, and the highly-reflective dining room table were meant to create a magical world of glittering light when a multitude of candles were lit on table candelabra and the wall sconces. It's that kind of thoughtful attention to appearance and the harmonious interplay of all elements in a room that we teach and would like our students to internalize.

If you're interested in learning more about interior design and decorating strategies, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.

Our Crush of the Day: Contemporary Dutch Designers

Atelier NL: Fundamentals of Makkum clay dishes, bowls, cups

My design head is still humming over the contemporary wave of Dutch designers we discovered in a recent trip to Amsterdam. I wanted to showcase the works of several standouts, to give our interior design students inspiration and to also make consumers aware of the high level of creative quality working in the industry right now. My first props are to Atelier NL (Nadine Sterk and Lonny von Ryswyck); their products are savvy and cerebral - like a lamp that knits its own lampshade when turned on! Their clay ceramic work (above) plays with clays dug up at different locations and times of day in order to fire at different colors.

Maarten Baas is brilliant designer. We saw many of his works on display at the Stedelijk Museum, including his Real Time clock (below) - the face is a video that shows Baas from behind the clock face wiping off the hands that show the old time and using marker pen to draw new hands at the updated time. His work is groundbreaking and rule-breaking. 

Maarten Baas: clockface of his Real Time Clock

Maarten Baas: Plain Clay Floorlight

Piet Hein Eek combines a respectful use of waste and recycled materials with clean contemporary lines. His furniture is always sleek and well fabricated, like his Waste Cabinet (below), made of scrapwood that has been highly lacquered.

Piet Hein Eek: close-up of drawer details on his Waste Cabinet

Other Dutch designers you should know about include:

• Bertjan Pot
• Hella Jongerius
• Studio Job
• Chris Kable
• Ineke Hans

If you're interested in learning more about interior design, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.

Decorate Your Outdoor Rooms: Hot Tubs

A hot tub on top of your pool: Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich designed the Sci Fi Hot Tub within its own inflatable iceberg

If I could bottle the warm, sunny weather we had over Memorial Day, I would - it was flawless! It got me thinking about how our interior design students and homeowners everywhere should be adding outdoor rooms to your list of must-decorate spaces. The trend in recent years has to bring the outdoors indoors and to also bring the indoors outside with livable extensions of the home. Good home decorating enhances the function of a room, and so too should you consider the function of an outdoor space.

More traditional hot tub, but well designed: Bullfrog Spa 151R SportX

I'll be exploring outdoor room decorating in upcoming posts, but I thought I'd start with hot tubs. Having just come back from a trip to Amsterdam, I made a special side trip to see the Weltevree showroom and check out the Dutchtub, a sensational lightweight, portable hot tub that uses a wood fire to heat your water in what amounts to sitting in a giant colorful teacup! 

Wood-burning, portable, back-to-nature alternative: Weltevree's Dutchtub

Privacy helps with hot tub placement: Weltevree's Dutchtub Loveseat

If you're going to add a hot tub to an outdoor room, make sure it's convenient to other amenities for bathing and pool use. Is there a cabana or changing room handy? (A converted part of your garage might make a good cabana.)

A lightweight, inflatable solution: Oval AiriSpa portable hot tub

Do you want the hot tub to be on a deck, handy to in-and-out traffic from a family room? (Make sure you don't have a wood-burning Dutchtub on a wood deck - for obvious reasons!) Wherever you position the hot tub, make sure the outdoor room has lots of privacy, with plantings, hardscape, and fencing designed to shield bathers from prying eyes. Finally, plan for safe evening lighting to make the passages between hot tub and home accessible; there's nothing worse than groping in the dark or tripping and falling down after spending a relaxing time in a hot tub. 

Evening relaxation with built-in lighting: HotSpring Limelight collection hot tubs

Click on any hot tub photo for more product information, and add a hot tub to an outdoor room for summer entertaining, after-work stress relief, small intimate parties, or close encounters of the romantic kind. 

If you're interested in learning more about interior design, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.