Vow Muse on Little Black Book

A few weeks ago we posted a two-parter on our role in a photoshoot done in August to showcase some fabulous wedding design and photography. Mary Phan, the orchestrator of this collaboration, has been featured in a dedicated post on Style Me Pretty's coveted blog, Little Black Book. Vow Muse is mentioned with a personalized thanks to Angie and Alicia (thank you, Mary!) toward the bottom, and is one of the credited vendors listed below the post!

Mary also covers the event in her own blog where she gives us a shout out below one of the pictures showing the teeny tiny books with our custom vows written inside. Thanks again for inviting us to work with you, Mary!

Yelp Helps, Berkeley 2010

Last month on October 18th, Vow Muse made a debut appearance at the first East Bay Yelp Helps event! Yelp Helps is a gathering of local non profit organizations that strut their stuff for one night of do-gooder fun. Yelp users from around the area were invited to attend and enjoy nibbles, beverages and a multitude of information on ways to get involved in local communities. From groups that help the homeless to organizations that assist in preparing at-risk youths for college to folks who host a rock 'n roll camp for girls, there was more than enough good karma to go around.

How was Vow Muse able to cash in on this non-profit action, you ask? Well, Alicia had the brilliant idea to offer free haiku to attendees and we were accepted with open arms! For three hours on a cold October evening we three Muses (Angie, Alicia and our lovely intern Kane) manned (or womanned, as it were) a table, handed out business cards, spouted informative monologues about VM and wrote haiku for only the most daring passersby.

Below are some photos of our beautifully decorated table (inspired by Courtney, the best decorator ever) from the event. We met some really nice people that night and, though this wasn't a prime audience to receive our services, we had a great time nonetheless. Here's to helping with Yelp!

 

The Muses at Yelp Helps, Berkeley, 2010

Tablescape Photoshoot Part II

Recalling last week's post, Vow Muse was invited to contribute to a photoshoot of two tablescapes for two fictional couples, executed, basically, to show off the superb talents of Ms. Mary Phan and her team of fabulous wedding consultants.

After providing some vows for "Ben and Holly", the second part of our assignment with Mary was to submit a few relevant and engaging quotes for the second fictional couple's tablescape. We were provided another "bio" of this couple, which described the groom as a tasteful but starkly formal corporate lawyer who fell for a creative and unconventional fashion editor. She is adventurous while he keeps to more classical tastes and their wedding is to be a blend of both, formally themed "Black, White, and Pink all Over".

With these guidelines, we searched for quotes centered around love and romance, but also that pointed out the importance of happiness and uniqueness of each partnership and the people within them. These two people don't need to be a mirror image of each other to have a successful life together. Here are a few of the quotes that we provided to Mary:

"Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out." ~Roy Croft

"Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Mary liked these quotes best:

"Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." ~Franklin P. Jones

"In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities." ~Janos Arnay

And here are a few of the pictures that included the written word from the photoshoot on August 4, 2010. All photos courtesy of Silva Stills & Cinema.

Photos by Silva Stills & Cinema

Tablescape Photoshoot Part I

In late July, Vow Muse stumbled upon Ms. Mary Phan, the chief wedding planner for Very Merry Events. We sent her a friendly email to introduce ourselves and generally spread the good word about VM. Mary kindly responded with a request to participate in a photoshoot she was organizing by requesting we pen a few words to contribute to the tablescapes.

The format was this: wedding planners and other consultants love what they do, but they always have to do everything someone else's way. The bride wants fuscia not violet. The groom wants Guiness not Pinot Noir. The bride's mama wants circular tables not square. Obviously this is what they are paid to do; wedding consultants make someone else's day exactly what they want it to be. Which can be totally fabulous. But, what if the wedding planner had her druthers? That's what this photoshoot was about.

Mary and a team of handpicked consultants designed, created and photographed wedding tables for two fictional couples on a beautiful August day earlier this year. They made up all the details (including in-depth descriptions of each of the couples' personalities, preferences and even hobbies) and then set to work creating a perfect wedding setup.

What was a Muse to do with all this? Mary requested some custom written vows and quotes to sprinkle around the tablescape and let Vow Muse do the dirty work. She gave us the "fact sheet" on both of the couples and her feeling of what these fictional folks would want. Here's what VM delivered:

For "Ben and Holly" who are described as "successful young suburbanites", he a respected engineer and she a talented graphic designer, who "enjoy the tranquility of a quaint cabin, brisk hikes, or slow bike ride" along with indulging in literature both as avid readers and as occasional writers. It was their hope to share their passion for the written word and respectful love of nature with their wedding guests.

Drawing from the couple's strong ties to nature and the neutral gender roles of these two people, Vow Muse contributed this monologue of wedding vows for the groom:

"I am drawn to you like a flower to sunshine; the unstoppable force of nature, timeless in its sincerity, unwavering in its devotion. Gentle as a summer breeze, strong as the roots of an ancient redwood, beautiful as a misty rainbow, you are the only woman in this wide world for me. It is on this day that I vow to cherish your kindness, your keen intelligence, your gentle soul for as long as we both shall live. It is this day that I will forever remember as we frolic in the great seas together, stroll the forest hand in hand and pedal side by side into all the sunsets to come with laughter and joy to light our path. It is on this day, my love, that I give myself entirely to you—and you to me—in exchange for a lifetime of learning, loving, and, above all, happiness."

Mary loved how we incorporated the woodsy theme into the verbiage, weaving the nature theme throughout the text. Under normal circumstances we would have gone through a few revisions to make sure each word of each phrase sounded exactly right and may have ended up writing a second draft that was quite a bit different (sometimes people need to see what they don't want to realize what the do want). But in this case since the bride and groom were fictional, they were quite easy to please.

Stay tuned for how Vow Muse addressed the second couple for this photoshoot, and for some of the beautiful pictures taken by Silva Stills & Cinema.

Vow Muse Blog

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Cheers to the Vow Muse blog!!