Our bride and groom found a way to beautifully blend their South Asian heritage with their North American upbringing. Through food, traditions, and outfits they were able to celebrate their culture while incorporating a modern romantic design aesthetic. Toast Events planned and designed the dreamy day, while Maison Anthea filled it with lush, romantic blooms. The love and joy of the day radiate in imagery captured by Stephanie Mason & Co., visit the full gallery by clicking the image above to see it all.
Before I design a space, I like to create a story in my mind for my main characters- the client, and watch that narrative come to life in my imagination and transfer it to my canvas; which was this gorgeous industrial space. When envisioning Tasnia and Evan's wedding design I knew right away that to honor the beauty of the architecture, we wanted to enhance the rustic disposition of the building while creating an elevated and intimate environment lush with wild floral elements. Because our space was cavernous we specifically chose to centralize the floral elements to floating hoops of branch work and strategically placed blooms so that our design looked like the building had been abandoned and nature simply took over and beautified the space. For this, I crafted a floral recipe to include natural elements such as Smoke Bush, Raspberry Bush, wild vines, etc which couldn't necessarily be purchased from a wholesaler or flower farm. This required our carefully chosen florist to physically forage from the forest to obtain the wild foliage to create that effortless natural aspect of a design I had envisioned. I specified that the florist add blooms in clusters so that it mimicked a rose bush we could see growing in our backyards. The aim was to embody and embrace imperfection. These hoop elements created the ambiance and provided the eye with a central place to gaze upon which created a feeling of intimacy in such a large space. While 90% of our budget was spent suspended, our next design challenge was creating warmth in a cold industrial space. For this, we lit hundreds of candles on all our reception tables in beautiful striped eclectic glassware vessels that transformed the flame of a single candle into a million rays of light which filled the room with a glow illuminating guests' faces and in turn amplifying the ability for our photographer to capture human expression & celebration throughout the evening. We also reused many ceremony florals in the reception space maximizing the overall aesthetic and budget.
From the bride... We met on bumble, turns out dating apps do work! The proposal was perfectly us, we woke up one Saturday morning and got ready to go get a coffee from one of the coffee shops around us, that's our Saturday tradition so nothing felt out of the ordinary. He was definitely acting weird though, and after we got our coffee insisted that we keep walking towards a sandwich shop a few kilometers away which felt strange given the time and the fact that we both got pastries with our coffee but I went with it. Eventually, we found ourselves walking through Confederation Park which is where we would always meet up after work when we started dating and have always called it our park. He asked me to sit down on one of the park benches for a minute and suddenly he was down on one knee! I was so surprised that instead of saying yes, I shouted out "No", because I couldn't believe that this was really happening. I said yes eventually after the shock wore off of course. I really wanted the wedding to feel very soft, and romantic, with a bit of an indoor-outdoor feel. The color palette was very neutral with greens, beiges, and whites, our wedding was right in the middle of summer and I wanted to keep things feeling as light and breezy as possible. My family is from Bangladesh and my husband is half Indian so we wanted to blend our South Asian heritage with our North American upbringing and lifestyle. The main ways that we did that was through food, we had an incredible Indian buffet catered by the East India Company; the music, we asked our DJ to play a mix of English and South Asian music; and lastly, through our outfits, both my husband and I wore traditional South Asian outfits with me in a lehenga and my husband in a sherwani. The bridesmaids also all wore saris. The florals and greenery played a large role in the design elements of our wedding. Our florist, Maison Anthea did an incredible job, my bridesmaids and I carried bouquets made up of white and blue roses as well as dahlias. We had a beautiful asymmetrical altar which had a variety of greenery, smokebush, and large cream and blush roses, the altar was moved into the reception area after the ceremony as a backdrop to our sweetheart table. We also had four massive greenery and floral halos hanging from the ceiling in the reception areas that included the same florals. The actual ceremony itself was very special. I really wanted the ceremony to be personal to us our relationship. Our officiant, Evelyn Hope from All My Tomorrow's Officiant, crafted a beautiful ceremony that focused entirely on our journey together, what we love most about each other, and what we hope for in our next chapter. We were also able to include a few of our family members that were close to our hearts in the ceremony, my Grandma came up and did a reading in our native language which was incredibly special, we also had my husband's parents each do a reading as well. We also included a garland exchange as part of the ceremony which is a part of our South Asian culture which both of our mothers helped with. All in all, the ceremony was just really special. Another unexpectedly special moment was our first look photos. My husband and I were on the fence about whether we cared to do that or not but our photographer, Stephanie Mason & Co., really encouraged us to do it so we went ahead with it and it really was so nice to see each other all dressed up and have that one special, quiet moment together before the craziness of the wedding continued. The photos in general ended up really being the only time that both of us got to spend one on one time with each other and talk a little so that was really special too!
Our wedding was on July 29th so we knew it was going to be very hot so we had an ice cream truck from the Merry Dairy one of our local ice cream shops come after dinner. There Merry Dairy is also both my and my husband's favorite ice cream shop. It was a huge hit with all of the guests! It was really important to me to wear a traditional South Asian outfit for my wedding, its what I always envisioned myself wearing. I chose a lehenga which is an outfit made up of a full-bodied, floor-length skirt, a cropped blouse, and a long scarf that is typically worn as a veil for weddings. I bought the dress from a store in Markham, Ontario called Dulhan, it was the first store that I went into and I immediately fell in love with my lehenga. It was white net fabric, fully embroidered with little white flowers, pearly beads, and crystals. I also wore traditional South Asian jewelry with a heavy collar necklace, earrings with white stones and navy beads as well as a tikka which is a dangly headpiece worn in your middle part. Because my outfit was so big and ornate, for shoes I kept it simple and comfortable with some white leather block-heel sandals. My husband was debating between a suit and a sherwani, but as soon as he put on a sherwani he was sold! A sherwani is like a longer coat sale garment worn with thin, tapered pants. His was from a store in the GTA called XXXX. It was a navy jacquard fabric, with large gold buttons, a gold embroidered collar, and cuffs. The pants were white linen pants. To finish off his look he wore a pair of cognac loafers from Harry Rosen. The one wedding advice that I've been giving all my friends is: get a wedding planner. Having Elise Schmitz from Toast Events plan our wedding was the single greatest wedding planning decision that we made and the best part is, that's really the only wedding planning decision that we had to make. Having a wedding planner made it so that my husband and I could pick the fun stuff like having an ice cream truck but not have to worry about all of the little details. A wedding planner takes all the stress out of the wedding, they have the best recommendations for vendors, and are able to really execute your vision in a way that would be impossible to do if you don't plan weddings as a full time job! And it's so nice to have someone with a wealth of knowledge about weddings at your disposal.
Vendors:
Photography: Stephanie Mason & Co. / @stephaniemasonandco / www.stephaniemasonandco.com
Event Planning & Design: Toast Events / @toast.events / www.toastevents.ca
Florals: Maison Anthea / @maisonanthea / www.maisonanthea.ca
Venue: Horticulture Building
Make Up: One Fine Beauty / @onefinebeauty / www.onefinebeauty.com
Hair: June & Flora Hair / @juneandflora / www.juneandflora.com
Rentals: Lavish Events Ottawa / @lavisheventsottawa
Invitations: Invitation Studio / @invitationstudio / www.theinvitationstudio.ca
Wedding Dress: Dulhan / @dulhanbymischief
Entertainment: Primetime Entertainment
Officiant: All My Tomorrow’s Officiant / @allmytomorrows.ottawa / www.allmytomorrows.ca
Catering: East India Company /@eastindiacomanyrestaurants / www.eastindiaco.com
Food Truck: The Merry Dairy / @themerrydairy / www.themerrydairy.com