Market Musings

This past weekend we ventured to Hotlanta for America's Mart Home Market. We kicked the weekend off at Lee Kleinhelter's chic boutique, Pieces, for a party honoring our favorite colorful designer, Jonathan Adler. As wonderful as it was to meet and greet with Mr. Happy Chic, the most fun part of the evening was the impromptu photo booth (complete with mustache and granny glasses props!) by Naugle photography (our favorite/funniest shot from the evening is pictured above). We attended a confab with Mr. Adler on Friday at market and our favorite piece of advice he shared was this: “Every room needs a dash of hippie and a dollop of socialite.”

We kept Mr. Adler's words of wisdom in mind through Friday and Saturday as we scoured endless floors and mazes of home décor. We picked up a few gems, including our favorite candle line, NEST, a fabulous new furniture line and wonderful fine art source. Perhaps our top find was in Currey and Company's showroom – in addition to the fantastic lamps we bought, they had an exquisitely catered cocktail hour. It was so good, we came back to visit Saturday (many thanks to Joy and the Currey team!). It inspired us to plan an open house when we receive the lamps (and other market finds) with an exquisitely catered cocktail hour...any exquisite caterers out there who would like to show off their skills at MCD's open house in early fall??

Speaking of food and wine, we checked out Miller Union on Friday night. It's one of Atlanta's acclaimed new restaurants, and if fine farm to table food is your thing, we highly recommend it. It was delicious!

Seedy Fashion

We're always on the look out for inspiring floral designs and our most recent obsession hails from the most fashionable city in the world. Paris celebrated nature's finest designs last week when John Galliano debuted Christian Dior's floral-inspired line during the Haute Couture fashion shows. His elegant, thoughtful, drop-dead gorgeous creations gave a whole new meaning to floral design. In addition to watching flowers day and night, through every stage of bloom, Galliano also studied up on Irving Penn's  and Nick Knight's photography. Couture is all in the hand-sewn details and we couldn't be more impressed with the fabric to petal transformation. And the shoes!!!

We pulled the image from Style.com – check out a fab article and the rest of the show here.

Beautiful clothing aside, we're wondering what the French fashion house did with the gigantic Parrot Tulips used as runway décor after the show...

Something Old, Something New

Weddings may be the most stressful of all the events we do, but hands down, they are our favorite. A garden-inspired wedding ceremony and reception we recently designed at North River Yacht Club had several extraordinary homemade touches added by the bride and her family. Pictured above is her creative spin on the traditional bride's bouquet. Heirloom and vintage pins on delicate lace were a nice way to accent elements important to the theme of the wedding. The altar and buffet florals we designed were inspired by the lush colors – rich purples, creamy whites and all shades of garden green – in the fabric the family brought in for the table linens. Take a peek at more images from the wedding from photographer Kelly Cummings of Spindle Photography.

Summertime Blues

Sunday was designated as an official day of prayer for the Gulf Coast and since our recent trip down there to work a wedding, our thoughts constantly turn to the devastation from the oil spill. The oil arrived on the Orange Beach coastline the day we left and luckily, the bride and groom kept a positive attitude throughout their wedding weekend. Selflessly, they weren't concerned whether or not the oil would affect their celebration and we all quietly mourned the changes and challenges our culture is experiencing.

MCD cannot express our heartbreak in words – it is impossible to fathom the uncertainty we face in the weeks, months and years to come. We stayed down in Orange Beach to work with Tuscaloosa Magazine on next year's Beach Issue and did our best to help stimulate the local economy for a few extra days. Matt is also helping with the relief efforts and has made plans to visit 4th of July weekend and volunteer with wildlife clean-up.

We're pleased to share that we've spoken with a few folks from T-town that also have plans to vacation on the coast for the 4th. In the spirit, we wanted to share a picture we snapped during the wedding weekend from the bay at Ono Island.