This week we are excited to share with you a very talented florist – Design by Gilda!

Gilda has been in the floral design business for over 10 years. Her unique, sophisticated and innovative designs always leave her clients beyond satisfied.

In a recent summer wedding in August 2010 at the Palladio, Design by Gilda created a beautiful look using over 5000 stems of flowers! She mixed 1000 stems of extra tall white calla lilies, 2000 stems of white hydrangeas, and 2000 stems of vendela roses.

The design creatively mixed flowers, fabric and rhinestones. The centerpieces on each table were designed with 9 glass cylinder vases wrapped in silk taffeta fabric, Swarovski rhinestones, and strings.

You can see more of Design by Gilda's arrangements by checking out her website and Facebook page.

We're excited to introduce you to one of our newest vendors added to our directory - The Gourmet Pop!  The Gourmet Pop combines style, design and delicious popcorn to bring you a POPPING experience! Their gourmet popcorn buffets are a unique and tasty addition to any special event. Whether it's a simple birthday party, a business party, or a lavish wedding, their custom jars filled with a variety of delicious gourmet flavors and gorgeous table decor definitely keeps everyone wanting more!

The Gourmet Popcorn provides a variety of over 40 gourmet flavors such as strawberry cheesecakes, caramel yin yang, cocoa dream, Tahitian vanilla just to name a few. Contact The Gourmet Pop and schedule a free consultation to come up with your perfect custom display. Each event is special and their goal is to add a little POP to yours!

Services include:

• Consultation
• Designed/Embellished Jars
• Tongs/Scoops
• Variety of popcorn flavors and colors
• Favor boxes/baggies
• Custom Tablescape / Decor to match event colors
• Custom table linen
• Set up/Take down

Of all the wedding tasks that I took care of before the wedding, selecting my wedding dress was probably one of the easiest ones to accomplish! The very first wedding dress I tried on was the one I ended up buying! You can read all about my wedding dress shopping experience at Jobyna's Bridal in one of my previous blogs.

My whole experience with Jobyna's Bridal was fantastic! Not only did they help me through the whole process of selecting a dress, but they were also great to work with through the whole dress fitting cycles! Thank you Isabel, Angie, Kristina and the rest of the team for all your help!

Check out some pictures of my wedding dress, designed by Pronovias.

UPDATE: Jobyna's Bridal is now operating under the business name Lovella Bridal.

Photo Credit: Bauman Photographers

Whoever knows me knows my love for desserts! So given that, our wedding cake was a very important part of our wedding and it was critical or me to not only have a beautiful cake, but also a delicious one!

Shant & I had decided to work with Cake Studio and we had such a fun time doing our cake tasting with Sonig. You can read all about our cake tasting experience in my previous blog. After dozens of flavors, we selected dark chocolate cake with mocha filling and dark chocolate truffle ganache for two of the tiers, and mocha cake with cookies and cream filling and dark chocolate ganache for the other 2 tiers.

Our wedding cake was a 4 tier cake, with coral flowers stuffed between each layer. The coral flowers were by Sky Event & Production, and they matched the flowers used in my bridesmaids bouquets. We also personalized our cake by adding our puzzle logo on 2 of the layers (we used the same puzzle logo for our wedding invitations).

Thank you Cake Studio for not only the gorgeous cake but also the delicious dessert!

Photo Credit: Bauman Photographers

I never realized what a major impact flowers can have on your wedding! It sounds crazy but I always thought that what people remember most about your wedding is the food and the music. But I was surprised that one of the main elements of our wedding that our guests still talk about to this day is our flowers!

Shant & I decided to work with Sky Events & Production for all of our floral and design needs. Sky Events took care of not only all the beautiful centerpieces, but also making our head table look incredible!

I had met with Lilit from Sky Events just a few months before my wedding, and based on all her positive reviews on Harsanik.com and her amazing personality, I went ahead and booked her right away! In my first meeting with Lilit, she gave me a lot of great ideas of how I could make my wedding stand out with my centerpiece designs. She recommended that I have 3 different types of centerpieces, with each one having just one type of flowers.  After giving it some thought, I went ahead and agreed with the idea and we decided to have 3 different centerpieces - made up of dendrobium orchids, calla lilies, and casablanca lilies.

Overall, Lilit and the Sky Events & Production team did an incredible job with all of our wedding flowers! When our guests first walked into the Taglyan ballroom, they were awed by not only the beauty of the centerpieces , but also by the sweet scent of flowers that took over the ballroom!

Thank you Sky Events & Production for the amazing work!

Photo Credit: Bauman Photographers

Hi - it's Marineh again from Harsanik.com. Last month, I shared with you the video highlights of our wedding from the talented BGS Productions!

Now it's time to start sharing the pictures! Shant & I decided to work with Bauman Photographers for our big day. I previously blogged about Bauman Photographers in my engagement photoshoot blog. After seeing the results of our amazing engagement photoshoot, we knew Jared Bauman and team would be able to capture our wedding in a unique way! 

Bauman Photographers did an incredible job with our wedding photos and we couldn't be any happier with the results! Check out just a few of the photo highlights from our wedding! I'll be sharing a lot more photos over the next month, highlighting different elements of the wedding, including the flowers, the cake and the dress.

Photo Credit: Bauman Photographers

We’re excited to feature Noor, one of the newest wedding venues, on our blog! Noor officially opened last November and  is located in the beautiful city of Pasadena right on Colorado Blvd. Noor’s location is perfect for all occasions since it can accommodate small parties of 100 or less, or large parties up to 2000 guests!

Noor’s space is made up of 2 ballrooms, the Sofia and the Ella, a balcony overlooking Colorado Blvd & the mountains, and a large open space on the upper level of the Paseo Colorado which can be a perfect venue for an outdoor ceremony.
The Harsanik.com Team was one of the first people to see the Noor venue even before it officially opened its doors last year. We were impressed by its location, large space, and beautiful ballrooms.

We got a chance to speak with one of Noor’s owners, Robert Shahnazarian, Jr. and he explained that Noor prides itself in offering completely customizable packages. “Because of the flexibility we offer, we can try to come up with something that will fit the needs and budget of our clients.”

Noor is not only a perfect location for a wedding, but should also be considered for all other celebrations. Contact them today to get more details about how Noor can accommodate your event!

In my last blog, I shared with you Part 1 of my wedding highlights video from the talented BGS Productions. Part 1 covered all the day time activities, including the pre-celebration at my parent's house, the church ceremony at St. Garabed, and our photo shoot at the Griffith Park Observatory.

Now it's time to share with you Part 2 of our wedding highlights video! Part 2 is a recap of our reception at the beautiful Taglyan hall in Hollywood. Brian from BGS Production did an amazing job making a 3 minute version of all the key moments from our reception that really makes you feel like you were at the party!

Brian - we can't thank you enough for your incredible work! We absolutely loved working with you and are so thrilled with all of our wedding videos!

A few months ago, I shared with you the amazing wedding trailer that our videographer, BGS Productions, made. This was simply a teaser video he created just to get us super excited before he revealed the wedding video a few weeks later.

Shant & I want to thank Brian from BGS Productions for his amazing work! We are so thrilled with our decision to work with Brian. He was such a pleasure to work with before the wedding, during the wedding, and after the wedding. Before the wedding, Brian answered all of our questions and even gave us tips on where to go for the wedding day photo shoot. On the day of the wedding, he was a rock star, capturing amazing shots, including things that we didn't event notice, along with capturing moments in such a unique way. And Brian was amazing after the wedding, delivering the wedding trailer just after we got back from our honeymoon and having our complete wedding video ready about 1 month after the wedding!!  And let me add that the wedding video was absolutely stunning! We were so amazed that Brian was able to tell the whole story of our wedding and make us relive our wedding day all over again. Plus we did not have a single edit request!

Now check out Part 1 of our spectacular wedding day highlights video from BGS Productions! Part 1 includes the pre-wedding celebrations at the house, the ceremony, and the photo shoot.

Choosing a cake vendor was one of the easiest tasks for Shant and I.  I have been using Cake Studio for a few years for birthday and other special occasion cakes.  I even had Cake Studio create mini-cakes for my bridal party (see previous blog for pictures).  Cake Studio not only makes delicious cakes, but they are also so creative – they can make any design you can think of!  So I knew Cake Studio was the right choice for us when it came time for our wedding cake.

Shant and I made an appointment with Sonia from Cake Studio, and before meeting with her, Sonia asked us to do some research and collect a few pictures of cake designs we liked.  This was going to help her understand our style to make sure we designed a cake we absolutely loved.  Shant and I went through a few websites and quickly realized that we liked 3-4 tier cakes, round, with flowers between each tier, and alternating designs on each tier.  Since we already decided to use puzzle pieces as our logo, we wanted to integrate our puzzle design into our cake. 

When we met with Sonia at Cake Studio, we told her our preferences, and she quickly sketched out our wedding cake.  Then came the most fun part.  Sonia laid out a large platter with 8 cake flavors, 8 fillings, and two ganaches (Sonia had sent us a menu of options that we had narrowed to these “few” options).  Sonia gave us tips on how to mix and match, and gave us some of her most popular combinations.  We were in love with nearly all of the flavors and we had a very hard time making a decision.  But after stuffing our faces with delicious cake, we decided to go with dark chocolate cake with mocha filling and dark chocolate truffle ganache for two of the tiers, and mocha cake with cookies and cream filling and dark chocolate ganache for the other tiers.

We loved working with Sonia from Cake Studio – she made the whole process simple and fun. We cannot wait to taste our cake on our wedding day!

Note: Cake Studio has just started a Cake School! They are offering cake making and decorations classes. So make sure to contact Cake Studio for more info!