I love fairytale vibes, I mean, your wedding day basically is a fairytale, right?! That's exactly what I wanted this styled shoot to feel like. I wanted to give couples a bright pastel color scheme to work with, and show off some of the most elegant and luxorius feeling decor. I'd call this a mix between a Bridgerton and garden style wedding! I really like the light and airy feel, and I wanted the color scheme to match that. I opted for baby blues, lilac, blush pink, sage green, and a muted yellow for all my inspiration. I pulled looks from Pinterest that gave off a victorian and parisinne vibe, and tried to build my ideas off those.

The Midnight Gem is one of my favorite venues in Eastern Iowa, I love the clean, sleek, and modern asethetic, but all looks aside, this venue has one of the best staff teams I’ve ever seen at a venue. Each team member is incredibly sweet, and you can tell that each person genuinely cares about your wedding day as if it were their own. They take care of so much for you on your big day, ensuring that all the tables and chairs are set up for you the day before your wedding, stocking the mini fridges in your bridal suites with your favorite drinks, and even coordinating your vendors to ensure everyone knows the plan and timeline moving forward on the big day. Their email response times are great, and their venue managers even meet with the couples as often as they want for venue tours to plan out the space before the wedding.

Another feature they have that I like, is that they offer two bridal suites. While most venues only offer one, or they give the groomsmen a ridiculously small room to get ready in, the Midnight Gem has two very large rooms for both parties. Each suite is modern luxe and offers natural lighting, with a few other fun features. For the bridal suite, the girls have a 5 mirror vanity to sit at and do their hair and makeup with not only natural light, but vanity lights as well. They also have a large couch and coffee table to lounge on and mingle while getting ready, along with a private outside lounge, en suite bathroom, floor length mirros, a dress rack for everyone’s dress, and a mini fridge that is stocked to the brim with mimosas and other beverages you like. Seems hard to beat, right? Well for the guys, their suite includes a large couch and flat screen to watch whatever game is on tv, or they can hook their xbox up and play games while the ladies are getting ready. They also have a poker table, en suite bathroom, floor length mirror, a rack for everyone’s suit, a mini fridge stocked with everyone’s favorite beers, and access to their patio area where they have a putting green to play a bit of golf.

The Details

I gave TandemHart free range in creating the invitations and other stationary; afterall, I'm a wedding planner- I have no expirience with graphic design whatsoever. But like always, they completely knocked it out of the park! We stuck with ivory invitations that had gold accents since we were using so much color elsewhere, which overall really made the invitations stand out in all the detail shots!

For these detail shots we wanted to keep things simple, so we stuck with the major pieces such as the invitation suite, bridal bouquet, jewelry, wax stamp, bridal veil, loose floral, and a spool of ivory lace to add some extra depth to the photos. I always reccommend the bride and groom set aside a box of all the little things that they want included in their detail shots, like their invitation suite, wedding jewelry, perfume and cologne, etc. It helps make sure everything is together so the photographer can get shots of them quickly instead of having to hunt for all the little details. The jewelry was provided by Elegance on 5th and each piece was hand picked to match our theme. Since we had a few different outfit changes for the shoot, we got to mix and match our favorite jewelry pieces and show off different ways to style each piece in these detail shots.

Tablescape #1

For the decor, I was using a bright pastel color scheme and aiming for a victorian/Bridgerton vibe. I wanted the tablecloth to stand out since the decor was simple for this layout, so I seacred on the Nuage website and found this table cloth and immediately fell in love! I liked that the design was faded enough that it didn't pull too much attention from the table decor. For centerpieces I had Tulipsis Floral add in some greenery and stems for the budvases lining the table, and I added in some gold votive candles, taper candles with ivory candlesticks, and a blush wooden table number. I knew I wanted each place setting to feel extremley elegant, like you're sitting down for tea in the Queen's palace, so I placed gold beaded chargers with vintage floral plates, silk napkins, blush water goblets, and gold silverware, topped with a stunning menu created by TandemHart. Overall this was one of my favorite tables of the entire shoot- I thought it was stunning and the use of all the colors fit together perfectly!

Tablescape #2

For the second long table, I wanted to use a lillac linen because I rarely see that color used and I thought it'd fit perfectly with the other decor elements we added to the table. I paired it with a blush table runner to draw eyes to the center of the table where all the decor is located. I had Tulipsis Floral bring 2x smaller floral arrangements for this table that used light pastel colors to really bring the entire color scheme into this design. I then added some taper candles to add height to the table, and used mismatched candles sticks which where a mix of baby blue and ivory. I then placed some different colored votive candles around the center of the table, to really create a romantic feel, along with a few mismatched budvases so the floral didn't feel so sparse. I wanted to create that elegant feel at each place setting again, but I wanted it to be completely different from the previous table, so while I still had the beaded gold chargers, vintage floral plates, and gold silverware, I also added a sage crinkled napkin and a differently styled menu that I had tied blush lace around. Although it was a completely different setup, it was still similar enough that both tables fit together perfectly.

Tablescape #3

For the final table setup, I wanted to showcase a round table setup. I used one of my personal favorite centerpieces: the tall gold floral stand with hanging glass orbs and realistic LED candles. I know a lot of couples are afraid to use large centerpieces because they think their guests won't be able to see each other, but with this setup, the stand is tall enough that guests can see right through it without having their view obstructed. I paired the floral stand with different sized taper candles with baby blue candlesticks, gold votives, blush flower petal votives, and a few mismatched bud vases to help spread floral around the table. For the place settings, I again used the gold beaded charger plates, but I paired them with plain white plates, a differently styled dinner menu, sage water goblets, gold flatware, and a lilac napkin tied with a strand of greenery. The linens I used were a plain baby blue round linen, topped with a sequin swirled ivory overlay. I loved the idea of having another specialy designed linen, but wanted the pattern to again be muted enough so it wouldn't pull focus from the centerpieces.

The Headtable

I had a very specific vision for the headtable right from the very beginning. As mentioned above, one of my favorite decor elements is to have the hanging glass orbs with LED candles- I just think it looks so cool! Especially when the lights go down for the dancing hour! So I started with the idea of having the hanging orbs involved, and having them hang off a type of trellis arbor behind the headtable. Then I thought about placing floral all along the top and having it flow down in a sort of whimsical way. I had Tulipsis Floral also place a large floral arrangement at the front of the headtable too, to really give off a gardeny feel. I wanted this space to feel like a fairy garden with all the candle light and floral, because what's more magical than a fairy garden?! I placed a vintage princess loveseat with gold trim behind the headtable for the bride and groom to sit in to give off that luxurious and elegant feel. Then for their place settings they had gold beaded chargers with vintage floral plates, blush silk napkins, and gold flatware, topped with a stunning menu created by TandemHart. The linens used for the headtable were also from Nuage . We used a tan linen for the underlay, and the 'White Claire' overlay for the top.

The Lounge

We set up a stunning seating area for guests to enjoy during the reception, but it also served as a really cool photo op for the bride and groom! Borrow My Vintage brought in all the furniture, while Tulipsis Floral went in behind the movers and added all these beautiful floral arrangements! I went in and added some pillar candles to give it that romantic and homey feel, and viola, a perfect seating setup! We even ended up taking the mauve couch outside for sunset photos which turned out INCREDIBLE! If you add any furniture pieces to your wedding day, I highly recommend you take some solo pictures with it outside. I mean, just look at how cool this photo turned out after we brought the couch outside (photo included below). Since the florist attatched the top righthand floral arrangement to the couch via clamps, it was super easy to move and we didn't have to do any flower fluffing after the move. The bottom lefthand arrangement was a floor piece so we just picked it up and moved it outside next to the couch. As I'm sure you can tell by the photo, we also had some bubble guns we used during the sunset photos and the pictures turned out so cute! I thought the bubbles added such a cool fairytale vibe to the overall style of the photos, and the bride loved it! I wanted to include the bubble guns in this shot because I wanted to show couples that you can reuse things (like bubble guns) for your staged grand exit AND your bridal photos!

The desserts

I deceded to go with Ami's Cakes for the cake design because she has such an incredible eye for detail. Ami would call me and ask what my vision was for the cake, and all I could really say was 'pastel, fairytale, bridgerton vibes' and thats it. I trusted her to create something truly unique and stunning, that I just wanted to give her creative freedom to make whatever she wanted- and sometimes that's best. Beacsue when you give an artist creative freedom, thats when something truly incredible gets made.
For the dessert setup, I knew I wanted to bring in a piece from Borrow My Vintage, and when I saw this vintage white vanity, I knew it'd be perfect for the dessert display. I told Tulipsis Floral about my vision of having floral cascade out of the drawers, but never in a million years did I think it was going to look this good! They really took my idea and made it look even cooler than what I pictured in my head. The rest of the desserts were made by The Hangry Lady, because I wanted a very unique dessert setup, almost like something from a tea party. I got these really cool glass boxes with gold trim that we displayed the desserts in, and we staggered them at different heights to really add in depth to the dessert table. We also placed a vintage mirror under the cake stand and displayed dessert cakes on that as well, which was so cool and unique! I then placed some extra taper candles and votive candles on the vanity to offer up some candlelight to give off a romantic feel.

Welcome Table

We used the same setup for the entry table, but we moved a few things around. We still had the vintage vanity and floral arrangements, and we even decided to keep the cake displayed there because it was such a stunning piece that I felt like it had to be shown off as much as possible! I used 2x whitewashed vintage windows on the entry table to display different things. The window in the bottom right was used to display the seating chart, while the window atop the vanity is a new wedding trend I wanted to try out. I call it 'Love Through Generations', and the point of it is to display the wedding photos of your family members over the years! I displayed photos of my great grandma, all 3x sets of my grandparents, my parents wedding, along with my older sisters and cousins wedding. It was really fun to go hunting for old wedding photos through my grandparents photo albulms, and it was really cool to see the whole thing put together! I included one of my favorite wedding trends as well, the photo guestbook with an instamax polaroid camera. Couples have been loving the idea of a photo guestbook where guests take a photo of themselves and tape it in a scrapbook while writing their well wishes to the couple. It's way more fun and interactive than a normal guestbook, and it's more fun to look back on! In the bottom lefthand corner you can see some vintage blue luggages stacked on one another. That's my version of an 'Attending from Heaven' table with a little bit of spice (better photo below).

Memorial Table

Most couples just stick some photos up in the corner of a room of their lost loved ones, but I wanted to do something different; something more unique. Afterall, you have this huge decor setup, why not do something more unique for your memorial table? So, I stacked some vintage blue suitcases and placed the photos of lost loved ones on different angles of that, along with my 'Attending from Heaven' sign. If I had more space on the vanity I probably would've placed it on that, but honestly it looked really cool on the ground next to the entry table! It helped add in different heights to the space, and that pop of blue looked really good in the photos! It helped the area look more full, like the decor was planned out very strategically trying to cover every blank space the venue had. However It would've looked good on a low side table too, off to the side of the entry table like it is.

Cocktail Hour

I wanted to do something unique for guests when the entered the venue, and although I love the idea of a champagne wall, they're not that popular anymore. Most guests don't drink champagne, but I've seen such cool champagne wall displays that I knew I wanted to use one, but for a different purpose. Thats how I got the idea of a charcuterie wall. I had The Hangry Lady put together some charcuterie cups, and we displayed them on the champagne wall for guests to grab as they entered the venue for cocktail hour. It was such a cute idea, and while The Hangry Lady had her logo sticker on the cups, we easily could've changed it to be a monogram of the couples initals or something else on each cup instead! Then to the right of that we had another example of a seating chart, this time using a vintage gold mirror. I LOVE using mirrors in wedding setups, and it could be something as simple as using your free standing mirror in your bedroom for your wedding (lord knows I've used my home mirrors for weddings before). For this display though, I had TandemHart print out ivory namecards with gold foil, then I hung them on the mirror with gold wax stamps I had created earlier in the week. I hung them on the mirror using double sided tape so they were easy for guests to take off, and didn't leave residue on the mirror afterwards.

Getting Ready

The bridal makeup is easily some of my favorites that I've ever seen. I love that we were able to incorporate pearls in the brides hair, and they stuck surprisingly well throughout the day! Her makeup was a simple wedding day glam, and we had the hair stylist give her an updo to really show off her jewelry and the wedding dress. The lace bridal robe shes wearing is a special robe from Jocelyn Taylor Bridal that goes with a specific dress, but an alterations specialist could make you a lace bridal robe as well from the remnants of your wedding dress. The white silk PJ's I bought off Amazon, and I steamed them the day before so there would be no crinkles. The bride also got a spray tan a few days before from Spray Tans By Megan so she would have that nice wedding day glow (the groom also got a spray tan so he could match the bride in their wedding photos).

I had a special vision in mind for the bridal getting ready portraits way before the shoot even came together. I knew I wanted the bridal portraits to be feminine, giving off girl boss and bad b**** vibes. Like 'Yas gurl I'm getting married!'. I wanted her to pop the champagne and give us the feel that this is HER day, that SHE is the main event. I think that the heart shaped sunglasses really helped pull of the vibe, especially when the bride popped some champagne and poured it in her super cute coupe glass- with her pinky out like the royal princess she is. And her ring from Elegance on 5th gave such a timeless and classy look to the photo with the giant pearl, I just felt like overall these photos were stunning and were easily some of my favorite!

Overall this shoot was so much fun to do, and thanks to my incredible vendor team they really helped me pull off my vision! To check out more photos from the shoot, you can check out the gallery below, or head back to my website and look through my photo gallery.

Vendor Team:

Venue: The Midnight Gem @themidnightgem

Photographer: Nicole Laing @nicolelaingphoto & The W Photography @thewphotography_

Planner & Designer: Elizabeth Bliss Events @elizabeth_bliss_events

Décor: Elizabeth Bliss Events @elizabeth_bliss_events email: elizabethblissevents@gmail.com

& 11:11 Event Co. @1111eventco email: Hello@1111EventCo.com

Linens: Nuage Designs @nuagedesignsinc

Furniture: Borrow My Vintage @borrowmyvintage email: BorrowMyVintage@gmail.com

Florist: Tulipsis Floral @tulipsisfloral

Stationery: TandemHart @tandem_hart

Desserts & Charcuterie: The Hangry Lady @thehangryladyy

Cake: Ami's Cakes @amiscakesgf email: ami.frank12@gmail.com

Dress: Jocelyn Taylor Bridal @jocelyntaylorbridalandprom email: info@jocelyntaylorbridal.com

Suit: Skeffington's @skeffingtons_formalwear

Hair & MU: Aurora Blush @aurorablushbeauty email: hello@aurorablush.com

Rings & Jewelry: Elegance on 5th @elegance_on5th email: info@eleganceon5th.com

Spray Tan: Spray Tans By Megan @spraytansbymegan email: mobilespraytansbymegan@gmail.com

The Midnight gem Wedding Venue

Address: 2613 Ders Drive NW, Swisher, IA, United States, Iowa
Email: info@themidnightgem.com
The Midnight Gem
Costs: Peak Wedding Season $6,500 +, Off Season $4,500+
Capacity of 300 guests
Amenities included: Tables & chairs, indoor and outdoor ceremony space, bar setup and staff