Christmas with the Leahys

 

Every year my mother comes up with the best Christmas decorations in their condo in Baltimore.  Here are a few of my favorites taken with my Instagram app on the iPhone....  Happy Holidays!

Shannon Leahy interviewed for Carroll Magzine

When I was home over the Thanksgiving holiday my mother and I gave a joint interview about decorating for the holidays to the local magazine in the county I grew up in.  Here is an excerpt but you can read the article here.

Deck Your Halls With Boughs of Style

Going Green
Not only is “green” a traditional holiday color, but it also characterizes a new trend in decorating. San Francisco-based event planner Shannon Leahy, daughter of Westminster resident and interior designer Susan Leahy, said that some companies, such as West Elm (www.westelm.com), offer decorations made out of recycled materials. She added that people are also making the eco-friendly choice to purchase live Christmas trees that can be planted after the Christmas holiday.

Building Collections
Many people build holiday collections, from miniature Santas and nutcrackers to retro ornaments and angels. Depietro said the collections serve several purposes: among them being the attachment of personal meanings and memories.

“I once decorated a home for a woman who has hundreds of nutcrackers,” said Depietro. “They are in all sizes, from all places around the world and they are in every corner of her home during the holidays – down the staircase, on the mantle – and she had stories about where she got them over the years.”

Shannon and Susan Leahy agreed that collections are popular holiday decorations. Susan said she has been collecting crystal glass ornaments for 25 years, and Shannon collects all-glass Santas.

“I have a huge collection of glass ornaments,” said Susan Leahy. “So I start with those and then add a color theme that I carry throughout the rest of the house. Last year I used Magnolia leaves and copper, it was beautiful.”

Shannon Leahy added that copper is really easy to work with and has a color that offers an alternative to the more traditional gold and silver.

Wedding Monogram

 One of my clients has recently been going through the process of creating her monogram for her wedding.  Monograms have been around for centuries represent and a beautiful way to express the union that marriage creates. 

For a wedding, your monogram should not be used until after the ceremony.  So on printed materials like the invitation it's important that you don't use the full monogram, but for printed materials at the wedding you can.  Using just your first initials in the invitation is acceptable.

There are many ways to go about the process of creating a monogram.  You can draw it yourself, use a computer program or a monogram designer.  For her wedding the bride and I worked with Caroline at Monogram Inc. in New York.

 For the first round, Caroline at Monogram Inc. submitted the following three designs as a starting point.  The bride further described what she had in mind, a substantial "H" with a smaller "C" and "D" hooked onto it.  Then the next three rounds further narrowed the look.

 And the last round would be the derivation acceptable for the save the date and invitation.  Finally we had our monogram look...

 Here is the monogram used on the save the date in copper and artemis green hand engraved by The Printery:

 

The bride and groom will use their full monogram on the printed wedding materials as well as items in their home such as beautiful monogrammed linens, like below:

Stunning, right!?

Sound advice...

I really enjoyed this post over at Snippet and Ink from A Practical Wedding.  I think this is fabulous advice, originally posted here.

If you’re reading this website, chances are very good that you’ve been called a bride for months and months. But here is a newsflash: you’re not a bride. Not yet, anyway.

For most of us, the liminal state of bride-dom lasts for about ten hours. It’s long enough to put on the dress, say the vows, transform yourself from a single person to part of a brand new family, and then party like it’s going out of style. And then it’s over, and that’s a good thing. So the question is, how do we take those ten hours and experience them to their fullest? How do we get what we need out of this liminal state, and move forward with minimal regrets and a lifetime of memories?
In short: you need to really show up emotionally, let go of all the planning you worked so hard on, and embrace imperfection.

That sounds gauzy and hippy-zen and impossible, right? Well, it’s really none of those things. So, without further ado, here are the things you should know about your wedding day that no one will ever tell you. (Except, um, I’m telling you, so you win.)

Your wedding day might not feel like you expect it to feel.

After reading tons of wedding magazines and zillions of wedding blogs, it’s hard not to have an idea of how your wedding day is going to feel. The thing is, that idea might be dead wrong.

First, I think we all hope our wedding day is going to feel pretty and chic. The one problem with this plan is that you can’t feel pretty, because pretty isn’t an emotion. Trouble! As my husband warned me before the wedding, it’s really important to differentiate between how wedding pictures look and how your wedding day will feel. Our wedding pictures look dreamy and beautiful, and for that I’m grateful. Our wedding ceremony, on the other hand, felt really gritty and raw. The ceremony felt intense, but not necessarily happy. And that was ok. There was plenty of time for joy at the party, and in the weeks of bliss to come.

So on the day itself, do everything you can to resist classifying your wedding day emotions as right or wrong. Maybe like me, your life will change hard and fast, in a moment of gritty intensity. Maybe you’ll ride a wave of joy, but just feel like you threw an awesome party, nothing life changing. Maybe you’ll so overwhelmed that you’ll weep for hours. Maybe it will be something totally different, and even more unexpected. Whatever you feel, let yourself feel it. It may not be at all what you expected, and that may be a blessing.

Your family is crazy, and that’s ok.

I know right? You’re sitting here reading this thinking, “My family isn’t crazy, my family is lovely! And besides, it’s my wedding day so they’ll be on their best behavior.” Well, sort of. Your family probably is lovely (mine is), but you know how everyone acts in high stress situations? You know how your mom freaks out on Christmas Day about having the table set just right, and you have the brother who’s super delightful but slightly socially awkward in large groups, and you have the two uncles that don’t really get along that well after the four whiskies they always insist on having? Yeah. That stuff is going to happen on your wedding day, because weddings are stressful. But here is the thing, it doesn’t have to matter.

Being a bride has certain perks, and one of those perks is being given a free pass to not give a sh*t. If your mom starts freaking out while you’re getting ready, have a sister or a best friend who’s tasked with pulling her aside and telling her to breathe. If your uncles start fighting with each other after their fourth glass of whisky, you have permission to just turn around and walk away.

You’re not going to be able to make everyone happy, and that’s fine. For ten hours of your life, your job is to protect your own experience. Your job is to refuse to get emotionally involved when people get stressed, and to just walk away and let it go. It’s tricky, but it only lasts for a few short hours. Tomorrow you can get totally pissed at your mom when she’s acting a fool, but for today, it’s not your problem.

What happens next is so much richer.

Because planning a wedding is a giddy mix of beautiful things, mixed with a serious dose of pain in the *ss, it’s easy to get focused on This One Day We Spent So Much Time And Money Planning. But that day is not the point. Your marriage is the point. So as your wedding day approaches, remember that this too shall pass. And what you’ll be left with is your marriage, which is infinitely more beautiful than the most stunning wedding dress in the world.

My wedding day? It was one of the great joys of my life. But the happiest day of my life? That was probably a lazy honeymoon day with my husband, drinking whiskey and looking at castles. Or maybe it was just any old lazy Sunday, reading the New York Times, lounging around the house… and oh yeah, not planning a wedding.

I planned this dinner party...

just kidding.  but i totally would!