Museum of Art / Fort Lauderdale

Feeling a bit homesick for New York, I visited Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art and discovered a very unexpected surprise. The museum resides in a fabulous building boasting nearly 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, designed by the famous Edward Larrabee Barnes. (He designed the IBM building in Manhattan, and also happens to have taught at my alma mater, Pratt Institute.)

Proving that there is some fantastic art outside of NYC, the museum is bringing in incredible exhibits, has launched a fabulous studio program, and their permanent collection is really great. I have to admit, I felt some pride in my new home.

Enough gushing.

The point of me mentioning all of this, is that it came to my attention today that you can rent the museum out for WEDDINGS! The location is perfect. It's located along the beautiful Las Olas Boulevard, which has plenty of shops and great restaurants for your guests to visit, and the iconic Riverside Hotel is just a few blocks away.

I'm officially in love.

For more info you can check out the Museum's website: http://moaflnsu.org

or contact the museum's special events director at 954-262-0249

Cait's Custom Ring

I was talking with my dear friend Cait today who recently got engaged (and got into Harvard for her residency! Congrats!) We made a completely custom engagement ring for Cait with admittedly very little direction from her. I'm not sure if she even knew what she wanted, but we were able to interpret her clues into a ring that she says is perfect, even though she wasn't able to describe it completely. She thought it might be helpful to other brides-to-be to see the process that we went through together in making her ring - so here it is.

She knew that she liked these two Tacori rings, but she felt like something was off about them. She liked the portion that holds the center diamond on the first one, and she liked the band on the second one.

So we drew up some sketches and settled on this one. We decided to add diamonds to the prongs, we extended the twist down the band, and we made the portion that holds the center diamond feel more integrated into the ring.

Next we made a model of the ring in wax to make sure that Cait liked the proportions of the ring. We later used this wax model to cast the ring in platinum.

And, Cait's final one-of-a-kind ring.

Wedding Favors

I had friends in from New York and the other night we were looking through some wedding books that I bought for the studio. We began talking about wedding favors and we stood divided on whether they were a MUST or a MUST NOT. I like the idea of giving them, but I must say I've gotten some terrible favors, like a jelly candle in a miniature champagne glass. What are you supposed to do with that? I threw it away, but I admit that I felt some guilt.

So, we came to a consensus. Edible wedding favors are almost always a good idea. So, if you're going with wedding favors (which I think is only polite) go with food!

Some of my favorites:

Miniture bottles of Vermont Maple Syrup (My sister-in-law gave these away at her wedding. She's been known to carry a bottle of true maple syrup in her pu

rse so they made for a cute story as well.)

Miniture bags of fresh roasted coffee beans. This one is great because you can do it yourself. You can get the burlap bags here and I recommend my favorite coffee by Gorilla Coffee in Brooklyn.

Ohhhh...and you can never go wrong with Signature Favor Boxes of Jacque Torres chocolates!

Sarah Seven

I've long been a fan of Portland, Oregon designer Sarah Seven. She has a fantastic new 2010 Bridal collection, and I adore her ready to wear! She uses all natural fabrics, some of them vintage recycled and 5% of all sales are donated to charity! Ugghh...I'm in love!

Work that dress.

I've never been a fan of "trash the dress" photos, but I love Ashley Brockinton's "work that dress" sessions. They're a great second chance option if you weren't thrilled with your wedding photos. Can you believe that Lisa in the pictures below is wearing a dress from the $99 rack at David's Bridal!? These pictures give me a little flutter they're so beautiful.

Good things come...

to those who wait.

A little delay in opening Ring Finger Studio - but I'll keep you posted on our progress.

On a happier note, March 7th marked one year of marriage to my adorable husband Chris!

We decided to take a last minute trip to Sarasota to celebrate. The highlight (other than spending some much needed quality time with my hubs) was finding the Sarasota Architectural Salvage Company. I was so excited and overwhelmed by the abundance of crazy good stuff in there! Basically, they go into buildings all over the world that are about to be torn down and they salvage as much as they can. Stained glass windows, old hinges, doors, chandeliers, columns....

I considered renting a trailer so I could fill it and bring it back to Fort Lauderdale, but I would have felt badly making Chris do so much manual labor on our little vacation.

Oh, that place was the stuff of my dreams!

Sneak Peek

The new website is under construction, but I wanted to provide a sneak peak at the beautiful photos that will be featured on the site. They were taken by my dear friends Ashley and Sam at Ashley Brockinton Photography. Aside from their amazing photos, they've been so supportive and have been a great help to us being able to get Ring Finger Studio off of the ground. Here's a sneak peak of some of the shots they took for Ring Finger Studio.

With it being nearly a year since we first met Sam and Ashley, when they did our engagement and wedding photos, I thought I'd include a link to the slideshow of images from our wedding so you all can see what truly talented and inspired photographers they are!

Our Wedding by Ashley Brockinton Photography