Louella Court

Flavor favorites pt. I + Thanks to The Bride's Cafe

So here is my Two Paperdolls "behind the scenes" confession. Whenever we print a menu card for one of our brides, which we do quite frequently, I take it over to my desk, tune everything else out and scour the meal choices to decide EXACTLY what I would sample if I were a guest. And after I've made my choice between the chocolate truffle wedding cake and the passion fruit sorbet (who am I kidding, I'm going with the chocolate truffle) I can't help but mentally catagorize the menu on my list of favorites. Is this menu in the top ten? Maybe even the top five? It's cut-throat competition really.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a menu that undoubtedly makes the top five ... I daresay it even creeped into my top two (my favorite of course being my own ... maybe I'm a tiny bit biased). But any menu with a French Fry bar deserves a second look, and when I saw how creative our clients Jaclyn and Dan were getting with their wedding menu it got me thinking ... Thinking that maybe it's time we share a few collaborations between our clients and the extremely talented group of caterers they work with. So without further ado, I present you with my two favorite Two Paperdolls & Louella wedding menus. And please stay tuned for part II; next week I'll post the rest of my top five!

• Cat and Justin (wink, wink) - scroll down the link to see our wedding story

Design by Two Paperdolls

The only menu of the top five that I've actually tasted, the highlights for me were the shrimp and grits and the chocolate wedding cake with chocolate praline filling. Neither of us ate more than a bite or two at the reception, but we were lucky to be sent away with a serious assortment of to-go boxes. In the end, our first married moments alone were spent munching (me on the shrimp, Justin on the crab cakes) in our hotel room. And my mom managed to escape the reception with the entire top tier of chocolate cake, which made a fantastic breakfast dessert the next morning.

For all of this we can thank the caterers at the Charleston Place Hotel. They came up with the perfect assortment of Southern treats for vegetarian and meat-eaters alike, as well as rolls and sashimi for my sushi-addict hubby. We were luckier still to find the most delicious wedding cake around by Lady Fingers in Charleston.

• Jaclyn and Dan - *see more on this creative couple's wedding at The Bride's Cafe

Design by Two Paperdolls

Jaclyn and Dan did a fabulous job of putting together a chic reception, while maintaining a playful atmosphere for their guests, and their menu is a perfect example. It's no surprise that this creative meal comes from one of our favorite area caterers, Leila at Feastivities. While I wasn't at this wedding, I have been lucky enough to snack on Feastivities treats at several bridal shows, so I know that these culinary creations looked AND tasted amazing.

Highlights of this menu have to be the previously mentioned French Fry bar with traditional, waffle, and sweet potato to name a few. Not to mention the gazpacho shooters, watermelon kabobs, or carrot AND devil's food cupcakes. Is your mouth watering yet?

*We'd like to thank Janie at The Bride's Cafe for including us in her post about this amazing wedding!

National Stationery Show 2008 - part 1

Okay, so we're a little behind in posting about our recent jaunt to NYC for the National Stationery Show! We've been pretty busy here on Louella Court since wedding season is now in full-swing  and we have some cool new projects in the works.  Two Paperdolls and Louella Press are constantly undergoing changes and improvements, and the excitement going on around here this time of the year certainly keeps us on our toes!

We'll tell you about some of our exciting new projects soon, but for now, let's go back a few weeks to the NSS, shall we?

This was the third show for the ladies of Louella Press, but as the newbie around here it was my first time attending the show as a part of Louella (and actually, my first time altogether).  Walking into the Javits Center for the first time was certainly overwhelming.  It is so massive!  When people told me that it takes days to really be able to walk through the show and see every single booth, they weren't kidding.

Our friends from Evantine Design made our booth design become a reality.  Basically, this is what it looked like on day one of set-up:

After a lot of hard work building and setting up, we were pretty excited with the final result (click on any image to see it full-size):

The bright orange carpet may not have been our first choice had it all been up to us ;-)

We love how the bar turned out!

Our engraved Invitation wall shows just a handful of the unique color combinations that our clients came up with over the last year. It's always a thrill to see how the look of one of our designs completely changes when our clients put their own color twist on things.

The press kit ladies all dressed up and ready to go!

After everything was all set up on Saturday afternoon, Vanessa went to SoHo to do some shopping while Maggie, Rachel, Cat and I went to Dos Caminos to celebrate -- with free Margaritas!

Maggie & Rach

Cat & Brooke

Stay tuned for part 2 to see what fabulous (we think so!) new products we introduced at the show this year.

Custom design tips on Style Me Pretty

While we love the idea of working with a custom invitation designer, we also realize what a daunting task this can be for a bride and groom. We've compiled a few tips for making the process a bit easier, and you can find them in a two part guest post over at one of our very favorite wedding blogs, Style Me Pretty! The tips are being posted in two parts, check out part two here.