fatamadrina does white

This year I decided to exhibit at a local wedding fair event, after a long while. To be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of such events in this Country, especially from a service vendor point of view, but I felt like I needed to reconnect with the local industry and I had been toying with the idea of an all-white decor which felt just perfect for such an occasion!

Since last year, I’ve been streamlining my workflow and campaigning for a ‘less is more’ approach in my daily life. I’m positively downsizing commitments, splurges, projects and the focus I’ve gained from this process has been a-mazing, actually allowing me to dive deeper into the things I care about the most. To me, less things in my life also meant clearing the so many inspirational feeds I received, which actually made my creative inspiration feel drained. ‘Less’ has become going back to a blank canvas, to white space. So my yearning for less has soon morphed in a yearning for white.

I craved white.

An inspiring, promising, nuanced white that could represent what my consultancy can be to you guys getting married. A white canvas on which we can write your own story.

moodboard for the fatamadrina booth © fatamadrina

So I decided to build a whole booth decor on a white scheme. I started off with a few magazine clippings I had kept (yep, I still read paper magazines and collect clippings. Very retro, innit?!), but I soon moved on to creating a Pinterest board where I could collect any predominantly white image and/or detail that caught my attention.

Paper Poms tassel garland ph. Barbara Pederzini

Then I started adding subtle colours: the gold foil of a wall sticker, the powder pink of a satin ribbon, the milk white of lace. It might not be incidental that these were the very colours of my first ever tissue paper tassel garland, which I had ordered from Paper Poms at the beginning of the 2013 season with a gut feeling that it’d come handy! And this is how I ended up with a colour palette which was effectually a moodboard in itself. From that to sketches to the actual project it was a very smooth process, not unlike the one when I help brides and grooms to design their wedding.

design sketch by Barbara Pederzini

On January 18th and 19th, couples visiting the local wedding fair were welcomed in a conversation corner which was slightly different from the one I’d envisioned (in the meantime, banqueting chef Bruna Musso had suggested we shared a booth, since we work so well together), but still very much true to the original concept. There was a lot of white, a few soft colours to complete it, plenty of atmosphere and warmth, a blanket/cushions covered sofa, and pictures from my weddings rotating on a screen.

ph. Barbara Pederzini

It was a very gratifying week-end and the surprising news is the ‘fatamadrina does white’ pin board is still very much alive and thriving. Could it be that I’m getting all minimal and whitey?!