Lessons

Lesson Info

Q&A with wedding designer Daniela Fagét

we're looking for a venue original we had looked at a few different venue is what we really wanted what laura the bride really wanted was just really all that matters is she really wanted a raw space and I for one love raw space where we can really take with the bride and groom one and create that so the less of space has in it already the better for me as a designer to be able to create what the bride and groom want and so when we found this space I was really excited because it had cem brick walls that had some just big big tall ceilings and I immediately started being able to think of you know let's hang this here and that's through this here laura and billy style is very eclectic they like some vintage things they like things a little bit contemporary and modern and so this kind of space really lends itself to that so you know as soon as we walked in I said yes this is it and I think some people had some reservations because it isn't really raw space it's not a beautiful hotel ball...

room it's not very polished but I think it lends itself very well tio what billion laura wanted and it was very easy to take their love and their passions and their ideas of style and to create that in this space so we did some really fun things we drape some of the bear windows with some beautiful silk fabrics in the colors that they had chosen for their wedding it was important to them that things aren't two matching battery so we took you know different shades of the cobalt blue that she loved so much she's really into the metallic warm kind of brown sugar color so we work with copper and a really rich warm gold and so some of the windows and so forth are draped in fabrics which is really pretty and softens up this raw space that we have we took some really beautiful silk linens to drape the tables with we found some really cool chandeliers that laura has been collecting overtime and have hung those at different heights it's in various places so altogether it's just it's very romantic it's eclectic it's kind of kind of vintage yet contemporary feel to it and it's coming together really well so I've got some questions online coming here holly true in the tweet chat room asked how did vendors respond to being rushed you have to execute this and only four weeks during the wedding season what were you thinking well I for one didn't set the date um and I was not yes I wasn't too excited about it being the last week in august either but however I'm always up for a challenge I really like laura and billy I really wanted to work with jasmine I really like the whole idea of what we're doing so I figured that this was a great opportunity and it was really going to be fun to show what we can do in such amount of time but definitely yes some of the plate vendors we reached out to us just like there's no way we can do this is a really busy weekend for us already so sorry we can't help you other people really I call you know this is a great idea this is a great opportunity I want to be involved with this let's see how we can make it work they were very flexible and I think we ended up with a great teama vendors that we're flexible you know that we're creative and that's really what you want in your event team anyway is people who are willing to be creative and flexible and make things work so I've been very happy with who we ended up working with all right and then in the chat room princess actually asked how is the creative life filming of this event affected the set up of the venue and it hasn't been bad about the set up of the venue really um b I think what was most challenging is that there's actually an event happening here tomorrow and the next day and so they were very kind in letting us come to the into the space the day before the event cause I'm sure they'd rather be here setting up right now they were very kind and allowing us to come in and set up our event but what happened is that they came on wednesday set up their event then we had to move all their stuff set up ours and then tonight at eleven we get to tear all our stuff down and return it to the way it was when they set up their stuff so we basically have to you know set a part of it and then set up their event for them so that's been the really challenging spot is doing all of that all at once and actually related to that it is the foodie stas food bloggers conference that's happening in the same spot so I'm not amazing people coming I'm really excited now you do ah design for events well yes yes we do all sorts of corporate events and social events weddings all sorts of things like that so I'm actually you know hoping I get to see a little bit of what happens here tomorrow and sunday as well you put your conference so wholly true says great response thank you about the question earlier about rushing your vendor through four weeks he said looks beautiful in your hard work will be so appreciated by the bride and groom I hope so yeah you know michael is always to go a little bit above and beyond what the bride and groom want you know the bride is usually pretty good at allowing me to find out what it is they want and then I hope to surprise him with it few little extra things that they just makes him feel like oh wow I didn't expect that or it's so much better than I expected if if I see that in their eyes and I know I've done it are there any surprises that you know of that they haven't seen yet that's you but I can't tell you okay you'll find out along with everybody else all right very well it doesn't come out during the ceremony no okay throughout the evening and let's see here what um can you describe a little bit so people were kind of seeing that there's something going on behind the curtains you know maybe you can kind of ah tease us a little bit about what are some of the bigger part of putting this together of what putting this together well one of the logistic things that went wrong there's always something that goes wrong so one of the things we had planned on originally it was that there was gonna be this big beautiful tent outside that was part actually of the few food bloggers conference and we were going to use that tent to allow all the guests to have their cocktail hour outside so you know we were going to set the beautiful ceremony in here allow everyone to go outside have a cocktail underneath his beautiful tent we flip the room towards you know the reception set up and then we allow everyone to come back in we allow jasmine to shoot the room as it's all beautifully set up with no people in its always very important for photographers to get room shots with no people in it there's nothing worse than a beautiful room with like a waiter or aghast or guest but their coat down on a chair just completely mars the whole photo a lot of work on photo shop to try to get rid of that after the fact so we try to clear the room now we don't have the tent what happened you know due to some sort of zoning thing we weren't able to get the tent so later tonight so we can't use it so now we've got one hundred twenty five people in the ceremony that we need to try to keep inside for a cocktail hour while we're flipping the space into a reception set up so that made it as do a lot of changes in how we set up the room you know it made logistics a little bit more difficult so we have I think we figured out a way that we were able to set up most of the reception tables already we've got it set up so that there's a really nice flow from the ceremony set up which is absolutely beautiful I'm really excited about the ceremony set up people are going to flow over have some drinks it was actually beautiful outside today was supposed to rain so someone was looking out for laura and billy so we're gonna hope that we can get some of the guest to go outside and enjoy the nice weather while we flipped the space and then clear the room to get allow jasmine to get some really pretty shots of the room and I guess that's something we all get to look forward to is that about things about six o'clock that the room flip happens on time five thirty five forty five six o'clock depending on how you know how long it takes all the guest to come inside releases and when we get to start the ceremony so something you know like the taping of this what what makes the big difference is that is as every guest comes and they need a sign a release so that slows the process down usually guests will think to arrive fifteen to twenty minutes before the ceremony so they'll still do that but then we have to get them to sign releases so even though the invitation say five o'clock ceremony we've planned that ceremony actually starting around five fifteen to allow for that to happen and there's a great one that came up from the chat room stephen j photo jasmine has been talking a lot about how to engage vendors before they for referral resource so as a photographer how would one approach you the wedding designer to get their name out would you contact before after during the wedding just passed him a business card not the wedding honestly if you're a photographer and you try to have me something during the wedding it's going to get stuck in a bag down my shirt who knows but it's the likelihood that I'll find it afterwards and remember is not good so contact me before wedding is great after a wedding following up is great what a designer wants to see in terms of their toes and they want to see beautiful shots of their design you know they want to see beautiful shots down the table of close ups of the flowers they want to see you whole room shots again without people in and if you can document those things and make the designer's work look amazing and get them that they're going to want to hire you and they're going to want to recommend you to the writing room so that's what we're looking for so it appears do you have some photographers do you have your own list of photographers that you like to refer that you know will make you look good yes I do here locally yeah well but then I like all those people I don't mention angry you know but but maybe we can put a twist on that what is it that they do that make that put some on your short list nothing who they are you know how do you pick your short list of doctors you want makes you work well some of the photographers I work with a lot here in seattle is bradley hanson azure uh john and joseph those are a few that pop to me because I've worked with him lately they're all amazing and they go the extra mile they make sure they get those shots they get the bouquet shop that you know I'm looking for that's going to end up in the magazine because a lot of our work doesn't end up in magazines but it's only gonna end up in the magazine if they have that editorial style to them if there's a beautiful book a shot if there's that sexy bride and groom shot of theirs that room shot with all the lighting all the candles are lit versus sometimes a photographer will come in and try to do a room shot with the candles aren't lit yet so no magazine's gonna accept that so if photographer has the id in the the knowledge to make sure that everything set before they take that photo and that photo has that editorial sail to it I'm going to love it the magazine's gonna love it and everyone's going to get published so that's a wonderful thing to have so those three photographers as an example that I mentioned they do all those things and then they get me the images they say here's all the images from the wedding we've picked some of those images that you like which ones do you prefer will touch up those well you know we'll put him in a magazine or you could you know submit them to the magazine and then we take it from there but they get the images to me they're not the type of from photographer who goes okay well I shot the wedding if you want some images you know they're thirty dollars apiece if you're gonna charge me for photographs and I'm gonna recommend you don't charge me for photographs and actually that reminded me so one thing I know about you from early on from your website yes was that you've been featured a lot of magazines which I know a lot of photographers america I see questions right coming up how do you get in magazine things can get so how do you know do they come to you first of all do you get magazines because you're working with photographers that know how to get in magazines or do you know how getting megan's and you're taking your photography in the magazines with you I am taking them with me almost every magazine that we've been published in the last five years they have been publishing either because the magazine approached me and use their photographers and and it was an editorial if it was a real wedding it's because we submitted it to the magazine I mean maybe once in a rare while once out of you know thirty times photographer submitted their work and I was just lucky that it was my work but I have great relationships with all the local magazines I've been in grace I'm on twice now which is an amazing national publication I have really good connections with those editors and that submit work to them all the time and so if you know if the work is great if my work looks great in the photographer's done their job right we can get them in um I want to come back to that because a lot of people are gonna have questions about that one comment that megan megan megan world will photo asked in tweet chat is how do you keep yourself so calm and collected on such a hectic day I think just time experience I've been doing this for ten years and if I'm really really frantic the bride's going to get frantic all the vendors gonna feel frantic and it's my job to keep everybody even kill even if you know inside I'm really upset about something my job is to figure out how that's going to get fixed to delegate to sell that to someone for that to get fix but it's my job to remain cool and calm and collected and it's just it's everything is going to run so much smoother to be that way that's just the way to be and now there were bunch people that kind of flared up one word but you said you took your photographers with you into publication now clearly that has got to be a symbiotic partnership for that because you can't just take you know so what is a photographer need to give you in order for it to end up having a chance of being published they need to have I mean obviously magazine were the images so like I said what the magazines were looking for is they're looking for great shots of the bride and groom usually they like a vertical shot of the bride and groom because you know in a lot of magazine they'll start that feature off at least for real weddings with a vertical pits page of the bride and groom so do you have a really great sex reshot the bride and groom that really really helps locally I know the magazines like a lot of collecting you know beautiful pictures that show things some of the more national magazines like the really glamorous work eso it really depends on how you take those images but beautiful room shots magazines like all the beauty of what's happening at a wedding anything that makes that wedding unique anything that makes that wedding beautiful anything that makes it kind of eclectic though that's what we want you know there's shot of the dress is always important shot of the rings but the what makes the wedding unique is the color palette the style the flowers you know all that decor is really what says each wedding apart and then the guests as well but most magazines don't like you know a bunch of pictures of guests eating so that doesn't really help but you know for a photographer to send me the shots I could kind of say okay we need a couple shots of this we need some versions of that and then they can go touch those up and then we can send it off to magazines you ever coordinate ahead of time in terms of what magazines you might want to target a particular wedding to or do you pretty much make that decision after the event or how does that process work I do think ahead I mean I usually know when when I'm designing the wedding what magazine is gonna be a good fit with that wedding I mean each magazine you know has own editor and that editor has a certain style and even the do local magazines in seattle there have a very different style and I tend to know what that editor likes and what kind of events they might feature the same thing with the national publications they each have their own spin and a flair for the kinds of weddings they except for the kinds of editorial they accept so as I'm working on a wedding I can kind of tell which you know what what magazine if it's going to end up anywhere where it's gonna end up or if it's going to end up on june bug june bugs an amazing block here it's a national bloc with it's located here in seattle and they do some great features of weddings and so most of my winnings I'll know kind of where they should end up based on the style of the wedding you know I'm seeing a lot of actually these questions coming about a bunch of times we should have addressed this we addressed the beginning but a lot of people getting interested in coming in late what is the wedding designer's name we should we should plug you again you way launched in introduced you and then I got people interested well my name is daniella isabella for d j um that's why many companies named bella signature design isabella's a long family name that goes down throughout generations in my family so that's where the name of the company comes from and we did do some planning mostly designed for me again it's all about the decor and the flowers and taking the essence of the bride and groom and bringing that out throughout the dip core and everything that's at the venue at the reception at the ceremony and making that event really personal some people will say branding and it is somewhat branding the event with the with a couple but for me it's a bit more personal just branding it's really trying to get the essence of the bride and groom and in creating an atmosphere at the event for them right now I saw question go pass and I'm not fast enough to be able to talk to the camera and read everything but there was someone that said something about extorting free work out of out of the driver so I'd love to address that if that question come back up but no we definitely I don't expect photographers to do free work there get already getting paid by the couple but if a za photographer if they want me to look at the images and get those images out two magazines they can't charge me you know that if they're saying oh I'm gonna charge you with thirty dollars a picture well the next photographer you know that I worked on with last week wedding is going to give me free pictures because I'm giving them more work I'm putting them on my website I'm putting them on my block I might be getting them into a magazine so you know if they give let me have access to their photography which is featuring my work then I'm obviously going to push that much more than you know if someone saying well sure you know I took some beautiful pictures and it's going to cost you this much the more that photographer works with me the more I'll help them get ahead as well and I you know watching watching how jasmine works I'm sure we could probably ask that same question of her saturday or sunday I know that a big part of her growing her business is making sure that no professional she work does not have sons of photos in their collection but just have everybody I mean it's a win win you know why you helped promote me I help promote you we all work together and and in general on an event like this everyone this is the team of people that are working together for the bride and groom the bride and groom are our clay and we should all work together and I've worked at venues where you know the cater might say we don't let the candles that's your job because you brought the candles well great but maybe you were in the time rush and you help me light the candles and then later when we need to flip the tables I'll help you move the tables for me all the vendors and event work together as a team to make the bride and groom in all the guests happy and that's how it should work oh and by the way sweet g photo says she loves your necklace so sort of selective in the chat room says in twitter says who benefits most by being published is it is it the designers of the diver who who benefits the most depends I mean in most of the magazines you know they'll be everyone will be listed so it really depends I mean if it's really amazing photography that really stands out because it's beautiful unique then obviously the photographer's gonna benefit from that the designer is going to benefit if there's a great photo of this amazing cake that cake designer is going to benefit from it so I think everybody does you know there's nothing like having you know your name in your work and print and for that to get passed down for that to be on a coffee table as a bride and groom walk into your studio to talk to you about your work so I think everybody benefits by the way one of the things I'd love to tell everybody is there's his amazing software company called to bright lights and it's really amazing it's online I think it's free for most photographers and you go in there and you can put your photos from any wedding up and there's magazines now and other publications that go on there and look for good wedding photos to publish and so this is you know thes two girls that used to be photographers created a software program so that photographers who could just come in and upload their photos since these girls are photographers they make sure that photographers were always credited and now more and more magazines and publications are coming to them to pull work straight from there so it's a great organization to get involved when if you want to be published that's cool so it's a little bit like so it basically gives that it gives a place that if they're if if publications air looking for features you don't want source yeah that's called to bright lights and the only people that are allowed put work up our photographer so I would love to be able to upload images I get from photographers up there but they won't allow me to because they want to make sure that the photographers get all the credit for their work and so you know it's just done very cleanly everyone always gets credited its a great great product and actually there there is a question that came up some jumping around a little bit because because there's a lot of we'll chat epic in the main chat room ask do you mind sharing your bride and groom's average budget for designs mmm mmm mmm oh boy that's a tough one to talk about in public well no I don't mind about talking about it in public but it's it really ranges for my main company bella signature design where we do full design meaning flowers table linens we do lighting draping we tend to start around sixty to seventy thousand dollars for a wedding and on up we've done weddings much bigger we've also done winning smaller let's see there's only fifty guests and they want something really intimate just have a few tables and obviously that cost goes way down and also goes way down if they don't have professional lighting rod and like here we didn't really have like a awful lighting package we have some up lights we have all the lights from all the video equipment but we don't have a full lighting package we have a little bit of draping but we don't have a lot of draping throughout the ceiling for example those are all things that raise the price dramatically so no I know I'm curious a lot of this is just coming together very very rapid I was going to ask what this would've wait too but it's really not even an accurate question it's all based around the constraints of time that we pulled this one together rather yeah so um oh daniel how do you feel about photographers who approach you to recommend clients who may be interested in free photos see what that means daniel how do you feel about photographers who approach you to recommend clients who may be interested in free photos you know this is probably someone who was thinking more along the lines that you're the photographer so I might be ok yeah I'm not sure what you mean for me honestly if I'm going to recommend a photographer to a client I need to make sure that the photographer does great work whether it's shooting my work it's shooting the client you know and every photographer in my opinion and you guys are all photographer so you can let me know but everyone has a different style in my client the bride and groom are gonna have a specific style that they're looking for whether it's a certain kind of documentary style or you know whatever and so I try to figure out you know what is going on what photographer style is going to be a really good match with my client and send my client to those photographers and then allow them to choose so I kind of tried to pre match them a little bit but they have to have you know really good customer service they have to be really personal and be able to make my bride and groom feel really you know comfortable in front of the camera so I have for example have one bride and groom right now that are you know thought we were gonna be really nervous and we're not comfortable in front of the camera and we're doing this engagement session we're really worried they're both really cute really beautiful people but they were really nervous the photographer that working with them made them feel so comfortable some of the best engagement photos I've ever seen so you know it's all about that photographer being able to make them feel comfortable and bringing out the best of them just like in my design who I try to bring something out of the biting room and created in the room the photographer has to be able to make them look their best and those photographers that do that that makes my work look that we work all work well together those air the photographers are recommend and actually that's really getting a lot of interest obviously they had a lot of photographers online with us how often to clients choose your met recommended photographer versus finding their own how you know it's for referrals how often is it coming through you is the way in designer ninety percent of the time it comes because there's so many photographers out there it's and it's not always like the most photographers the best again it comes down to style it comes down to experience and most of our clients you know they might have heard something from another you know friend of theirs that they also recommend but they usually check in with me and you know our wreck commendations usually go a long way in terms of matching them up with the right stella photographer and weeding out through all the different photographers that are out there craig you're laughing I'm laughing because well first of all when you talk about what exit cost sixty to seventy thousand dollars I mean clearly and you've been publishing very high end magazines clearly that's out of the budget range for a lot of people but what someone is just saying hey I'm not saying I'm rich but if I was heck I'd hire her that was just one quarter I smiled about good well answers I mean there's there's different florists in town there is different people in town that have much lower remain just but we do tend to do the higher end luxury weddings and you know since we do offer all these different in house services I do all my own floor I mean I have a team that helps me that we do our own floral we you know work with the linens we bring everything together and because of that you know we end up charging quite a bit because we're doing ah large percentage of the wedding and actually speaking of that um you know one thing keep in mind in terms of you know the budget for the budget range of the weddings were looking at we are bringing one of the top ten wedding photographer in the united states I mean you know I'm pretty sure that the wedding's that jasmine chutes are in that category if not about I have to imagine yes um uh let's see here do you do destination wedding so a couple of blasts give you destination weddings or is that just in seattle area no we do about five destination weddings a year I try to limit it to that because I have young children and I like to spend lots of time with them as well so it's it's always that balance of of home life you know family life of it I loved it a destination weddings I like to travel I like the idea of you know working with a couple from here and and bringing them to the venue and working all the logistics out too so about four to five a year and actually this was this was an interesting question I thought this is this is again coming back to the idea of referrals do you ever invite photographers who you don't currently know to do a portfolio review so you can consider them for future referrals in other words you do yes one of the things we're actually working on us having one day a month where we allow new vendors with this photographer videographers or whatever to come into our studio and show us their workers we get so many requests people call us an email us all year long oh I'd love to be on your list can I just send you a link to my website and honestly like if you want to be recommended way need to see your work either in person or to see your portfolio way needed to sit down and talk with you so we're currently setting up a day a month where we will invite vendors took him in and show us their stuff very cool and actually related to that they're compete people asking from various questions I think you should share a little bit about some of your reese and project because you had a couple of really high end projects we've just been working on people people don't know your name in this audience the way they know jasmine star's name right so you know who the heck are you that you're designing a jasmine star you know event is it is one version of theme so ok yeah so what we're just working on last week I think last night yes sir last week we had a really fun wedding it was filmed by mtv so they came and flew out for about a week and films are writing room throughout the week the whole passes of them getting ready for the wedding and then the wedding itself so that'll be out november but we do tend to do some really fun high end events and you know for me it's fun obviously I like working with clients where I have a little bit of freedom so if they tell me the ideas that they have the style that they have and for me to be able to take that in to make it bigger and better yet still very personal that's what I love to do and I think that's why I work has done so well is because people they see part of themselves they see their style in what we do but yes we have done some some nice high profile events I'm gonna give you two questions and then you're gonna have to leave with this last question the question is this come up a number of times how large staff do you have it depends on the event and I think you're thinking about this event for this event actually been really lucky a lot of a lot of us vendors donated our time and services to this particular event and so a lot of the people we have here are volunteers which is great I usually have a staff about about ten that come and set up from here than anywhere from you know putting the flowers on the table putting the candles out steaming the linens is a huge thing like there's nothing I hate more than creased linens on a table and it's a pain to steam every little table every little curtain that we put up but it's so worth it because on camera when you have this wrinkle linen or the big crease that comes in the linen from when you get it from the linen and company looks horrible so I always bring along staff to do all those little teeth details so everything looks wonderful so here I think we have about eight to ten people here who'd taken care of all those details and that's about how many will have at a particular venue