Figuring Out The Vibe
I NEED HELP.
You know what everyone said would be fun & exciting & easy? Planning a wedding. You know what’s actually not at all fun, exciting, & easy? Planning a wedding. Don’t get me wrong…super excited to get married. Super excited about the man I’m marrying! But making 2 million decisions for my one and only wedding? Not so much. I wish someone would have been real with me leading up to this time in my life! I totally bought into the Disney princess dream and that just ain’t it. And you know what’s funny? We often hear the same about designing/decorating your home. We have clients & customers come in all the time saying: “I finally get to redo my house, but I am just having such a hard time pulling the trigger on anything… I need help!”. Same, girl. Planning a wedding is a lot like casting a vision for what you want your dream home to look like. You gotta think big picture before you can decide on what your bridesmaids will wear or if you want a leather sofa or a performance velvet sectional! There’s a lot to consider, and while it sounds dramatic…every decision you make has to go with the vision. If it doesn’t vibe then it’s gotta go!
NARROWING DOWN THE VIBE
I know it’s not true for everyone, but for a lot of us (cough, cough, me) making design choices (for your home) just doesn’t come as naturally or easily as most! Narrowing down that vibe can be HARD. Especially when you love so many things. You get this picture in your head of what it will be like…and you know all the potential it has…but then you’re hit with making pretty substantial choices that will last YEARS. Not only will it last a long time, but it will be viewed by & lived in by everyone, with a pretty hefty financial burden. The same is true for your wedding…only it will last years on the internet & in the memories of you & your loved ones. So where does that leave us? The trick is to find a way to stay true to yourself & mix the different parts of your style into one aesthetically pleasing combo. And enlisting your friends to help! (It’s us, Lambert Home, we are your friends in this scenario). I’m blessed because we do this everyday & the process we use at Lambert Home works for weddings too! So here’s the run down…
STEP 1 & 2
Initial consultation & Sign The Contract. Our clients already know, but for you new homies out there…the first step to becoming our client is letting Sarah come out to your home to give it a once over. She gets a feel for your family, your desired style, the layout of your home, everything. And she takes notes. Like, a lot of them. Now, Sarah already knows me. So step one wasn’t so much about getting to know me or the location as much as it was casting a vision & committing to the process! When we started brainstorming for my wedding there were a lot of keywords & moods being thrown around to set my “wedding vibe”. Conversations on conversations were had, y’all. I’m a bit of a conundrum in general. I am traditional, but also not at all. I like moody and wear mostly black…but in my truest self I am a big fan of color & anything that makes me feel free. So to say I was a bit wishy washy at first is an understatement. I could truly have 100 weddings, all different, and they would be equally perfect for me. So there really was no wrong choice in what direction I wanted to go…I just had to figure out how I wanted to FEEL on the big day and run with it. It’s at this point in the process that we may ask you to give us some adjectives to describe the mood/vibe you are wanting for the room or home. I’ll let you in on a little not so secret, secret. We describe things in a pretty bizarre way over here at the studio. Sure, we use words like: transitional, modern, bohemian, & farmhouse, but we often use descriptions based on movies, books, feelings, & experiences. It’s almost like a shorthand. So after many MANY conversations about the ~vibe~ of my wedding. And I mean…MANY. Like too many. Eventually Katie said “your wedding vibe needs to be like the feeling you get sneaking out of your cabin at summer camp to make-out with the hotter older boy in the dark.” It’s safe to say Katie really gets me. So the vibe was born. We dissected that phrase a bit & came up with “personal, romantic, intentional, & nostalgic” as my keywords.
STEP 3
Step three at Lambert Home is pics & measure. This is an important step because we gotta know the dimensions & specifications of what we are working with, right? During this step Sarah would come out to your home & take a ton of photos and measure every wall, ceiling, crack & crevice of your home. For me, this step comes a little later in the design process. Like right before the wedding when we are trying to figure out where the tables should go & if they will be accessible for my Gran who is using a wheelchair. All things Sarah considers during her pics & measures.
STEP 4
Initial Presentation time! For our design clients we create a “Pinterest board” of sorts with Sarah’s intention for their space. We choose general images and selections to see if we are on the right track with things. In our standard setting a client would sit down with Sarah, she’d show you the presentation, and she would ask things like: “Is this where we want to go?”, “What do you like about this?”, “What do you not like about this?”. This is the first dreaming and scheming time for the creatives involved in the planning. When it came to my wedding we shared a lot of photos, Pinterest boards, instagram stories & posts, and then compiled everything we were liking so we could compare it to the original vision cast. Eliminating things that weren’t making the cut. This is also the point where Sarah makes suggestions you would have never dreamed of. She sees the bigger picture, always. For my wedding specifically…I never considered using pop culture to help cast a wedding vision. I mean, I’m not boring, but I’m not THAT level of creative. Sarah suggested channelling The Wonder Years and my favorite show; Parenthood! Brilliant ideas. For those who don’t know…we bought my childhood home! So the concept of family & the nostalgia of growing up right where we are going to exchange vows…I can’t think of anything more romantic & personal!
STEP 5
Specific Presentation. Samples. Samples. Samples. This is actually a big part of my day to day at Lambert Home & a really fun part of the process. This is when Sarah & I find samples that specifically bring the vision to life. For me it’s 6 candle color options, the wedding favors & invitation design mockups. For you it’s the perfect blue trim I found in the design district for those custom drapes you need for your living room. It’s the color scheme goal Sarah selects & the furniture we all love & are able to get in by your deadline!
STEP 6
Sub Meeting time. We love our subs at Lambert Home. We use the best of the best. They’re like family. If you are a construction client the sub meeting is when everyone who would be involved in your job would come to to your house, with Don (your project manager), and nail down what is to be done & how. Picture my entire family, the Lambert Home crew, and all our friends coming to my house to figure out, logistically, how we are going to back trailer bathrooms into our side yard & hang 20 strands of bistro lighting across my yard. It’s fun stuff!
STEP 7
Final Design Meeting. This is typically when Katie and Sarah both sit down with you to tell you what they specifically selected for you & what it’s going to cost. This is both the best & scariest part of the process. It means you get to see the vision start to take shape, but also have to make the big decisions. The decisions have the potential to start changing the vision entirely. This is when you gotta keep asking yourself “is this setting the vibe” and “is this worth it to me” over and over again until you are blue in the face. It’s all about priorities! For example, I really wanted to get married next to a lake. I really wanted it to be moody & low lighting. Small & intimate. But that also meant it would have to be a destination wedding AKA more money and I wouldn’t be able to invite most of my friends and family. Sometimes the things you think you want aren’t really what you want or need in the long run. Like those marble countertops! If you’re Italian & tomato sauce tends to get slung all over your kitchen…you’re going to be sacrificing your sanity & low maintenance lifestyle for those pretty marble countertops, baby! There’s give and take with everything, but it doesn’t mean the end result won’t be perfection. Forecasting these things is what we are good at! As for my wedding…we’ve veered from those initial desires, but that doesn’t mean we’ve lost sight of the vision! We’re just honing in on the vibe & prioritizing what’s important to us! Because you know what I don’t have? A lake-house in the Adirondaks. Or a small family. This wedding is about to be 125 people minimum. But you know what can hold 125 people & is also as beautiful & nostalgic as a big lake at a summer camp? The backyard in my childhood home. Yup, the one I grew up in. The one my fiancé proposed in. The one we bought from my mom. It’s also free and allows me to spend my money on brand new windows & doors for the exterior of our house. You see? It all works out if you keep the vision and trust the process!
STEP 8
Execute! September 25th, 2021 is creeping up. I still have a ton of things to accomplish and inevitably a lot will be determined last minute (like where certain things look best), but the final step is bringing everything to life. I’m not worried about the final look & implementation because Sarah, Katie, & Don are exactly the people I’d want helping bring the vision to life. They are truly the best at what they do! We can’t wait to show you how it turns out & love having you follow along on the journey!
…..
Vegas, Miami, Nashville. These are where normal people go for bachelorette trips. Where do Lambert Home girls go for bachelorette trips? Daufuskie Island. You’ve never heard of it? Us either. Think of the most obscure place on the North American map and you’ll probably be close. So why Daufuskie? And what even is it? Well…let us tell you…Katie, being Laura’s Matron of Honor, and queen of planning trips, was naturally charged with planning Laura’s bachelorette trip this summer! That should be all you need to know to understand how we landed on a tiny unknown island in South Carolina, but if you don’t know Katie then let’s just say…she LOVES a remote, live like a local, adventure. The rest of us do too. So as soon as she pitched “island formally divided by plantations that became the central home of the Gullah Culture” we knew we were in & that it would be an experience of a lifetime.