Wedding Show – Martha Stewart – Mainstream Media

Wedding Shows

 

I attended the Martha Stewart Wedding Party yesterday at Gotham Hall.

 

Gotham Hall is a wonderful venue that was once a bank. It has a soaring domed ceiling and beautiful details. It can comfortably fit 250 to 500 guests so it is not the place for a modest wedding.

 

There has been a lot of talk about bubbles and the bubbles we live in. Brooklyn, where we call home has gone through tremendous change and has also insulated itself from the rest of New York. The bespoke sensibility with hand made this and artisanal that has become a caricature of itself. If I see another distressed wood restaurant with tolix stools, industrial lighting with edison bulbs, and subway tiles, my head will explode.

    

The attitude in North Brooklyn reminds me of the same attitude that art students had in my school. The sense of entitlement that they had because they were “artists” and no one else was. I had my own sense of entitlement because I was a scientist in school and in my opinion, anyone can learn art history, not everyone could master quantum mechanics. None of that really matters. You need to judge from within and not from without. Ironically, I am an artist of sorts and have abandoned science. 

 

I have mixed feelings about wedding shows, myself as a bride, I felt disconnected from mainstream weddings and ended up doing what I wanted to do anyway. I don’t like swirly calligraphy, french manicures and poofy dresses and wouldn’t be caught dead in a rhinestone shirt that says “bride”.  My honeymoon picks would be a remote road trip through some obscure part of the world rather than a curated resort vacation. It’s not my place to judge others who make those choices, that is how bubbles are built, through judgement and insecurity. I can respect their decisions.

So on Sunday morning I decided to step out of my artisanal, bespoke comfort zone and crossed over a bridge into midtown Manhattan.

 

This show is curated by the Wedding Library by Claudia Hanlin and hosts such luminaries as Matthew Robbins Design and Ron Ben-Israel. It’s exciting to see and meet some of the top designers in the industry and to realize at the end of the day, they are standing by their table, selling their services just like me.

 

I enjoyed visiting the show with an open mind and leaving my little hipster bubble to see what the rest of the world is doing. In terms of florals, what I saw was pretty, romantic and relaxed. Yes there were a few holdovers that had perfect round orbs of roses on display, but for the most part, the vendors there were embracing beauty and just being authentic and who they are and letting the flowers speak for themselves.

I am hearing a lot about authenticity and more than every with our fast paced world and over sharing on social media, it is important to have your own voice and not parrot the voices of others.

 

I talk to my peers about shows and whether they are beneficial or if they are just so crowded that it is difficult to connect with any potential clients. My takeaway is that it is always great to be amongst people who are driven and passionate and who work just as hard as you do.

 

I also like some of the swag. I got some cute boxes of custom printed hershey kisses that I gave to my children and a tube of sunscreen from one of those resort vacation places and some terrific brochures about off the beaten path spots for a Thailand vacation.