Neon Tropics Meets Retro Havana on Friday 13th

Eleven11 Photography

October 13, 2018

When you think of a Friday 13th wedding you’d be forgiven for assuming it would likely be a spooky, horror or Halloween themed bash, but Elizabeth and Adam wanted to flip this idea on its head, instead opting for a wedding theme that represented their colourful personalities! The colour scheme primarily featured hot pink, lush tropical greens and metallic gold and oh my goodness does it look all kinds of wonderful!

They were married in April in Cincinnati. They chose Rhinegeist Brewery for both their ceremony and reception because they liked how they were able to curtain off one side of the room and have a cosy ceremony, then open it up and change all the decor and furniture for the reception and party. They they hired a day-of coordinator to do this for them during the drink’s reception so they could still enjoy this time with their guests.

“Being that our love of creepy horror movies brought us together, it was super fitting that we would get married on and take inspiration from Friday the 13th”, began the bride. “I had a bit of hesitation at first to really play up the date, in case we would scare or alienate any family or friends, but then I thought honestly why not have a little fun with it? I didn’t want to go too over the top gore so we took all the elements we love about Friday the 13th: Flash tattoos, superstitions, and that famous horror movie based on the day, and found ways to incorporate them.”

“When I was doing research on the floral element, I came across these beautiful tropical installations with neon signs. I was super inspired by them and knew this would be a really pretty way to bring in that romantic feel, while avoiding what you traditionally see at a
wedding. This element was super important to me because while I really wanted to incorporate the fun horror movie and tattoo ideas, this still needed to feel like a wedding and I hoped these arrangements would give it that special feel. We both really love that retro 50s pin-up look, so when I was trying to think of a way to describe it to the florist, ‘Retro Havana’ came up as an overarching theme, and that pretty much stuck for the vibe of the day in everything from decor to what we wore.”

For a lot of their decor and furniture hire they worked with Queen City Vignette. “They have an amazing warehouse full of vintage and new collectables that you can pick from to outfit your venue space”, Elizabeth continued. “We ended up getting most of our rentals from them including the copper chairs, wooden banquet tables with hairpin legs, clear hexagon chargers, assorted coloured water goblets, and all of our lounge furniture including a beautiful vintage rug, metallic pouffs and side tables – AND my absolute favourite piece – a hot pink lip couch. This couch ended up attracting someone else’s eye as the owners at Queen City just recently sold it to Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips! How cool to say that a piece of our wedding now lives with one of the most iconic rock artists of all time!?”

Having such a strong theme that was very based around the florals meant they needed a fantastic florist to bring their tropical vision to life. Luckily they found Katie’s Blooms. “My bouquet had a massive King Protea in it along with lots of greenery and hot pink hits from varying tropical plants and flowers. Our centrepieces had to work with our family style dining set up, so some tables had a runner of sorts with greenery (monstera, palm leaves, philodendron, etc) and others had colourful cactus in glass jars of sand, bud vases with pops of pink and green and other on theme arrangements mixed with a spray of roses and ranunculus. We also had a massive arbour of tropical greens and a bleeding heart neon sign that served as our ceremony space. Later in the evening it doubled as our photo booth background so we got a ton of good use out of it! The cake topper was designed with a hole in the head to hold flowers, which almost looked like a day of the dead skull. It was the perfect mix of dark and romantic I wanted our wedding to have. After Katie did her magic there were flowers and tealight candles everywhere, one of my absolute favourite parts about the look of the wedding.”

When asked what her favourite moment of the wedding was, Elizabeth fully admits she can’t really choose one! “It’s hard for me to pick a specific part of the wedding that was my favourite, because the day was really so great. I was SO stressed the week leading up to the day that when it finally came I was able to just relax and enjoy the company of my husband and all of our family and friends. Before the wedding, I was told to really enjoy this moment because it was the only time that everyone we loved would be in the same room at one time, and it was so true. This thought overwhelmed me, but in the best way possible and I think we were still living off of the high for at least a week after the wedding.”

“Keep yourself organised, don’t be afraid to ask for help, take some time for yourselves and soak it all up on the wedding day”, she advises. “It’s true what they say that the day will go by so fast, so don’t worry if something doesn’t go quite as planned and don’t make compromises for details that mean something to you as a couple. The parts of the wedding I loved the most were the ones I hesitated on when we were initially planning. The biggest thing I would have done differently is take more time for myself and spend more time relaxing with my husband, the week before the wedding. I had so many little projects to finish and a crazy amount of stress that could have easily been avoided had I let people help earlier or kept myself more organised.”

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