As a classically trained professional musician, I cannot express how much I LOVE seeing musicians perform live music at weddings.  Live music adds a personal touch and engages your guests differently compared to canned music.

Are you looking to hire live musicians for your wedding?  Here are some groups that I’ve played with and/or highly recommend:

Chamber Light Players from Symbiotic Collusion

Miss Musique

Hot Metal Strings

Cityscape

Freya String Quartet

Billy Price Band

Check out some of the music we encountered at our weddings in 2013….

Here is the Freya String Quartet (with a clarinetist) playing a wedding ceremony in the garden at Heinz Hall…

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And here is my friend John Marcinizyn playing with a flutist for a cocktail hour…

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Last March I traveled down to Austin, Texas with my friend Katia to help her shoot a wedding…..and there was a mariachi band at the reception!!!!  They were awesome!

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If you need any help at all finding musicians for your wedding, don’t hesitate to contact me for more referrals!

There are some brides who know exactly what they want when it comes to wedding flowers.  Other brides are not so particular (with regard to flower type),  and often just know what colors they’d like to see.  I personally knew that I wanted purple carnations and gave the specific names of these carnations to my florist for my wedding.  Since I had a destination wedding, I made a Pinterest board of all the flowers I wanted, and sent it to my florist in West Virginia (shout out to Gillespie’s for being so awesome!)  I also made a drawing of what I wanted my tablescape to look like.  Here is my rendering:

Alisa

I was pretty specific, no?  HAHA!  This part of my wedding was very important to me, and I wanted it to look *perfect*.  We only had 30 people at our wedding (and we didn’t have a traditional reception), so this was where we were spending most of our time.  Here is what the table actually looked like on our wedding day:  (Thank you to Aaron Varga! WOOT!)

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Even if you aren’t planning a destination wedding, it is important that you openly communicate with your florist so you get what you want!  Bring pictures or create a board on Pinterest!  Here is the board I created for my florist.

Now, take a look at the gorgeous flowers my brides from 2013 chose for their weddings….

Wedding flowers, orange, yellow, blue orchids, red lilies, light pink roses

In these next photos, the bouquet on the left was done by Sam’s Club, and the bouquet on the right was done by the always amazing, Gidas Flowers …

White wedding flowers, lilies, roses, hydrangeaLavender and plum wedding flowersGroom boutonniere ideasPurple and pink tulips for weddingWedding peonies, light pink, white peonies, blush rosesGreen wedding orchids, purple rosesBlue hydrangeas, orange ranunculusBoutonnieres for grooms

My friend Ken from Flowers in the Attic did the blue and white bouquet on the left…

Light pink wedding liliesWedding flowers for grooms

I’m a big fan of Mt. Lebanon Floral!  She did these beautiful purple and green bouquets in these next photos….

Green and purple wedding flowers

There were a couple of weekends when I wasn’t shooting weddings in 2013.  So, instead of shooting, I played with a string quartet contracted by Miss Musique at this Wyndham Grand wedding in Pittsburgh.

This wedding was ENORMOUS and beautifully decorated with hot pink carnations, candles, and gold accents.

Ceremonies at Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh

Gold Chiavari chairs!!  woohoo!!

Summer Weddings in PittsburghHot Pink Wedding Details

Floating candles lined the aisle…

Candles along the aisle at Wedding CeremonyGold and Hot Pink Wedding details, gold candelabra, pink carnation balls

Pink carnation garland at Indian Wedding in Pittsburgh

I of course couldn’t take photos while we played, but I did capture some details of our instruments…

String Quartet at wedding ceremony in Pittsburgh

The natural light from the wall of windows lit the room beautifully…

Gold Candelabras, hot pink carnations, flower balls, gold Chiavari ChairsIndian Wedding ceremonies in PittsburghWyndham-Grand-Hotel-Wedding-Pittsburgh-09Indian Wedding ceremony at Hotel in PittsburghWyndham-Grand-Hotel-Wedding-Pittsburgh-11Hot Pink and White Wedding ColorsWyndham-Grand-Hotel-Wedding-Pittsburgh-013Sparkly rhinestone hot pink white wedding colorsWyndham-Grand-Hotel-Wedding-Pittsburgh-14Gold elephant at Indian Wedding in Pittsburghcandles lining the aisle for wedding ceremony in PittsburghIndian Wedding ceremony in PittsburghPink and gold wedding colorsWyndham-Grand-Hotel-Wedding-Pittsburgh-19Having an Indian ceremony in PittsburghWyndham-Grand-Hotel-Wedding-Pittsburgh-21Thank you to my great friend, Andrea Levine!  Andrea is the beauty and the brains behind Miss Musique!  If you are looking for soloists, duos, trios, quartets…..any instruments performing many genres….contact Andrea.  I’ve played with and for her and can honestly say that it was a wonderful experience!  (And…I took all of the photos on her website!)

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