Liz + Liza

You know those warm desert nights in Southern California?

The ones where the even wind is warm and at 2am you might want to dip into a pool?

Yeah. We don't get those here.

Liz + Liza are from LA, but they have a family home over on Salt Spring, so through their many flights landing in Vancouver, they fell in love with the city + decided to get married here.

Obviously, they needed Corinne at Filosophi to help out.

The first thing Corinne had to do was make sure that they understood that here, in our beautiful pacific northwest rainforest, between the mountain and the ocean, southern and temperate for Canada, it's still the frozen north of Canada. That when you attend a wedding outside, even in the hottest months, you still need to bring a jacket + a blanket + sit under a heater. And that means that an outdoor wedding the way they imagined wasn't going to be possible.

Very important to the two brides was that the service + food be high-end + impeccable. And yes, our local caterers can move heaven + earth + do an incredible over-the-top job outside in the wilderness. However, because they're outdoors caterers + serving staff cannot do as perfect a job as they can inside their full kitchens.

There was only one solution.

create a forest inside the vancouver club

Once you hear it, the solution is almost too obvious.

But actually, really, only someone with like a million years of planning experience is going to be able to come up with that idea + pull it off. 

80 people attended the wedding as guests.

40 staff were required to turn the VC into a forest.

Nothing fit in the elevator, everything had to go up the stairs. Set up started at 10pm the night before + finished the next day at 2pm. A mere 18 hours later.

The chandeliers were raised.

A boardwalk was constructed.

an epic transformation

and just like that, the Vancouver Club became a perfect forest wedding capable of serving the most impeccable and high-end food + keeping everyone warm.

The brides celebrated all sorts of things that make our beautiful + only mildly frozen city + the treated their guests to a perfect welcome - with welcome bags + a boat cruise.

The welcome bags included all sorts of local goodies, including those to-die-for quintessentially-Canadian bottles of Noble Syrup. 

It may sound like a stereotype, but we do actually love maple syrup here. 

The night before the wedding the guests, all set with a pre-game sugar cookie + shot of syrup [we shall assume they all took a shot of syrup first because that is a very epic + Canadian thing to do] got on a boat cruise that showed off that magnificent shoreline that is our home here, watching the forests + mountains + sunset from the comfort of an impeccably curated boat [set up and taken down by the same crew who were about to get off the boat, head over to the VC and transform it into the forest]. The next night the guests all got to see how similar the inside of the downtown club looked to the views from the night before-  

how special to experience the great outdoors outdoors + indoors

the evening was perfect

full of emotion + feelings

Liz + Liza 

and all the wonderful, beautiful complicated and flawless feelings that we call love

Celebrated, impeccably.

inside a forest wedding

 

Filosophi Planner: Corinne

eva mcmillan