Viva Bella on Cincinnati's Channel 9

In conjunction with Cincinnati Wedding Magazine, on Saturday morning, June 27th at 8:45 a.m., Dora will have an appearance on Cincinnati's Channel 9 to talk about how to create a "Wow" wedding! If you can get up that early on the weekend, check it out!

KC & Antwan... getting married this weekend

Meet KC and Antwan.

KC is a BEAUTIFUL, fun loving girl with some spunk. Antwan is an NFL linebacker and absolutely one of the biggest (no pun intended) gentlemen I've ever met! They have been a pair a long time and are finally getting married this weekend! I've had the privilege of planning their wedding over the last 5 months (yes, you can plan a wedding from start to finish in 5 months!)

Kortnee Kate did an amazing job of capturing their personalities during their engagement session, so I wanted to share a few of those pictures.

The above picture shows the smooth, slick side of this fantastic couple... but don't let it fool you. There is definitely some silly, fun lovin' happening between them, as seen below....

I am loving KC's shoes above.... Wow, how tall are those heels! I guess she needs them to be able to reach Antwan!

Beautiful smiles!!

The below picture is one of my favorite ones.... Antwan has an inspiring smile and kind nature. I feel this picture captures both!

I am really looking forward to this wedding on Friday night!! Can't wait! Check back to see photos from their wedding.

All images courtesy of Kortnee Kate Photography (formerly Simply Timeless).

New Ad!

I'm very excited about a new ad that's just come out in CINCINNATI WEDDINGS magazine. I know it might seem like nothing to outsiders, but my team works hard to make sure the message we're sending out about viva bella is right on. So can I tell you a little about our new ad?

First of all, this is Kristin (Humpert) and Nate Hagedorn. They were married on December 1, 2007 . I thought their photo, taken by the amazing Tine at TM Photography, was perfect. To me, it says romance, mystery (because you can't see their faces) and contemporary elegance.

Cindy Loon at loon + co helped me put this together, and we landed on the text to read "feel, experience, and remember." Over the last year, I've really been working on brand identity and these three words keep coming up as central to who we are as a company. The continued feedback we received from clients was that they felt and experienced something special at their event that they would soon not forget.

The unique half-rounded box (which always reminds Stevie of the Partridge Family opening sequence) was created by our web programmer, Chris Bollman, and we use it on the new website a lot. To us, it communicates different and cool and modern. Lastly, you see a lot of chocolate brown and toasted gold in the ad- those have become signature colors for viva bella, so we wanted them to figure in heavily into our print ads.

So it might seem a small thing to someone flipping through the pages of CINCINNATI WEDDINGS, but to me, it's a 4x6 representation of my brand and company to the whole world. Thanks again to Cindy Loon for her great work on our new ad!