the blog

On December 12th, he gave a gift to a special girl. It was a beautiful box with something special inside. Inside the box was a Nutcracker with two tickets to her favorite ballet in New York City.

This beautiful courthouse wedding was just perfect for these two. 

Hello! My name is Allison and I’m the owner of Allison Barnhill Designs, a design studio based in Annapolis, Maryland, that specializes in custom wedding stationery. When I sit down with a new client at our design meeting, I share a few interesting etiquette details and they always seem to be a surprise.  Honestly, I typically preface these details with the words, “90% of the population probably has no clue, but…”  So, I thought today it would be fun to share a few of those rules you may not know.

While gorgeous wedding cakes have always made for special focal points at weddings, we’re helping couples make an even bigger impact with eye catching Dessert Displays!

The trend is to offer a dessert display that not only creates an impressive focal attraction but also lets you delight your guests with the fun, variety, and decadence of multiple dessert options!

Dessert displays can beautifully incorporate your theme and colors.  With more couples having fun with DIY elements at weddings, the dessert display also lets you explore your creativity with flowers, signage and other decorative elements that create a “wow” factor – further enhancing the overall décor of the wedding venue!

The day is finally here, you have your ideal dress, the flowers have been delivered, and the cake looks delicious.  But before you tie the knot with your perfect partner, what do you need to know about how to create stunning wedding pictures that will last a lifetime?
Before the big day, you should always have a hair and makeup trial to ensure you capture the exact wedding look you want.  It is always helpful to gather some inspirational pictures to bring to your hair and makeup artists.

I finally got around to sharing this! About 2.5 months ago, my family threw me a really incredible baby shower and I was literally showered with gifts and baby goodies. At the time I just thought how awesome is all this stuff… now two months later I have a 2 month old and putting most of it to good use.

Most of the weddings we photograph are couples who are 20 something and 30 something year olds. Well this where we love our job even more because love knows no age. Atena and David are one of our amazing couples, and they aren’t millennials. But they are madly in love. 

Atena and David had a beautiful ceremony on the 4th floor of the Legg Mason Tower overlooking Baltimore’s waterfront. Atena always wanted to get married in a little chapel in New England, but family, friends, and career is here in Baltimore. So, they brought the chapel to Baltimore and to their wedding venue. They stood in front of their guests, sealed a box of “spirits” and all their guests prayed over them and their marriage towards the end of the ceremony.

Where do two people who love trains get married? Well of course, a train museum! But these two didn’t get married just anywhere… they said yes to forever in front of family and friends but also surrounded by an audience of massive historic trains. If you’ve never been to the B&O Train Museum, you’ve gotta go! It’s a pretty incredible site to see.

Morgan and Max incorporated a few really awesome things into their wedding day. Morgan’s mom handmade the bouquets, the girls carried in lanterns instead of bouquets, and the groomsmen were given multi-tools as gifts. Their guest book was a giant antique map where guests could sign and  “claim territory” like the olden days! Our favorite part of the day was our portrait time with Morgan and Max. Having so many historic trains to choose from to take pictures with was awesome, and Morgan and Max were so pumped to jump from train to train (no pun intended!).

Anyone in need of wedding invitation ideas? Today is your lucky day because we are talking all things wedding stationery with our featured vendor and guest blogger, Basic Invite. If you are engaged and planning a wedding you have to check them out! But first, let me tell you all about them.

We loved every detail of this wedding day! From the beautiful florals from My Flower Box, to the shawls and the fur cape of the bridal party, to the Baltimore stationery and more!! Wait until you see the details for yourself! 

You’d think that at some point we would get snow… but we still haven’t. But, we’ve definitely gotten some pretty cold and pretty windy days! Jackie and Justin had a windy windy engagement session in December, just a month before their wedding… and boy was it cold. But that didn’t keep these two from loving on each other, smiling, and enjoying their time together. 

We loved that they wanted to incorporate two locations historic to Baltimore. The Baltimore Museum of Industry as well as Fort McHenry.