Prospect House Open House Design Breakdown

 
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Overall Design

We had the privilege of designing and planning the Prospect House Open House a few weeks ago.  This was the ultimate design challenge -  to create an organic eco modern design that showcased the space without overpowering it. 

When owners Erich and Kathryn asked us to help with planning the open house, the first thing we did was sit down and breakdown what it was they wanted to get out of the event.  The main goal was to showcase the space in an organic and elegant way that dressed it up but did not take away from the stunning modern architecture. 

Prospect House is one of the most beautiful event venues to be built in Hill Country in quite some time. Designed by award winning architect Max Levy, it is simple and modern space that takes full advantage of natural light and the gorgeous hill country landscape. 

Once the general direction had been thought through I sat down and created a design board. I always create a single one page board for all of my events. Pintrest boards are great but I feel that if you have 100 photos to look at it is easy to get distracted. Design boards are a great way to convey the design direction and colors to all the other creative vendors. That way everyone is on the same page. 

Design Details

FLORAL

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The next step was putting together an awesome vendor team to help bring this design to life. My first stop was Brooke at Pollen Floral Art who is my go to florist when I have an idea that is structural, organic but modern and a bit outside the box. Brooke and I sat down and started talking about the structure and feeling of the floral. Nothing too bright but if we only included greenery it would seem a bit bland. To play off of the blue/grey runners we added in a touch of white and light purple to create a color palette that was organic but had a little pop to it. 

DESIGN ACCENTS

Because Prospect House is such a large venue and in order to get the correct scale for the main hall photos we had to fill 10 -  6 ft tables. For an open house this is quite a lot of space to contend with so I started searching around for ways to help fill in the gaps between the floral. During the brainstorming stage I fell in love with these geometric shapes from a interior design catalog and I loved the idea of using them to accent the clusters of succulents and tillansia plants. Amazingly, I found an Etsy vendor who makes a less expensive version of them in San Diego. Score! 

I still needed to add some color and candlelight to the space so I reached out to Bobbie at Loot who let me borrow their amazing collection of brass candlesticks and  green vintage goblets. While the design would have looked fine with standard wine glasses I wanted to put a little bit more color on the tables since the venue is so neutral. Thank you Loot! 

PLACE SETTING DETAILS

Now for the final touches. Contigo has the most amazing collection of Heath Ceramics dinner and salad plates that they use with their catering service and were gracious enough to let me borrow them for the table display. The french grey of the plates tied in perfectly with the grey of the table runner. Premiere Events loaned us their Premiere Select line of fantastic wine glasses, flatware and hemstitch napkins to finished off the look. 

STATIONARY

One of my favorite design things to do is add a menu or piece of stationery to a wedding tablescape design. Is it needed, no but it looks so good and always helps tie the entire design together. Jane from CarolynJane Designs created these gorgeous hand drawn menus for us which is actually the Contigo menu for one of my April 2016 wedding clients(that wedding is going to have the best food)!  

Once all the details arrived we put together the tables making changes here and there to the design as we went. I always leave myself open to change and make design decisions on the fly so that every piece of an event looks perfect. 

THE FINAL LOOK! 

 
 

The main challenge for this design (except getting the balance between modern and organic correct) was creating a look that worked during the day time open house and for the evening photo shoot. Take a look through the gallery below to see how the space changes with the light! 

Thank you Vendors! 

Here are the final photos of all the elements put together! Thank you Jerry Hayes Photography and Katherine O'Brien Photography for the great images! 

Special thanks to all the vendors who made this open house possible: Pollen Floral Art, Loot Vintage Rentals, Premiere Events, Contigo Catering, LoveBirds Sweets, DJ Gatsby, The Cupcake Bar,  Carolyn Jane Designs and ILIOS Lighting Design

Kate GoddardComment