Weddingbee Blog

After visiting many, MANY places in the Chicago suburbs, we finally decided on a reception venue! We chose Signature Events for its proximity to home, good food, and reasonable prices. As for the aesthetics? Well, I have a bit of an issue there…

I am really uncomfortable with the walls of our ballroom. The room is handsome, and I can totally see it working for another couple… but it’s much too dark for the bright, cheery wedding we’re planning! Happy colors against all-white walls, tables, and chairs? Not gonna happen here. By the way, Mr. Parfait and I recently decided on a new, bright color palette—more on that soon! Here is a picture of the space decorated for a wedding:

Because of the deep, dark walls and decor of our venue, I’ve been doing a ton of brainstorming on how to brighten up the place!

I don’t want to hide everything in the room, but I do think it would look worlds better with our colors if we did a little covering up! I’m really excited to share my ideas here, because when I talk about them in person, it ends up being a lot of words and hand motions but no real communication of ideas.

First up in this series: Fabric draping! Not the frilly or window-curtain-y kind. Something classy, perhaps made modern with some uplighting. Here are some pictures that inspired me:

Light, airy fabric all around

Draping accented with soft pink uplights

The above pictures are from Details Details. The walls are heavy on fabric, but they’re broken up by the gorgeous lighting. I do want to reveal some of the details of the room—I like the wood panels across the walls, just in small doses. One way to do it is with smaller pieces of fabric, like below. You may remember this from a recent guest blogger on Weddingbee!

I would space out the panels to show off the dark wood on the walls. Mr. Parfait is not a fan of the colored fabric, so we’d probably use white with colored lighting.

What do you think of my first idea for hiding, while still revealing, parts of our ballroom? Any suggestions of things you’ve seen and liked at special event spaces?