Chocolate-brown linen with lavender kick pleats and border showcasing containers filled with orchids set under a tent with pin-tucked, quilt-style wall inserts and a clear roof. 

Event Planner: Hopple Popple

Floral Design: Domenic Cambio, Domco Floral Design Inc

Linen: Table Fashions Ltd.

Table Setting: Be Our Guest, Inc.

Tent: Jesse Willis Tent Company

Lighting: Suzanne B. Lowell Lighting Design Inc

Photography: Genevieve de Manio Photography

Event designers view flowers, tabletops, and dcor as integral components in creating unique environments, incorporating everything from props to flooring to distinctive furnishings to produce a cohesive atmosphere, whether your wedding is held on a beach, in a garden, or any other space that can be transformed for a magical experience.

Edgar Zamora, CEO of Los Angeles event-design firm Revelry, says the best results come from building upon a location's natural attributes. I never fight an environment, he says. Instead, I prefer to use it, work with it, and complement it. Zamora has a huge warehouse that serves as a starting point for ideas: his inventory includes unique fabric treatments for ceilings and walls, custom designed table linens, specialty canopies and tents, distinctive bars, and made-to-order furniture.

For a garden wedding, Pasadena, Calif., event-designers R. Jack Balthazar, Inc., added depth to the scene by using imported accessories such as weathered urns with cascading floral arrangements, statuary, and an aged flea-market find for the bar. Our team creates environments filled with fabulous flowers, fabrics, props and accessories that will transport your guests to a world that is all your own, says president Niki Delacueva. "Its all about the drama, drama, drama."

Its also about creating a mood, stimulating the senses with a unified vision for dcor, music, food and lighting. Once people step inside these meticulously conceived environments, they enter a storybook world where outside cares are left behind. Wherever a couple and their guests look, we want them to see something beautiful and special, says Emily Koteff, marketing manager of New York event-design group jessGORDON/properFUN.

Event specialists parse clients likes, dislikes and personalities and distill them to enhance the guest experience. Zamora, for example, recalls working with a young bride, the daughter of a wealthy family, who he described as full of life but torn between tradition and trends. For her ceremony, Zamora took the classical route, with a historic estate serving as the backdrop for familiar trimmings like a long aisle leading to a gazebo, where vows were exchanged.

At the reception, however, Zamora helped the bride and groom cut loose with a clubby party atmosphere that appealed to all the senses not to mention their youthful guests. Using the frame of a tent without the cloth skin, Zamora draped the open-air roof with colorful billowing chiffon and satin streamers to set a light-hearted tone. Eight geometric chandeliers bathed the area in light, changing from soft amber for dining to pulsing lavender at disco time. Capiz shell garlands dangled from the rafters and moved in the breeze; when they touched, the sound of wind chimes filled the space.

For an outdoor-loving couple from Colorado, jessGORDON/properFUN of New York set out to create an air of simple elegance, with an emphasis on nature. An open-sided tent allowed guests to view a tree-lined lake at the bride's childhood home, and the setting was enhanced with linens and floral elements in complimentary greens, rustic wooden chairbacks, and -- above it all -- a filigree bower of woven grapevine.

Scattered throughout the vines were dozens of twinkling LED lights that gave off the twilight glow of votives without the dripping wax. Tablescapes supported the theme with natural elements such as black river stones, candles floating in water, and green orchid heads in low arrangements. After the first course was plated, the meal took an unexpected direction when entrees were served family-style, ensuring that guests would engage each other and communicate reminiscent of a big country picnic, minus the checkered tablecloths, of course.

Proving that beach weddings dont have to be filled with kitschy conch shells and fishing nets, R. Jack Balthazar created a contemporary semi-formal seaside event on a boardwalk. We used a white palette with a burst of orange and dense floral arrangements to give the affair personality and to make it the lively wedding the bride wanted, explains Delacueva.

White draping, linens, chair covers, oversized lampshades complemented the stark white carpet covering the entire floor, creating the clean, ethereal atmosphere the bride had envisioned. Persimmon orange was the accent color, and hundreds of roses in variations of the shade were used on the tables. White painted manzanita branches jutted out of the floral arrangements, adding texture, whimsy and breaking up the formality of masses of roses. Persimmon napkins, wrapped in a sand-colored ribbon, brought the orange out to the perimeter of the table, while a simple capiz-shell ornament on each enhanced the beach theme.

Simple and elegant or multilayered and boisterous, carefully planned environments carry guests into a bride and grooms own special world and send them home with warm and loving memories of a fabulous fte.

Written by Francine Kaplan