I Do Venues: Montclair Women's Cultural Arts Club in Oakland

Photography by: Julie Mikos

Summary

A bold statement of color is the best reason to choose the Montclair Women's Cultural Arts Club as your wedding venue. Visualize a festive party with a roaring 20's Beau Arts theme where flappers, flowers, and fan dancers are all at home. A modest outdoor patio comes alive with gold or walnut Chiavari chairs set for your ceremony. Colored cushions and wispy ribbons on the back row and side aisle chairs create further style and movement, and the delicate lines of the Chiavaris will create an impressive frame to begin your design plan. At the top of your ceremony, the bride and groom will be welcomed by the facility's ornamental iron garden gazebo. Use a colorfully dramatic spray of flowers as a crown for the gazebo, and incorporate feathery garlands around its borders to take advantage of the soft movement of the breeze. Each of these small elements will help to create a larger, personalized and elegant impact to frame you as you say I do.

The Ballroom is delightfully playful with twinkling lights and candelabra chandeliers suspended from the ceiling to set a wonderfully romantic, vintage feel. In this colorful venue you won't find a single shade of gray, so the best design schemes will either build upon its bright hues by using palettes including raspberry, teal, or deep Victorian red for table linens, or else use a completely neutral canvas of ecru, champagne, or pearl. Giving height to your floral arrangements is a must. Using tall glass vases in non-symmetrical shapes and incorporating water elements with candles will make the room dance with flickering lights, and will create beautifully eye-catching movement when paired with rich, full toppers with tendrils tumbling down from the tall arrangements.