If I could do my wedding all over again, I seriously think I would like to have a Harry Potter-themed wedding. I’m not 100% sure I could get my husband on board with that, but we’re not really doing it, so I’ll just dream for now. I had a chance to make my dreams come true with this Harry Potter display window I put together for Sparkle Bridal Couture, a local bridal shop in East Sacramento, CA.

Sparkle Bridal Couture’s Window Display Project

When Sparkle contacted me last summer to ask if I would be interested in participating in their on-going window display project, I said yes without having any idea of what I wanted to create. It’s a really cool program where they ask a different wedding planner or designer to choose a theme, organize a vendor team, and install a display each month. 

They have a huge storefront window with a platform built-in, and this program gives them a way to maximize this real estate without having to do a boatload of work every month. It’s also the perfect way to introduce brides shopping in their store to area vendors.

Sparkle is unique because it’s one of only a handful of bridal shops nationwide that cater to plus-size brides. They carry only sizes 14-30, and their gowns are soooo pretty! They’re constantly getting in new designs, and when they sell out of a design, they replenish it with a new design, which means brides don’t have to be so worried that everyone in their city will be wearing the same dress on their wedding day!

It was the height of wedding season when I agreed to the project, so I back-burnered it until I finished all of my weddings for the year. When I started to get serious about coming up with a design, I was a little stumped. It needed to be something interesting and unique, but it also had to be realistic. I wanted it to resonate with brides AND be something that was important to me.

A Harry Potter Wedding Theme?

I started thinking about things that I love, and Harry Potter was one of the first things that came to mind. If you have only a casual relationship with the Harry Potter series, you might be wondering what a series of books about children at wizarding school has to do with a wedding…

Ostensibly, not much. There is a wedding in the final book of the series, but it’s not a main focal point of the book. But the idea of a Harry Potter wedding plays into everyone’s desire to put their own personal stamp on their wedding. Couples have been incorporating elements and themes from their favorite books and movies into their weddings for years now. And the wizarding world seemed ripe for inclusion in a wedding.

Harry Potter is obviously about magic. And weddings are about making magic. Weddings are also very much a team effort. It’s a collaboration between the couple, their families, and their vendors to make all their wedding dreams come true. So with that in mind, I came up with the tagline “Let’s Make Magic Together.”

At this point, I still hadn’t pitched my idea to the folks at Sparkle. I wanted to get their approval before I started reaching out to vendors. I wasn’t sure whether they’d go for my idea, but they LOVED it! I got the most enthusiastic response from them, and that would continue to hold true as I put together my team.

Dumbledore’s Army, Assemble!

My first call was to my friend Morgan Potter of Morgan Potter Photography, super-talented photographer and Harry Potter superfan. I knew she would be excited, and she was! She even volunteered to contribute some of her extensive collection of Harry Potter props. Her photos are so beautiful, I had a hard time choosing only a handful to include in this post!

At this point I really needed to refine my design ideas so that I had something to pitch to the other vendors I wanted to participate. I re-read the wedding scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bill & Fleur’s wedding, for those who aren’t aware). Because the wedding wasn’t a key part of the story, there wasn’t much to go on. My notes consisted of the following:

• White and gold flowers

• Purple carpet

• Gold chairs

• Gold balloons

• White roses

• Silver stars

• Golden bells

• Wedding cake topped with phoenixes

• Floating Champagne bottles

• Floating golden lanterns

As much as I would have loved to incorporate a purple carpet, I wasn’t sure where I would be able to find one that was suitable, so I nixed that idea and decided to focus on the white and gold aspects.

I had already found a set of Hogwarts house pennants on Target.com that I knew I wanted to use. I planned to hang them behind the mannequins wearing the bridal gowns so it looked like each mannequin belonged to a different house. I also bought a Mirror of Erised on Target.com that was smaller than I would have liked it to be, but would still be a cool design element. 

As soon as I saw white roses mentioned in the book, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the florals. I’ve worked on several weddings with Kelly Doan from LeLe Floral, and she had done something really cool for our most recent collaboration. Called “kissing balls,” they were round styrofoam cores with synthetic white roses glued on to cover the entire surface. I knew that if we suspended them from the ceiling using fishing line, they would look like they were floating. Perfect!

I reached out to Kelly, and even though she had never read or seen the Harry Potter franchise, she was excited to join the team. She also had a bunch of gold vases and lanterns on-hand that we could use. (So I didn’t have to buy white lanterns at IKEA and spray paint them gold, lol.)

Next I needed a bakery, because I wanted the cake to be an integral part of the design. Meghan & Daniel Jimenez own Above & Beyond Wedding Cakes in Elk Grove, CA. We also have worked together on several weddings in the past, and I knew from Instagram that Meghan could create beautiful themed cakes. What I didn’t know is that Meghan and her pastry assistant Courtney are HUGE Harry Potter fans!

Once they were on board, I gave them nearly carte blanche to create their dream cake. I merely gave them the color scheme of white and gold and asked them to incorporate the Golden Snitch. When Daniel emailed me a photo of the finished cake, I almost cried because it was the most amazing cake I’ve ever seen. It was more beautiful and more perfect than anything I could have imagined. I love it so. much.

For the final decor elements, I turned to two other frequent collaborators: Anahit Khachatourian from Khalligraphy for signage, and Celebrations Party Rentals for items to create a sweetheart table.

I had bought an owl online from Unrealbirds.com (shout-out to my husband, Rhead, for finding that site), which was my stand-in for Hedwig. I wanted to display Hedwig on a gold antique table that I own and make it look like she was delivering an invitation to the wedding. Anahit used white ink on a gold envelope, which I’m sure the post office would totally hate, but since we weren’t going to mail it, I wasn’t going to worry about it.

Anahit also created the “Let’s Make Magic Together” acrylic sign to anchor the display. We originally considered hanging it from the overhead wires, but it was too heavy. So we displayed it on one of my gold easels and Kelly dressed it up with some florals.

For the sweetheart table, Celebrations was gracious enough to lend me some of their gorgeous pieces: a white sequined tablecloth (Sprinkle), white linen napkins (Gabrielle), sparkly gold chargers (Glitz Champagne), white and gold plates (Marilyn), gold flatware (Parker), and gold-rimmed wine glasses and water goblets (Empire). I also borrowed two gold Chiavari chairs. If you ever want to up the ante in your wedding design, gold Chiavari chairs make a huge impact!

Lastly I just needed to find some balloons. You may or may not have heard that the world is currently suffering a helium shortage. I didn’t want to deal with that whole problem, so I ordered some white and gold balloons from an Etsy shop called Mika’s Party Shop. I wanted to suspend some of the balloons from the ceiling on fishing line, again, to make them look like they were floating. I thought it could be especially cool if air currents would bob them up and down.

I also ordered a DIY balloon arch. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but I thought it would look cool somewhere! Little did I know what a huge pain in the ass it would be to inflate all those balloons. (Fortunately, the balloon arch kit also came with a hand-held air pump, so the actual inflating of the balloons wasn’t the hard part. Tying them was the hard part. I literally couldn’t feel my fingers after tying four dozen balloons in an hour.)

Installation of the Harry Potter Wedding Window Display

When the day for installation arrived, I still didn’t have a concrete idea of how all of these elements were going to come together, but I knew we could make it work. And we did! The finished display looks so amazing, and I’m so grateful to everyone who participated in making it a reality.

The staff at Sparkle chose the perfect gowns for the display, including a fierce black sequined gown that any Slytherin bride would be thrilled to wear.

Kelly’s husband Henry hung all of the decor from the ceiling wires, which I was thankful for because I do not enjoy being up on ladders! We all had a good time during the installation, working together to find the right place for everything and adjusting it all until it looked its best.

More gorgeous photos are below! And if you want to plan your own Harry Potter wedding in Northern California, well, now you have a complete vendor team, at your service. Let’s make magic together!

Vendor Team:

Bridal gowns: Sparkle Bridal Couture

Design and styling: Risa James Events

Photography: Morgan Potter Photography

Florals and decor: LeLe Floral

Cake: Above and Beyond Cakes

Calligraphy and signage: Khalligraphy

Tabletop items, linens, and chairs: Celebrations Party Rentals

If you’d like to read about the shoot from Morgan’s perspective, here’s a link to her blog post about it!