Real Weddings: Deziree Lindsay and Jonathan Beller

A fun-filled New Year's Eve celebration at the Stoneleigh Hotel.

The wedding favors were black-eyed peas. It wouldn’t have worked for just any wedding, but for the New Year’s Eve celebration of Dezirée Lindsay and Jon Beller it was the perfect thank-you: a Southern tradition and a scoop of good luck.

But it took more than luck for 29-year-old Dezirée to get a wedding that was both stylish and unexpected. She had to be flexible and resourceful and enlist the expertise of Tara Wilson Events.

For starters, Dezirée wanted to get married on a holiday weekend, “so that people could come in from out of town and so that in the future we would have the day off for our anniversary.” Her first choice: the Fourth of July. But her husband-to-be said no to getting hitched in the brutal Texas heat. Labor Day wasn’t quite right. So they moved on to New Year’s Eve. “I didn’t want a typical wedding. I didn’t want to go and sit down and eat rubber chicken and have people stuck at a table somewhere. I wanted a cocktail party. Like come here and have a drink with us and celebrate—and oh, by the way, we just got married.”

But New Year’s Eve at the glamorous Stoneleigh? “I thought it would be way out of my price range,” Dezirée recalls. But it wasn’t. She learned, as many brides do, that it can be more costly to dress up a white-box ballroom from scratch than to host a party in a space already decorated in a desired style. The hotel’s Art Deco furnishings and 12th-floor penthouse needed only a few special touches to be everything the bride ever dreamed.

Wreaths on the windows and a smattering of white flowers were really all that was required to prepare the suite. A five-tier wedding cake ice sculpture situated under a glowing crystal chandelier was a breathtaking departure from a traditional bride’s cake. (Sweets were a dessert-scape of cake balls, cherry sours, lemon bars, peanut butter cookies, and a host of other treats.) And old-fashioned silhouette portraits covering the historical photos hanging outside the elevator carried the theme from her stationery. “Those were silhouettes of us in different hats and hairdos,” Dezirée says.

The silhouette theme was a major design element of the wedding. Working with a high-contrast palette of black, white, and Kelly green, Dezirée expanded on an idea she’d seen in a magazine. For the wedding invitations, Leanne Sutton of Orange Spot Pink Nose created a custom envelope liner with silhouettes of the couple and a zebra-print motif, which then played out on cocktail napkins, the favor bags, even a Flip video recorder Jon gave his bride as a wedding gift.

Other fun, personal aspects were a Scotch bar in the library in honor of Dezirée’s deceased dad and a vocal performance by the groom, who sang “I Get a Kick Out of You” to his new wife.

As the festivities—and 2009—came to a close, guests gathered on the balcony to watch the fireworks shower over downtown Dallas and toast the happy couple. The newlyweds rang in the new year with a midnight kiss.

Ceremony: First Presbyterian Church of Dallas
Photographer/Studio: Stacy Reeves
Bridal Gown Designer: Jim Hjelm
Bridal Gown Retailer: StarDust Celebrations
Hair: Mayra Rams-Sanabria of My Fabulous Faces
Groom’s Attire: Harold Bell for Mister Tuxedo
Bridesmaids Dresses Designer: London Times
Bridesmaids Dresses Retailer: Macy’s
Flowers: Absolutely Blooming
Reception: The Stoneleigh Hotel
Desserts: Savvy Sweets: Stylish Dessert-Scapes
Caterer: The Stoneleigh Hotel
Ice Sculpture: Dallas Ice FX
Band and/or DJ: Mr. Pink
Videographer: Lynn Films
Wedding Rentals: Elegant Designs
Wedding Planner: Tara Wilson Events
Wedding Designer: Tara Wilson Events