Harry Potter Bridal Window Display

the invitation

When your good friend who also happens to be a talented wedding planner asks you if you’d like to photograph the Harry Potter themed bridal window display she’s designing, YOU SAY YES!

(I mean, let’s be honest, she had me at “Harry Potter”).

For months, my friend Risa of Risa James Events has been working with Sandra from Sparkle Bridal Couture in Sacramento to plan their January window display. Sparkle is a bridal showroom for chic and gorgeous plus-size gowns dedicated to sizes 14-30 and every month they install a whole new display in collaboration with local vendors and artists!

So when Risa let slip that she was planning to do hers Harry Potter/Hogwarts themed...yeah, I got a ‘lil excited.

Aboard the Hogwarts Express

I arrived at Sparkle yesterday (yes, yesterday, how fast I’m blogging this should allude to how much I love this shoot), Risa was in full decorating mode trying to wrangle balloons while Kelly from Le Le Flowers and her husband Henry were already hanging gorgeous white rose “kissing” balls.

I’d like to say I helped set up, but as soon as the cake by Above & Beyond Cakes was delivered I dropped everything and picked up my camera because it is seriously the most gorgeous and perfect Harry Potter cake I’ve ever seen! True to the series yet still elegant, not gonna lie it’s something I’d always dreamed of for my own wedding.

With beautiful signage by calligrapher Anahit of Khalligraphy and prop rentals from Celebrations! Party Rentals we had one helluva dream team to engineer this window display!

I had fun photographing the increasingly-difficult-to-navigate Triwizard Task Maze that was the window display as more and more furniture, florals, decor and gowns were added, and eventually there were so many elements I was forced to return to ground-level!

Seeing Sandra add in the gorgeous wedding gowns as the final touch brought the whole display to the very highest level of "magical". Not only was there an adorable lace midi dress, but a show-stopping black sequined ball gown that brings to mind Bellatrix Lestrange and her Death Eater pals (wreaking havoc in style, mind you)!

mischief managed!

Wow, what a project! Thank you, Sandra for being a pleasure to chat Harry Potter and to work with. Thank you to Risa for extending the offer to this huge Harry Potter nerd and to everyone else for lending their enormous talent to this super fun project!

You can check out Risa's blog post about all the planning that went into this display and you can see the whole display in-person at Sparkle Bridal in East Sacramento (trust me, there’s so many little details, you’ll want to!)

As my first shoot of 2020, all I can say is what a magical way to kick off the year!