"Marry Her Sweet" - Event Designer Wedding Shoot

Model is Melinda Anderson, Photos are Myron Watkins , Styling is Alvita Lozano, Makeup is Sharla Mohney, and Wedding Dress/Veil from Rachel's Place Vintage

Melinda Anderson aka MeMe Designs + Events is a Women about her business in Detroit. Formally trained as an Architect, Melinda has been growing her event design/production and planning expertise with a variety of interesting projects in the Detroit metro area. Check out her website for more details.

This photo shoot is one in a series of brilliant marketing campaign ideas she is working on for her wedding event business. This shoot is called "Marry Me Sweet" for that young at heart sweet and sassy bride. She's a modern girl with a sense of adventure and fun, she wants to celebrate her girlish beauty. She wants us to come along, and how can we resist?

I got to come along for the ride, so to speak, styling Melinda for this photo shoot. I really enjoyed the shoot idea and loved her sense of drama, just look at all the emotion and expression she displayed. It was hard to select a few of these unedited shots to share, but I think these capture Melinda's energy, vision and passion.

I'm excited to find out what her next bride incarnation will be, she keeps me guessing and wondering with anticipation. Until then I know Melinda will continue to dazzle us with creative and spectacular events, let's continue the celebration Detroit!

Polyvore: A Social Media Partner for Creative Business And Thinkers

Polyvore is what I would call an open source social media platform for creative people. Those people could include an artsy teenage student, a seasoned professional graphic designer or a high profile fashion designer and everything in between.

The sets above are a very small variety of my work on that site and part of my creative portfolio. I find Polyvore very easy to use and it has become a great tool for exploring visual ideas that initially come to me in words and then grow into visual stories in my mind.

The important thing to understand about sites like Polyvore and others is that they are also used for developing important market research for a wide variety of professionals. The activity on them is "Open" and that means interested research and business partners can use it to study emerging trends and patterns that help them to develop marketing strategy. This is a form of 'Crowd sourcing" in a marketing sense. I'm not sure why this is not explained as such in the media write ups you will hit on the web. Perhaps Polyvore and other similar sites don't think users will care, or that the information will scare potential users away from exploring it's benefits, but I'm speculating on that.

In some ways traditional business and media formats have perfected the art of "HYPE" and can get the restless masses to move toward their ideas which makes the back story irrelevant. I DON'T SHARE THAT NOTION. In fact I believe that respecting the intelligence of your audience and teaching them about the big and small picture is imperative. We all live in a social context and have a need to understand the structures that influence it, to make good decisions. That is where the real value is and that is part of every personal and professional encounter I have. To do otherwise keeps our lives very small and focused on temporary things.

I use Polyvore to indulge my love of research, and my passion for visual serendipity. I enjoy following the work of so many creative users all over the globe who also use Polyvore, it has opened up a world of ideas that are truly inspiring.

"Tailor Made": Matthew Richmond Print Shoot

" Tailor Made" AD Shoot

Artist: Matthew Richmond and Model Hannah

Model/Agent: Hannah

All photos are work of Melisa Leeper

"Tailor Made, Style" Ad Campaign for Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel

Agents in shoot: Jim Littlepage, Marianne Prokop, Patti Gilman, Phillipp Armstrong, Christopher Ayers, Chris Dasaro, Karen Thomas, Penny Toth, Kendra McConnell Hurd

Location is: 752 Lakeside, Birmingham, Builder is Brandywine Construction, contact Agent Kevin Cristbrook for more details

Coldwell Banker Weir Mauel did it again, thanks to the creative team in marketing and the Nine featured agents. "Tailor Made" is the tag line for our next HOUR, and StyleLine Magazine Ad campaign. This is a sneak peek preview of the shoot for the August issues.

A special thanks to our feature Artist/Designer Matthew Richmond of "Saving The Planet 1 Dress at a time" for his custom CBWM, agent photo dress, Melissa Leeper and her assistant Beth McGinnis on photography, and my shoot associates Rose Suau, and Shelly Yarouch for all their hard work. I'm thrilled to be Styling these shoots and look forward to the next collaboration!