Mariée Ami
0113 Mariee Ami
The Mariee Ami team: Lauren Sharps, Mary Baugh, Louise McClure, Laurie Grantham and Neillie Butler.
With a coffee table full of books surrounded by comfy chairs, Mariée Ami’s office feels like a living room. It is from this space its owners talk daily with brides and their moms.
“By the time our clients get to the wedding, we have become friends with them, and I know what they want without asking them,” co-owner Neillie Butler said. “We are there for our clients in anything and everything that happens in those 10 months before the wedding, so they really trust us by the wedding day.”
Hence, its name: mariee ami is French for “bride’s friend.”
“We are a one-stop shop for everything from panty hose colors to etiquette to family relationships,” Butler said. “I am part wedding planner and part counselor.”
Armed with a background in corporate event planning, Butler had planned a Sweet 16 birthday party for co-owner Laurie Grantham, whose husband is a law partner with hers. After 18 years as a homemaker, Grantham was ready to start a business around the time Butler was ready to move her wedding planning venture out of her basement — and the two joined together to start Mariée Ami in April 2011.
The team at Mariée Ami helps each bride come up with a unique atmosphere for her wedding and then works with vendors to get it in the right direction.
“Mariée Ami creates the overall look and feel of the wedding, but it’s the bride’s plan. Whatever the bride wants, we will do. We take an overwhelming process and make it enjoyable.”
At one wedding, the bride and groom surprised the guests by leaving in an antique fire truck, but there were subtle clues earlier in the reception: match books on the bar and fire-themed songs as the final three on their playlist. Another wedding was a complete surprise for guests; they thought they were attending an engagement party.
For yet another, the bride’s parents had passed away in a plane crash. At a reception held at her father’s airplane hanger, there was a flyover during the cocktail hour in honor of her parents.
In-house Art Director Mary Baugh designs custom invitations, programs and other paper items for each Mariée Ami bride — just one of many touches that ensures no wedding is planned with a rubber stamp.
“The paper suite either starts or completes the look of a wedding,” Butler said.
If a wedding needs a menu or sign at the last minute, it’s easy to create with the designer is in-house, according to Butler.
Mariée Ami plans weddings all over Birmingham and increasingly at Lake Martin and at the beach, but it also manages Swann Lake Stables, a venue located on Sicard Hollow Road that is the perfect setting for the “rustic chic” style that is trendy now for weddings. And much of that trend has evolved from the bride’s new digital idea book: Pinterest.com.
“Pinterest has been the best and worst thing,” Butler said. “You can see what you like easier but you have to trump all of it. Now we are starting to hear brides say they don’t want a ‘Pinterest wedding.’ We are starting to look at the bride’s pin boards just for inspiration.”
And with that inspiration, a special friend sets out to bring to life the day a bride and her mom have been talking about for years.
