Every wedding is personal for Inn’s floral designers

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We’ve been talking a lot about weddings lately. Mostly those that have happened in the distant past. Today we talk a bit about weddings that happen at Biltmore in the present tense.

Did you know that this year alone, more than 200 weddings are scheduled for venues across Biltmore? Jodee Mitchell, Floral Designer at the Inn, and her team will have their hands in some of those events.

“It’s so personal to us. We put a lot of emotion into it and want everything to be perfect. Many of the brides have been thinking about their perfect wedding since they were little girls, so it’s a huge, important day,” said Jodee.

By the time a large wedding takes place, Jodee and her team have been in touch regularly with the bride for months. The process usually begins with booking the venue, often a year out. Fall weddings are especially popular and venues book up fast for this gorgeous season.

Floral Designer Jill Rutherford said the initial meeting with the bride, and often her mother, is the most important. “We talk about décor, look at the venue, nail down the date, get a feel for budget, and listen to the bride’s ideas. We also offer our own ideas, things we know will suit the selected venue.”

A flurry of emails are traded after that first meeting; the team offers more ideas and sends photos. Many brides create Pinterest boards to exchange ideas. After the details are ironed out, the team and the bride hold a final meeting where the team presents a mock set-up.

Today’s décor is decidedly different from even a decade ago. Jill says many brides want more than flowers.

“We often create display pieces, use fabric draping, and order signage and rental furniture,” she said. “We’ve even decorated a candy table for the reception! And theme weddings are very popular now.  We always suggest that the bride selects a look that matches the venue to let it shine.”

Most of the actual set-up for both large and small weddings happens within a week.  Some of the preparation can include setting up frame systems to accommodate hanging items, creating arbors, putting the floral arrangements together, and painting things as needed. Jodee credits Biltmore’s engineering team for their professional and fast help. Everything that’s built must also be taken down, and she and her team do that too.

“When we are at the actual wedding and see the bride we feel so proud of the work we’ve done to make their day exactly what they wanted and really magical. We take pride into our work.  The whole team is equally excited about making each wedding look spectacular,” Jodee said.

Cornelia Vanderbilt’s Wedding: A Sweet Discovery

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Our Museum Services team made a sweet discovery related to Cornelia Vanderbilt’s wedding to the Honorable John F.A. Cecil on April 29, 1924. It’s a fascinating detail that was recently uncovered in an attic—a first for Biltmore—and the sweet discovery all started with a simple phone call.

Fred Cothran proudly holds the keepsake cake from the Vanderbilt-Cecil wedding.
Fred Cothran proudly holds the keepsake cake from the Vanderbilt-Cecil wedding.

A sweet discovery

In 2014, Biltmore acquired a piece of cake for the Biltmore collection, which our curators confirm is the only edible artifact now housed in the archives. Cake? For the archives? Indeed. And even more of an enticing tidbit: we believe that it’s about to be 100 years old!

Candler resident Frederick Cothran, then 96, found the cake in a trunk he inherited from his aunt, Bonnie Revis. Miss Revis was a cook at Biltmore House between 1924 and 1935. He contacted Biltmore’s museum services department to report that he had what he thought was a piece of cheese from Biltmore House. Not wasting any time, Laura Cope, Collections Manager, paid a visit to Cothran.

“Food is personal. People bond over it, and it’s easy to relate to it on several levels,” she says, and that’s why she had to see the cheese for herself.

Keepsake cake with monogram details.
Keepsake cake with monogram details. “CVC” for Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil and “JFAC” for John Francis Amherst Cecil.

When she met Cothran he presented her with a neat and tiny box engraved “Biltmore House” on the top. Two sets of monograms are engraved on either side: “CSV” for Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt; and “JFAC” for John Francis Amherst Cecil.

After getting back to Biltmore House, Laura researched the customs of the day and realized that this was more than likely cake rather than cheese. Then, upon hearing a recording of Paul Towe from Biltmore’s Oral History collection,  she and her colleagues confirmed that this was indeed cake – fruit cake – that the Cecils gave out as favors on their special day.

Mr. Towe recalled attending the wedding as a small boy. Towe’s father was employed at Biltmore in the 1920s and 1930s, and his sister, Sarah, was a flower girl in the wedding. Towe said that “everybody got a little white box with their name on it with a piece of fruit cake.”

Keepsake cake box with Rauscher's stamp
Charles Rauscher was a French confectioner and caterer, and his business, Maison Rauscher, was known as the ‘Delmonico’s of Washington’.

The box top’s underside has a stamp on it, “Rauscher’s – Washington, D.C.” In her research, Laura learned that Rauscher’s catered and supplied many fine confectionaries and baked goods to society families in Washington, including the wedding cake for President Wilson in 1915.

The tradition of wedding cake keepsakes can be traced back to Victorian times, typically sliced from the groom’s cake, which was often a fruit cake. Slices were wrapped and placed in tiny boxes to take home as a memento of the wedding. The belief was if an unmarried woman slept with a piece of the groom’s cake under her pillow, she would dream of her future husband.

Prince William and Katherine Middleton carried out the tradition by sending pieces of boxed cake to commemorate their wedding in 2011.                              

100 year old keepsake cake box from Cornelia's wedding at Biltmore
Cornelia Vanderbilt and John Cecil’s keepsake cake box has stood the test of time for a century.

This 100-year-old piece of cake may be considered an odd addition to a collection that contains famous works of art, books, ancient tapestries and antiques. Historically speaking, that’s not the case.

“This is a clear line connection between our day and their day, so it’s worth the effort to have it in our collection,” Laura said.

Main photo: Guests at the wedding of Cornelia Vanderbilt and John Cecil enjoyed breakfast in the Biltmore House Winter Garden, April 29, 1924.

The Knot Dream Wedding at Biltmore

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Today, Biltmore welcomes The Knot Dream Wedding hosted by The Knot, a popular wedding magazine and online wedding resource. The couple selected this year has a compelling engagement story, as each was seriously injured during the Boston Marathon bombing. Their story touched everyone who has worked on this special day, as well as millions of people who have followed them in the news and on social media.

Their positive outlook is something everyone has noticed about this special couple. Although Rebekah, Pete and Rebekah’s son Noah were injured in the devastating attack in Boston, they kept looking forward and have already overcome numerous challenges. Pete proposed last October and that is when The Knot first heard of their story. The editors decided that the couple deserved their dream wedding and the planning began.

In January, The Knot started efforts to throw the ultimate dream wedding for Rebekah and Pete. Readers were asked to vote on the different elements that would make up this grand day. Step one was selecting the perfect wedding location. Voters loved the idea of this amazing couple saying “I Do” in Asheville, NC, as it is one of their favorite vacation spots. Once Asheville became the voters’s choice, Biltmore was selected as the venue.

Weddings are special at Biltmore and have been part of the estate’s history since 1924. That year, George and Edith Vanderbilt’s only daughter, Cornelia Vanderbilt, celebrated her marriage to John Cecil. Their ceremony took place at All Souls Church in Biltmore Village with a brunch that followed in the Winter Garden of Biltmore House. It was a magical time and one that still serves as inspiration for event planning today.

Ted’s Favorite Places

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Ted Katsigianis has experienced a lot during his three decades at Biltmore. As Vice President of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, he directs a staff that works in traditional agriculture such as forage and field crops, and livestock including cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry. He also works with the Equestrian Center programs. As if that’s not a fulltime job, he’s also in charge of environmental initiatives and sustainability!

The Farmyard in Antler Hill Village is one of his favorite locations at ChickBiltmore because of his personal connection to the area.

“I was heavily involved with the restoration of the Antler Hill Village Barn project and creation of the Farmyard. It’s a pleasure to see guests young and old enjoy interacting with our animals. The children are especially thrilled,” he says. “I enjoy admiring the sheep and cattle in the production pastures, and watching the poultry and baby goats in the Farmyard.”

His other favorite view is found on the estate’s West Side, located across the French Broad River from Biltmore House. The rolling pastures give way to Long Valley Vineyard—one of Biltmore’s earliest vineyards—with Long Valley Lake in the distance. Ted was a member of the team that helped create Long Valley Vineyard, and he’s proud to be a part of estate history in that regard.

“We were breaking new ground for a specialty crop grown in Western North Carolina, and we didn’t have anything to go by,” he explains. “I was in charge of the vineyard for 17 years, and some of our best harvests occurred during this time.”

If you would like to experience the views from the vineyards, we recommend the new Vine to Wine Tour offered on Saturdays and Sundays now through fall. This exclusive guided tour incorporates tastings of our best Biltmore wines while taking you to the vineyards and behind-the-scenes Winery production and bottling locales, finishing with a premium grand tasting and gourmet nibbles. You must have a Biltmore admission ticket or Annual Pass to participate.

Call us at 800-543-2961 to make reservations.

Behind the Scenes: Big Reveal Set For Fall

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Two rooms inside the 250-room Biltmore House – the Second Floor Living Hall and the Salon – will re-open this fall after the estate’s Museum Services team restores them to their appearances as they were when George Vanderbilt opened the home in 1895.

In recent years, the Second Floor Living Hall has been used as an exhibition space; prior to that, it was interpreted as a sitting area. An early 1950s photo offered a glimpse of the original furnishings of this space—gilded sconces, paintings and a suite of oversized Baroque furniture placed around the perimeter of the room. Additional research led curators to determine that the room’s primary function was intended as a picture gallery and formal hallway.

“We’re constantly striving to interpret the house authentically as it appeared during the Vanderbilts’ time,” said Darren Poupore, Chief Curator.

Bringing the room back to its original state includes conserving all the furnishings, recreating elaborate window treatments and making structural changes.

“We discovered that the original upholstery was a gauffraged fabric—a rich wool velvet with a pattern pressed into it—in a striking gold color,” said Poupore. “We had it reproduced in France by Prelle, the same company that made many of our historic fabrics for the Louis XV Suite project.”

Green velvet draperies will adorn windows featuring exact reproductions of four pelmets (or valances). For two years, local textile artist Heather Allen Swarttouw painstakingly embroidered and appliquéd each pelmet to match the originals.

As appropriate for such a prominent space, several notable paintings are being returned to their original locations. John Singer Sargent’s portraits of Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmsted and Anders Zorn’s painting “The Waltz,” which have been hanging temporarily in the Salon, will once again hang where George Vanderbilt intended. The restored room will be completed and re-opened September 1st, 2013.

Relocating the paintings from the Salon has led to its reinterpretation, centered on the fact that the Salon was one of the few first floor rooms not completed during Vanderbilt’s lifetime.

“Draperies were placed in the archways to prevent the Vanderbilts’ guests from seeing inside the room,” Poupore said. “It had bare brick walls, a rough subfloor and a structural tiled ceiling without its finished treatment. In the 1920s, Edith Vanderbilt turned it into a Turkish sitting room, but in 1930 everything except the 1920s ceiling treatment was removed and it became a space to display special objects.”

Curators decided to tell the story of how the room has changed through the years. Removal of a wall revealed an original firebox and brick walls. A section of the fabric ceiling treatment is being removed to show the terra cotta tiled ceiling above. Information panels will explain the new interpretation of the room when it re-opens October 1st, 2013.

Learn more about the Biltmore house.

The Royal Bundle Revives a Biltmore Memory

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This week’s arrival of William and Kate’s baby – His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge – has us thinking back to the summer of 1996 when the child’s grandfather, Prince Charles, visited Biltmore.

The occasion? To launch the first American Summer School of the Prince of Wales’ Institute of Architecture.  Biltmore House hosted the school’s students for a week that summer. They studied drawing while immersing themselves in the works of the estate’s designers Richard Morris Hunt and Frederic Law Olmsted.

The idea for hosting the school came after William A.V. Cecil Sr., George Vanderbilt’s grandson, attended a dinner party at the Prince’s Gloucestershire estate in 1995. The Asheville Citizen-Times reported Mr. Cecil said the Prince was interested in supporting good architecture in the aftermath of World War II. The war devastated many historic structures in London, and the city’s reconstruction wasn’t to everyone’s liking. That sentiment, he said, inspired Prince Charles to start the school.

While the Prince was at Biltmore, William and Mimi Cecil hosted a reception for him and his staff on the Loggia of Biltmore House. As the photo shows, the Prince’s visit caught the attention of lots of news photographers and of course, Biltmore guests!

Planning for such a visit during Biltmore’s high season was no small task, having started many months ahead of the June visit. Countless phone calls between Biltmore and Buckingham Palace took place, says Debbie Robinson, who works in Biltmore’s Marketing Department.

Bill Alexander, Biltmore’s Landscape and Forest Historian, was part of the welcome party that day, and with Bill Cecil, Jr., toured the Prince and his party through the gardens and Conservatory. So impressed with the gardens and Bill Alexander’s knowledge about the history of Biltmore and gardening in general, the Prince offered a special invitation.

“He said that I was welcome to visit Highgrove, his country estate in Gloucestershire,” says Bill, noting he’d shared his upcoming plan to lead a tour group through the English countryside with stops at notable gardens along the way. Bill made an immediate change to the group’s itinerary and later that fall, he and his tour group were welcomed by the Prince’s staff at his home. Unfortunately, an emergency took the Prince away from home that day, but his staff received Bill and the group like honored guests, treating them to an elaborate tea held in the Prince’s dining room after a grand tour by the head gardener.

It’s a lovely footnote in Biltmore’s recent history. We hope that Prince Charles is enjoying his new grandson. And our most heart-felt congratulations to William and Kate!

About the Photos

Main photo: William A.V. Cecil Sr. greets Prince Charles at the front door of Biltmore House, Summer 1996. Photo courtesy of the Asheville Citizen-Times, by Debbie Chase-Jennings.

Greg’s Favorite Places

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As head instructor for the Land Rover Experience Driving School at Biltmore, Greg Nikolas has what many people consider an ideal job. Greg drives luxurious and highly capable Land Rovers to rarely seen places on the estate while instructing guests on how to improve their off-road driving skills. The experiences range from 1 or 2-hour lessons on obstacle courses with steep descents, side-tilts, and rock crawls to full-day training in off-road techniques and recovery.

He doesn’t deny that it’s fun—he’s worked for Land Rover for 15 years, including the past 9 years at Biltmore’s program. And while he enjoys the time he spends navigating and instructing guests as they pilot Land Rovers through woods and fields, there are two locations on the estate he considers his favorites.

The first spot is the statue of Diana, located at the top of the Vista that faces Biltmore House.

“The view of Biltmore House from Diana is spectacular. Every time I’m there I think about how George Vanderbilt must have felt seeing his home from this vantage point. This particular view really puts the house’s size and splendor into perspective,” Greg says.

His other favorite is less well-known but just as scenic. Picnic Hill is located on the estate’s west side, across the French Broad River from Biltmore House and Antler Hill Village. There is limited access to this spot; it’s primarily visited by guests participating in a Land Rover activity. Picnic Hill overlooks Long Valley Lake, the vineyards, and provides a unique glimpse of the Inn on Biltmore Estate.

“It is so peaceful and serene there that you could be miles from anywhere. In reality, you’re only minutes from Asheville and the rest of the estate,” Greg says.

“As its name suggests, we use it for picnics on our full-day adventures. And it’s been the scene for more than one marriage proposal!”

Elaine’s Favorite Place

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Elaine Breault’s daily responsibilities often take her all around Biltmore. As operations manager for Lioncrest, Deerpark Restaurant, and Biltmore Catering, she manages the private events, weddings, and conferences hosted at these venues in addition to managing functions off the estate that use Biltmore Catering.

Four years of handling these duties has resulted in Elaine being pretty familiar with locations around the estate. And she has a couple of favorite places–that you may not be aware of–that keep drawing her back time after time.
One area is located behind the Inn on Biltmore Estate; there are hiking trails that Elaine uses for running when she feels like a challenge.

“The trail behind the inn is marked with good signage, and I usually turn right and run by the Brooder House, which used to be a chicken coop,” she says. “This particular trail also offers great long-range mountain views.”
There’s another location she likes for a completely different reason. The paved path that connects Antler Hill Village and the Lagoon is a favorite for both Elaine and her pit bull/lab mix named Lola. This is a popular trail for dogs and people alike as it passes through fields with the French Broad River nearby.

“Lola loves to walk here because she meets so many other dogs,” Elaine says.

Hope’s Favorite Place

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If you attended a seminar hosted by A Gardener’s Place, you may have met Hope Wright. In addition to her responsibilities as a sales associate in our garden shop, she conducts the free daily seminars on gardening and flower arranging offered throughout the year. Which means Hope is one of the lucky few who can gather materials from Biltmore’s gardens to create beautiful arrangements seen in displays.

Since she’s spent 14 years at A Gardener’s Place, it’s only natural that several of our gardens hold her most preferred locations on the estate.

One of her favorite walks begins at Biltmore House and continues down into the Shrub Garden, bypassing the steps that lead to the Walled Garden. She recommends stopping there to admire the glory of a Weeping Blue Atlas cedar.

As you continue toward the Shrub Garden, take a trail that cuts up to the right. Then turn around to view the many dogwood varieties that thrive here.

“This area is unofficially known as the ‘dogetum’, a take on the word arboretum,” Hope says. “I continue to be amazed at the variety of interesting dogwoods—my favorite is the variegated Weeping Kousa Dogwood.”

The view from this location on the trail is amazing. “You can see a tiny section of the Conservatory through the evergreens, and a fabulous view of the entire Walled Garden,” she says. “I like to sit on the cast iron Victorian bench and take a few moments just to appreciate the scenery.”

In springtime, you can see the tulips in full bloom, but summer also serves up beauty with the Walled Garden bursting with bright annuals. “Take a few minutes to go off the beaten path—there’s always a new sight to behold in every season,” Hope says.

Learn more about our gardens and grounds.

Bryan’s Favorite Place

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For Bryan McIntosh, the Spring Garden will always hold a special place in his heart. Since beginning his Biltmore career in Food & Beverage operations 12 years ago, he’s spent a great deal of his working life indoors, from managing the Stable Café to his current responsibilities overseeing all food & beverage services in Antler Hill Village as well as operations for The Biltmore Coffee Co. in downtown Asheville.

But the Spring Garden—a secluded space just beyond the Shrub Garden and shaded with towering pines and hemlocks— stands out to him for two reasons.

“It reminds me of a golf fairway, and it’s also the place where my wife and I were married,” he says.

“We met at Biltmore, so it was fitting that we got married here,” Bryan says. “The Spring Garden is an unusual place for a wedding so that made it different and special for us.”

Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted may have named it the Spring Garden for two small springs found here. As befits its name, this garden is glorious in spring with vivid blooms of forsythia, spirea, and redbuds contrasting with majestic evergreens. But summer brings its own beauty to this location, with leafy shrubs and trees creating a calm retreat.

For Bryan, the Spring Garden also had another plus going for it—it was one of the few places where he had not managed an event on the estate so it didn’t have “work” connections for him.

“My wife and I looked all over the Asheville area trying to find an outdoor location for our wedding. We just kept coming back to Biltmore; you can’t beat it,” he says.

 

Learn more about our gardens and grounds.