A letter from the founder
I started Alder & Tide in 2015 after five years planning weddings for a hotel group, where I learned everything about logistics and very little about restraint. The weddings were flawless and they all looked the same. The chairs were the same. The lighting was the same. You could have been in Whistler or Waikiki.
So I left, and I took on four weddings the first year, and I made a rule that I have kept ever since: nothing in the room that could not have come from where the room is. Cedar in Tofino. Arbutus on Salt Spring. Vines, if you are between them. It is a small rule and it turns out to be a demanding one.
Eleven years later there are six of us, in a studio above Water Street with a view of the rail yard, and we take on twelve weddings a year. We could take on more. We have chosen not to, because the work we are proud of is the work we had time for.
If you have read this far, you probably notice things too. We would like to hear from you.
Isla Marchand
The team
- Isla MarchandFounder & Creative Director
- Theo NakamuraDirector of Production
- Wren HalvorsenSenior Planner
- Mireille CôtéDesign Lead
- Samuel AdeyemiPlanner
- June ParkStudio Manager
Values
- Restraint
We remove until what remains is necessary. Then we stop.
- Place
A wedding should belong to where it is held. We do not import a look.
- Craft
Linen that has been washed. Candles that are unscented. Brass, not gold-painted.
- Honesty
We tell you what things cost and what they are worth. These are not always the same.
- Quiet
The best planning is unnoticed. You will not see us on the day unless you look.
Press
- Vogue
- Martha Stewart Weddings
- Brides
- Over The Moon
- Harper's Bazaar
- Condé Nast Traveller
Our studio sits on the unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. We are grateful to live and work here, and we hold that gratitude in every place we are invited to plan.