Catherine Tuton hosts dinner parties, and she sets a table the way she hosts: with real thought for how a room should feel before anyone sits down. This was a dinner party at the Wrigley Mansion in Phoenix, designed by Lux Florist, with two tablescapes in two rooms of the house. I photographed it before the evening began.
I love a room at this moment. Everything is in place and nothing has happened yet. Every candle is where someone decided it should be, every napkin is folded, and the room still has that held-breath quiet.
Catherine was in the room for part of it, in a leopard skirt, and I wanted her in the pictures. Not posed at the table like a guest, just moving through the space. A few of these frames are blurred, which is closer to how it felt: a room full of detail, and one person in the middle of it.
The Wrigley Mansion is not an easy house to design around. Painted wood ceilings, stone fireplaces, oil portraits, heavy drapes, old rugs. A room with this much going on can swallow a tablescape whole. Lux Florist didn’t fight any of it. They set two very different tables in two rooms and let the house do part of the work. The portrait over the mantel, the gold frames, the carpets worn soft: the design only had to meet the house halfway.
The Warm Room
The first table sits in front of a stone fireplace. Peach, blush and burgundy run its length, with tall tapers and shaded lamps keeping the light low. Nothing matches exactly, and that’s what makes it work.
You read the table in layers: glass, china, petals, candle.
I don’t shoot a table straight on the whole time. At some point I tilt the camera, let the focus drift, let a flower go soft in front of a portrait. The clean frames tell you what was there. The loose ones tell you what it felt like to stand in the room, and I need both.
The Silver Room
The second room is a different mood altogether. Two antique mirrors, silver and gold candelabras, white roses, clear ghost chairs. Where the first table is warm and layered, this one is cool and a little glittering. Gray napkins on glass chargers keep it quiet, and the candlelight does most of the work.
The mirrors changed how I shot in here. A reflection gives you a second room to photograph, and some of my favorite frames are the ones where the table sits inside the glass.
Catherine in a black dress, leaning at the table, the candle flames smeared into trails behind her. I let the shutter run long on a few of these, and I’m glad I did.
Warm and cool. Wood and glass. Peach and burgundy against white and silver. Two tables that couldn’t look less alike, and somehow they belong to the same house and the same host.
I keep thinking about how still it was. All that care, showing up in a ribbon, a menu card, a candle at just the right height.
Planning a wedding, dinner, or gathering in Arizona or beyond? Get in touch.
Venue: Wrigley Mansion, Phoenix
Host: Catherine Tuton
Design + Florals: Lux Florist
Rentals: Event Rents AZ, Hazel Grove Rentals
Photography: Elyse Hall Photography