The brief
A third birthday on a hotel lawn in Canggu — palms, sea light, and no shade to speak of. Frozen, which in Bali is always the same problem: the theme is made of ice and the location is not. And she was three, with a newborn brother in the family, so the whole thing had to be short, calm and mostly photographable.
What we built
An ice palace in white and the palest blue: a wall of ice with <i>IVY</i> in dotted lilac letters, snowflakes cut in relief, bare white trees, and a little picket fence at the base. Elsa, Anna and Olaf were built as solid figures at her own height rather than printed flat, so she could stand between them and be photographed as one of them. A balloon-packed <i>3</i>, and a garland in white, lilac and powder blue.
How the day went
In her own Elsa dress and tiara, and she did not take either off. Family photographs first, with her father lifting her onto the plinth and the baby asleep on her mother’s shoulder. Then the party ran gently through the afternoon on the grass — at three, an hour and a half is the whole attention span, and stretching it is how you end up with tears in the last photograph.
What the parents got
The set carried the day. Sculpted characters, no printing, no glare — and a series of photographs in tropical light that look nothing like a hotel lawn in the heat.
