Pink Peony Wedding Part Two {The Ceremony}

I am basking in a free week of doing absolutely nothing.
Where do I have to be? Nowhere.
What do I have to do ? Not a darn thing.
Am I lazy? Yes.
Do I love it? Yup.
Can I stop with all these questions already??? ok.

I have been so out of it I forgot to finish my post on my Peony Bride from this last weekend!
Blasphemy, I know!

So here we go with the Ceremony, the set up of the Tea Ceremony and the Reception area.

{Pink Peony Bride}
The bride was just so pretty in her little blue cardigan and although I don't have a very clear picture, she has the cutest freckles and I thought her makeup looked really natural.
Once we were ready to start we lined everyone up and got right to it.
The wind was picking up and I felt so bad for the bridesmaids and bride, they were freezing!
Here is a picture of the aisle. The instructions were to use the lanterns if I thought we needed them and I thought they looked great on the inside of the aisle.

I wish I had a better picture of the chair decorations for the first row. :(
They were bunches of garden greens, roses, and lisianthus that weer tied off with big pink bows.

Once she was down the aisle, I headed to the last row and asked the people sitting in the back to please use the bubble machines once they started walking back down the aisle. They were bubble guns that you point and shoot a million bubbles out, you know?
I went to go fill up the glass containers with pretzels and when we were down to the last bag we heard cheering! The ceremony was about 7 minutes long!!! The fastest wedding vows ever.
I do, you do? K, we do. Kiss. lol!

So we put the last container of pretzels out, snapped a quick picture and watched the couple make their way down the aisle.

Bubble machines are great! Way better than having a few people huffing and puffing into those little wands. :)

After another flying veil shot, it was time to gather up all the guests for a group shot.
There is the very sweet and stealth like Dacia Lamb. I CANNOT wait to see her pictures.
here's a link to her site, it's pretty amazing.
www.dacialamb.com

Then it was time to put that cute cardigan back on and get to the reception venue.

We broke down the reception area and left to the restaurant, Yet Wah on Clement street in San Francisco a short ten minutes away to begin the set up f0r the tea ceremony and the reception for the guests.

I forgot to clear my memory chip from my last event and hadn't uploaded my pictures to my computer so I had to conserve memory and only take a few pictures. I was so bummed.
So here are some of the shots I took at the restaurant.

We reused the flower bunches that were on the chairs at the ceremony to decorate the ledge of the stage where the couple and their parents were seated.

We placed a large floral spray in front of the head table.

We set up the cute Ferrero Rocher escort cards.
I wanted to do this so badly for my wedding, but I ran out of time and chose to emboss stickers instead of making the toothpick cards. Looking back I think I chose the hard way out actually, hehe.
Super cute!

We placed a gift box filled with candies, alternating pink and gold, at every place setting along with a card that asked guests to share pictures, and a flower in each wine glass.

I felt incredibly guilty that she hadn't ordered a toss bouquet and figured she would sacrifice one of the brides maid bouquets, so I made her one on the spot with left over florals. I always carry all my tools and ribbon so I can take care of last minute things if I have to.
Incidentally, I ended up making another boutonniere for her dad because he was hugging so many people that his cymbidium petal was broken and I thought it looked weird without a petal.

Finally, the cake was delivered and the bride asked if I could please decorate the top top of the cake with peonies. I think I'm more comfortable doing this :)

While I was running around, checking stuff off the list, the bride went to go change into her red dress and started to put on all the gorgeous jewelry that was gifted from her parents.

I loved it when it was the grooms turn to have his jewelry put on.

The whole family was fawning over him and dad, was like" No, no, no! Like this..."

Then it was time for the tea ceremony. At this point it was time for us to go.

They lived happily ever after....


The girls and I packed up and left. Debbie and Allison help me out on wedding days and I thank them for all their hard work!

C&E you two are such incredibly nice people. I wish you nothing but happiness, health and success in your marriage. I really enjoyed working with you guys and I thought all the details of your wedding were just fabulous and I am beside myself with the kindness and generosity you and your family extended to me and my team that day.
Congrats!

Pink Peony Wedding {The Set Up}

Hello beautiful people! I'm back, finals free!!!!
I can just never do another statistics final in my life now.
**jumping in the air, happily high five-ing no one**
I am free of quantitative reasoning and can focus on flowers now :)
whew.

Anyhow, on to my perfectly pink wedding!

I had the extreme pleasure of meeting my bride via my blog and she is just the sweetest thing in the world. She has a mad crazy schedule!!! She JUST closed on her house with her husband(who's a real life rocket scientist) she planned her wedding in like 2 months, she has lived in like three different cities since we met due to her residency in different hospitals, she is going to graduate in like a week to become official doctor, she has been a rock star MOH and photographer for two weddings in the last three weeks.....she's like a modern day superhero!
So the next time I am complaining that I am tired with homework, and weddings, and a husband and three kids, I am vowing to think of Cindy and her strength. :)

{Pink Peony Wedding}

Usually when I meet with a couple to discuss flowers, the bride always seems to know what she wants in her personal bouquet. She has either had a vision of what she would hold in her hands or she has done enough research, that she has the "look" or many pictures of inspiration to guide us. On this occasion, the bride let me know that her father had chosen the color pink and that was the only prerequisite. Well of course if you are getting married in May or June I would suggest peonies of you looking for pink, burgundy, coral, or white flowers for your bouquet. They are my most favorite flower when they are in season and I will forever think they are the juiciest most delicious flowers in the world. Not that I eat them, but there really is no other way to describe them in my world. :P
Here are the personal bouquets.
The bridal bouquet was all pink peonies and pink roses. I chose roses called Titanic roses for their cotton candy pink
color and the humongous beautiful heads that open perfectly.


The bridesmaids and MOH had the same flowers, they were just smaller bouquets.

This was a nosegay for the flower girl.
She would be wearing a babies breath halo with three roses on each side of the back, tied off with a long pink satin ribbon. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the halo before I left. :(
Her bouquet was 5 perfect pink roses with a babies breath collar and a pink satin bow.

I was scheduled to drop off all personal flowers to the bridal suite at the Hotel Kabuki in Japan town in San Francisco.

Typically I arrange with the bride to drop off at her suite or at the church. You would be surprised how many times flowers get left behind of they are all taken tot he suite. My recommendation is to have the bridal bouquet and brides maids bouquets delivered to the suite if you will be taking pictures before the wedding. If not, then have everything delivered to the church so you don't have the additional task of transporting all the flowers back to the ceremony site with you. Either way is fine by me! In this particular wedding we had so many corsages and bouts that we ended up taking half to her for the immediate wedding party members, then the other 15 sets of corsages and bouts with me to the ceremony site to distribute as the guests and family members arrived.

Then it was off to Shakespeare Garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Funniest thing ever? There was a Psychic Faire and Paper Faire going on in the park and the parking was full in the lots at the museum and on the street!!! Every time I walked back to my car to unload, I was harassed by psychics trying to get me to go to their fair. I couldn't help but laugh because I thought to myself if they were legit they would know not to ask me because I was trying to coordinate a wedding here.......hehe. Straight to hell is where I'm going, I know.
We met Abbey Rentals in the park so they could drop off the chairs that we would set up.
I have now worked three weddings with this company and they have been really good about picking up and dropping off the correct items every time. I would definitely recommend them to you. This is the view from the gates and the the walk down the aisle for the bride.

We set up the tables in the back that had signs that said:

" Cindy and Elwin have tied the knot, please have a pretzel. Too Cute! We set out yogurt pretzel, chocolate covered pretzels, and regular pretzels for the after ceremony snacks.
The water bottles were labeled with their personalized monogram and names and dates.
A girl after my own heart, I tell ya.

Cindy asked me:
"Do you think it would be ok to make massed Babies Breath arrangements for the ceremony?"

ummm...hell yes!!! I squealed out loud when I got her email because I absolutely adore this look. I hate babies breath in arrangements because I think of
red roses+leather+babies=80's prom
But in mass they look FABO!
So yes, my dear sweet Cindy, I think that's a GREAT idea, hehe.


She had given us a bag that had extra pink paper lanterns in them and told me that if we could use them great, knock myself out, if not then no biggie. So we used them in the aisle and on the babies breath mounds.
It took us exactly two hours to set up the location with the help of the grooms friends. They were troopers because it was COLD out there. We set up the flowers for the ceremony, and the on site pew and chair decorations along with all the other goodies Cindy had prepared for us.
We started to hand out the corsages and boutonnieres as soon as the family and friends started to arrive.

Here's is the woman that stole my heart for the day.
The mother of the bride. She was so cute and so appreciative of our help that I just wanted to give her the world. She smiled for me while I took a picture of her pink cymbidium orchid corsage.

The flower girl was impossibly cute.
She looked a little like Suri Cruise to me? Is it just me??
Either way she was gorgeous and she was freezing cold, the poor thing!
So cold that she didn't fight off the babies breath halo. I wish we could have gotten a shot of the back with the roses and ribbon, but we were moving sop fast to get everyone their flowers so we could start the ceremony.

Here's the proud mother of the flower girl. Her corsage was made out of salal, pale pink spray roses, and pink fancy roses.
She was not taking off her coat either, hehe. No did except the last minute ditch of the cardigans by the bride and the bridesmaids....poor things.


Up next is the quickest I do's in the world. Literally about 7 minutes!

Mango Wedding {The flowers}

My fabulous Menlo Park couple re-tied the knot today and I dropped off a few goodies for them.

Confession time:

I wanted to eat the brides bouquet.
Seriously.
I have this weird habit when I'm extremely happy or visually stimulated by something outrageously fantabulous, I tend to express my thoughts in extreme ways that don't make sense to most people......like if an arrangement somewhere stops me in my tracks I say:

"They are so gorgeous I want to eat them."
or
"Ugh. They're so fabulous I want to puke."
or
"OMG, the color is so ridiculous , I CAN"T STAND IT!!!"

My husband is used to this but when I say it out loud to some people, they look at me all strange....what they don't know is that sadly that's practically the best thing my brain can come up with when its on beauty overload! hehe.
I have issues :P
ALSO!
I got a new camera for mother's day and I just want to show off my pictures to you.

I love my camera so much, I want to eat it!
See? Now you get me.



Milva Roses and Coral Hypericum.

Scotch broom is growing wild right now and I adore it! :)

Mango Callas.


I mean look at these GORGEOUS yellow spray roses

Don't they make you sick???
Or is it just me?
oh.

So then it was off to work.

I loved making this bouquet so much because I truly love Milva roses and Mango Callas.

Stay tuned........