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!