White and Silver Wedding Bouquet

I told myself no work, for 1 month while I regroup from a rather...challenging year.
HOWEVER, I had a last minute request from a very special bride this past week.
I have been on my much needed vacation away from the world and my automatic responder has been on for two weeks while I travel to Boston through the New Year.

But them a rather curious email came through and while in bed,
I managed to reach over for my laptop and read this:
"OK,I have a secret, the flowers I asked you about were for me. I'm getting married on Monday."

WHAT?!?!?!?!

I called her from my cell phone from bed immediately to hear the story. Hahah!

She told me she was eloping and that she wanted me to make a quick bouquet for her with the only instructions being that I use white flowers and meet her at City Hall at 2:30.

So I ran frantically through the flower market on a Monday after the Holidays with zero luck on the flowers that I had in mind, but I did find some callas, football mums, alstromeria, stock, tulips, and dusty miller.

So here is what I whipped up. :)

I finally got a change to use my rose applique on the handle of the bouquet- score!

She forgot to add in a boutonniere so I made one just in case she wanted to use one :)


So I wish my lovely White Elopement Bride MUCH love and happiness!
You looked beautifully radiant with happiness and I am happy to have been able to be a part of this! xoxoxoxo

Merry Christmas/Happy New Years!

Thank you for checking in on me and my little blog. :)
I have been a bad blogger this year but I hope to be back on very soon after the Holidays with a what feels like a years worth of recaps.

It's been a challenging year, but things look GREAT for 2011 and I'm so ready!!!!
I hope you have a great rest of the year and I wish you all much love, happiness, health and success for 2011!

Happy Holidays!!!

Winter Wonderland Bride

AHA!
I'm not dead.

I lure you in with a picture, and then
BAM! I hit with an
"i'm sowwy"{sad face}
In hopes that you will accept my apologies for my lack of posts.
For those concerned- yes...I'm aliiiiive.
I have been busy personally and professionally and I didn't even want to half a** my blog until I had the time. Umm...except that's not now, this is just a teaser pic so that you know I will be back. Before Christmas even, just not until I finish out my latest project that will consume me till the 18th of this month. THEN, its a new me baby.

BTW~this pic is from an all white wedding at the Sir Francis Drake in San Francisco over the weekend. It was stunning! The Bride wanted to create a winter wonderland and that we did!
I will share soon =)

Love it to Pieces

The Julia Morgan Ballroom has the ceiling I love to pieces....as a matter of fact if I could take a piece, I would. : P

I had a walk through this past week with Jessica of Dreams on a Dime for a wedding we are working on next month. Jessica and I worked on
Pink San Francisco City Hall Bride
My San Francisco Green Room Bride
along with my Julia Morgan Bride in October and my
Winter White Wedding Bride in December....lol! I know, I know, what's up with these names right? Well if you follow my blog you will know I try my best to protect the innocent and rarely publish a first and last name unless they have given me the green light. She's a super cool person and one helluva vendor if you are looking for a wedding planner.

We met Linda, who BTW, is one of the nicest ladies EVER, for a quick walk through of the venue.
Bank by day, wedding ceremony location by night. The gold, marble and bronze is ridiculous in there! The ceremony will take place up front where the doors to the bank will be draped and two 6 foot arrangements will go.

The guest come upstairs for a cocktail hour and then the doors are open to a reception area with honeycomb ceilings and spectacular views of the San Francisco.

GORGEOUS.

The 20 foot fireplace is majestic.
Jessica made me laugh by saying I could rotisserie her if I chose to...lol!

We will use lots of candles, glassware, curly willow, orchids and roses in browns, rust, oranges, and reds. I can't wait for this one!

Pink City Hall Wedding {the Reception}

Long overdue but life and wedding season has been crazy busy. Kids are back in school, I'm back in school this week, I still have about 12 more big weddings to get through before finals and the Holidays and then I'm off for a month between mid December and January..it's going to be awesome. This summer went by super fast.

Here is the final post on the Pink City Hall Wedding In San Francisco.

Part 3 Let Them Eat Cake
Part 2 The Set up
Part 1 The Bouquets

Here is one of the two centerpiece we used for the tables. The centerpiece was an all orchid arrangement of a combination of light pink to fuchsia Phalaenopsis orchids surrounded by clear cylinder vases with floating candles in them.

The table linens and gold accents on the napkin ring holders and the plates were so pretty.


Here is centerpiece two, a rose pave in a clear cube vase. On top of the flowers sit three vases in varying heights with water and floating candles.



These pave centerpiece took me about an hour each.
Here's the design I played with to start. I took a picture with my camera phone when I realized I would be sitting there for the next 8 hours or so pave-ing my little heart out.

Here is a last minute Buffet piece we made for the Antipasto table.

The Dessert buffet looked delectable once it was set up! Wish I had taken a picture of it afterward.

The Ice Bar was sweet. I think I need one of these at my next wedding. :)

A few random pics of the room and details.

The staircase to the upper level in City hall was lit with Bao and Crystals name :)

The ceremony pieces had to be taken down from the staircase and re-purposed around the room in various areas. The room was filled with flowers and orchids everywhere.

This is a mini version of the bridal bouquet to place on the head table for the bride to toss and it just glowed in the lighting there.

So all in all, it was very successful and beautiful event. I am very lucky that Crystal is just the sweetest person, she made it really easy to work with and she was just gorgeous on the day of! All of her gowns were beautiful and she looked stunning in them. Bao hi five'd me like 4 times at the end of the night, lol, the only thing I wish I could have shared with you was the crazy grooms cake of him sitting at his computer with 9 screens!
So I thank C&B for allowing me to share in your special day.
I wish you much love and success in your marriage! : )

{And they lived happily ever after...}

Let Them Eat Cake

Listen to me:
Tracy at The Buttercream Studios is a *&&^*@#% Rock Star. period.
WOW. wow. woooow.

Enough about me, and what I think of her...let's look at the facts. Go to her site and look at her cakes and tell me they are not *gorgifical*{real word, trust me I'm a florist.} I am a self proclaimed flower snob and her orchids and hydrangeas are unreal...go look! Check out the couture cakes. Not only is she talented, but she's super sweet. I <3 her.
She also competed in the Food Network challenge that's airing later this year so be sure to check her out ;)

Pink San Francisco City Hall {part three}

Our bride served one sliver of each flavor to all the guest so that they too could enjoy each and every delectable bite of this humongous cake.

Here are the pictures of he beautiful cake she made for my pink wedding wedding.
With no flash and no lighting it was gorgeous.

But when the gold and pink lights hit it, it was spectacular!

Everything was hand made and hand painted...just look at the detail.

The night before I was running behind and couldn't get to her studio so my sister went out there for me with flowers and she came back with a tray of cake. Before she said "hello" she said open this NOW so I can eat it. I let her have one bite of each {because I am greedy} and she too was in love. I managed to save some for my husband and at 2am this was my dinner.

Pink San Francisco City Hall {The Set Up}

Here's the beginning post of this particularly large wedding: {the Bouquets}

Now onto the crazy set up. First of all, let me tell you I obsessed over every last little detail and flower for 30 days straight. I had been in touch with the lovely bride for months of course, but we changed the style and look of the wedding 3 times. I'm talking a complete haul over. We ended up with a mixture of the three. At point there was an after lounge involved, but in the end, it was nixed.

The last 30 days was crazy. I had to go to the fire department in SF to clear the votives, which didn't pass, I had to re-shop (for the best price) the tallest votives I could find which were UG-LAY ,so I had to use vases which tripled the cost right off the bat. I switched orchids vendors because two weekends before this event, the 15 orchids bunches we ordered came in under our standard of excellence for a white wedding that I will post once the photographer sends me pics, and I find my memory card. So we had to add $9 per bunch to our already huge order and then the tall vases we ordered were sold out a week before I picked them up (yes, 5000 vases in the inventory was depleted) and the other company I went with charged $6 more per vase...YIKES!! But, that is to be expected in this business. Just imagine, $1200 worth of vases.

When it all comes down to it, it has to make dollars and sense or what you love to do, you will not be able to if you are not watching your bottom line.

But here was the plan for the day:
The Task: To set up the ceremony area with 10 arrangements, set up the arrangements on the escort card and antipasto tables, along with 18 cocktail tables all between 2:00 pm and 4:45pm.
THEN the couple would get married between 5:00 to 6:00pm during which we would be hiding in the back room getting the centerpiece and dessert buffet pieces ready.
Finally at 6pm we would have the guests move up to the cocktail area and then have 1 HOUR to wait for the caterers to move the the theater style chair set up, roll in the tables, and then have us place 18 centerpieces down. Sounds easy? Not so much. Each centerpiece had a trio of vases filled with water in different sizes that need to be placed at each table filled with water, and then the candles dropped in and lit.....


So after we cleared the security check, unloaded the trucks, parked the cars(Thanks for the passes Pam!), dragged everything upstairs in what felt like 30 trips we finally started on the ceremony area at about 2:30pm.


Here is a picture of us setting up shop in the North Light Court of San Francisco City Hall.

These are all the cylinder vases waiting to be filled up with water.
Our shortest vase was 7" and the tallest was 47".

These all had to be taken to the first landing of the stairs of City Hall and let me tell you, these vases were HEAVY! Well...I wouldn't know because I didn't pick them up, but judging by the sweat running down Daniel and Durojaiyes faces as they lifted these vases, I figured they were as heavy as they looked. hehehe!

The tall floral arrangements were only made about 70 percent of the way. Once we got to City Hall we had to fill them in with the Phalaenopsis orchids and the rest of the roses.

Here we are in full action getting those done while the rest of the crew was on water and cocktail arrangement detail.
I told everyone wear black. Think: WAITER. lol,
BIG Thanks to
Allison, Daniel, Durojaiye, Debbie, Monica, Michelle, Mary,Melissa, and Tania for all your help!

These arrangements stood almost 4.5 feet tall!
Michelle and I worked

Here is Michelle working on the orchid placements.
That girl can work an orchid like it's no one business!!!!
Michelle and Julian were married 2 weeks before and it was her lovely all white orchid wedding I worked. ; ) She was a beautiful bride and her wedding was GORGEOUS! I can't wait to share her pics.

So then just as we are finishing up at around 4:30 pm the Fire Marshall come in for an inspection. DUMDUMDUUUUMMMM....he told us we could not leave all the vases up there on the stairs.
WHAAAAATTTTT?!?!!?! Are you kidding me? Do you know how heavy these are? This is the look we want, whaaa....? Naturally I didn't say that I jut started laughing when they told me...

Jessica, the wedding planner,( in the blue) finally convinced him to let us keep it up there for the ceremony and that they would be moved after wards. She's so good at what she does! I laughed at this pic because she has her head cocked to the side like she's trying to convince him that he's nuts, there will be no earthquake, we will be FINE....but he said no. So after the ceremony they were moved. Oh and that also had to get done in the 1 hour allotted time. grrrreat.

Here is the finished ceremony site! McCalls turned the lights on and it was magical.....gold and pink splashed everywhere.

While the guests were arriving and the couple got married, we were busy in the back room getting the centerpiece ready to go. Here are the tables {sans centerpiece} that McCalls set up. Fuschia linen, fuchsia napkins with a gold napkin holder and gold rimmed plates.

We set up the pave centerpiece cubes down without the trio of glass vases and floating candles so that they would be partially set up and easier to assemble once we hit the hour of truth.

The second centerpeice was a 6 vase cluster of vases: 3 with phalaenopsis orchids draped over one side of the vase, the other 3 with floating candles to give us light.

Then they told us the dessert table no longer accommodated our design and that we had to par it down to two vases. wwwooonderful.
The arrangements would be visible from 3 sides instead of just a front view, so we quickly had to turn this pink hydrangea floral arrangement into an arrangement to match the ceremony flowers...in 15 minutes.

Here is Michelle filling in from the bottom and I am filling in from the top.

Even with our ups and downs of the day, lack of rest and food, we were running on time. Stay tuned for the next post of pics which include the actual reception and end product. : )

Side Note:

I worked 7am - 11pm Wednesday, Thursday, and 7am - 1am Friday and 7am 2:30am the day of....I was beat. I also had forgotten to order my water proof stickers for the bottom of my vases and I called out for help on Facebook and a few friends came through with great ideas, but Jennifer from Green Quince offered to make them for me last minute! SCORE! She has the CUTEST Etsy shop ever and her invitations are so beautiful that I had to take her up on her offer. I was so grateful for her help. Look as my cute stickers : )

Vendors and Links:

Green Quince

Dreams on a Dime

McCalls Catering and Events