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!

Treasure Island Wedding {Part One}

So I would like to share with you my

Treasure Island Wedding
This lovely wedding took place in the very beautiful Casa De la Vista on Treasure Island in
San Francisco, CA.

Here is the happy couple, J&R, enjoying the blue skies and gorgeous bridge views on Treasure Island, in beautiful San Francisco. All the vendors were FABO: Chris from Chern Loong, Dorothy from Dorothy Hatchel Photography, Sunset Bakery, Kevin from Denon and Boyle and I bought the flowers and Jonathon arranged them! Lynne and the staff at Casa were so nice and I would love to work with them all again. Thanks to Alison and Brandon for coming through to help. :)

We crossed our fingers for good weather and I assured Julie that I would employ my skills as a weather changer...ok, ok...really, I stalked weather.com and hit up my almanac for last years weather. But I could tell her it wasn't going to rain and that we would be ok *cross my fingers*.

And guess what?? It worked, I'm magic. No rain.

Moving right along..... :)
So we proceeded to set up shop. First we made sure the aisle was big enough for Julie to walk down the aisle with both parents, ommitted an extra row from the front aisle so Dorothy(Dorothy Hatchel Photography) would have enough space to do her magic up there and then it was on to the place cards.


Ok brides out there, can I please ask a bug favor? Could you maybe alphabetize the place cards before packing them away? I will tell you why: when I opened this bag I could see that they meant well by placing them in the order that the guests would sit at the tables, however, it's way too hard for a guest to try to look at each table number in hopes of finding their name. So make sure they are alphabetized so that we can lay out the placecards and have the guests just look for their last name.
I laughed because I was saying out loud
"...ok, wait I have 12 Go's and like3 12 Wu's....so I need to start on their last names ok A,B,C,D...." yes, arranging Dave, Dan and Donna in order somethimes throws me off, hehe.

Then it was off to check on the ceremony site, the cocktail area, the reception room.
I loved how they used this hurricane glass to swirl in the napkins!I'm easily impressed :P


The view from Casa de la Vista was GORGEOUS!
I love San Francisco and to see it from this view was magical....

Here is the setting for the sweetheart table.

Look at this this ceremony site...is it not to die for? I fell in love with the tree as soon as I saw it.

Then it was time to get the tea ceremony going.

So I will continue with the tea ceremony, the western ceremony, and the lion dancers!

Blue and Green Succulent wedding

Holy Moly my YouTube bride has excellent taste in flowers and details.
I loved her wedding and I am so happy to be a part of it!
She was the CALMEST bride I have had to date.
My assistant, Deb, commented all day how calm and zen like this bride was and she hit it on the nose when she told me she could work weddings with me every day if we had weddings like this one. True that.

{So let me share with you my YouTube Wedding}

"Rain Rain , go away , come again some other day"

That was my mantra for the week. I was stalking the weather channel.
Guess what? It worked. I'm magic, no rain.

Our day started after I went to go to Emeryville to drop off flowers for my Wild Child Bride.
We made a stop to pick up dry ice and then on to Bi-Rite Creamery in San Francisco.
They were not going to have a cake, instead they would treat their guests to ice cream sandwiches. Check out the flavors that Bi-Rite offers:

ICE CREAM SANDWICHES
• Coconut macaroons with chocolate ice cream
• Chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream
• Dark chocolate cookies with mint chip ice cream
• Lemon gingersnap cookie with pumpkin ice cream

OMG. drooooool.

I also picked up some Mexican cookies for their pre-ceremony snack. The brides !sister kept askingus if we had tried to cookies, and I balked and said, no, of course not, I would be too embarrassed, I'm working. She laughed and said -no listen, these cookies are good, they are cookies on crack. I laughed and she said, ok this is ridiculous, I'm going to get you some. So we ended up tasting these cookies and they were freaking good!

You saw the venue the first time around when I went out to meet with my bride and the wonderful Andrea from Pelican Inn, in Sausalito right?

Side note:
These beautiful Pink Dahlias grow outside the Inn and they are HUGE!

I was greeted to these delightful out of town bags that the bride made.
From this little number, I knew the details would all be fabulous.

So we got there pretty early and had to kill time because the Inn is actually open to the public for lunch and from the food I tasted, I would highly recommend you go out there and have some food and a pint of something. The food is Zagat rated and lives up to it.
So I went over the timeline and phone numbers of vendors to make sure I was ultra prepared to start dialing if they didn't show up as scheduled.
Well, once we got started the set up started rolling pretty fast.

The florist showed up first. They were wonderful ladies that came out to deliver for a studio out of SF. They were made by Patrick and I promise once I get the full name I will update because I think it's fair to make sure I get all the vendors on here when I can. The flowers were beautiful!
I must admit, I had flower envy. I have always wanted to do a succulent wedding so any brides out there, email me and I will take care of you!
So we helped unload the flowers to get the ball rolling because the chairs didn't arrive at 2pm like they were scheduled. It was more like 3:15-3:30.
This bad boy was placed right outside the window in front of where they would be married.
This beautiful floral wreath had blue hydrangeas, maple, lemon leaf, seeded eucalpytus and these green berry things that I can't remember what they are called. :(

Got swag?
Over two of the the fire places, floral swags were hung.

A closer look at the centerpeice.
Green dendrobium, green and blue hydrangea, succulent, and purple thistle.

This was the indoor set up.

This was the outdoor setup.

So right about now, I'm thinking:
"where the hell are the chairs?"
What, I'm gonna roll out a new trend where everyone stands around the bride and groom as they are married in a hug of life???
Hmm....
Part oft he problem is that there is no cell coverage down there. By down there I mean Muir woods, Stinson Beach area where we are. I know crazy right? Everyone is so addicted to their phones. So thank goodness that Andrea let us use their land lines because the phone is the friend of a DOC wondering where the hell people are!
So I ask Deb to please call the chair people while I track down the sand for the place cards.
She leaves a message and here they come rolling up, you order chairs???
UH. Yeah!?!?!?
So they started settin gup and at first they set up in straight rows and then I hear the bride call down, wait, I want a semi circle! So cute, she was like snow white up there in one of the windows, so we quickly changed the front row and we were in full semi circle mode.

Look at the pew florals? GORGEOUS!
So right about this time is when the bride and groom are scheduled to leave to take pictures with the wedding party, Deb and the photographer and leave me to finish the final details.
I got my hands on the sand finally and then started to set up the guest escort cards, wish jar, and card box. Originally we were set to put this outside but of course with any deal you make with mother nature, i.e. if it doesn't rain today I promise to be super nice with all my vendors and wedding couples from now on, some concessions have to be made. So we got the sun which was great, because it was raining early that morning and it was slowly brightening up, but then we started to get this wind...but trust me I will take wind over rain any day.
It was too windy out side to set this stuff up.
We set up shop just inside the Inn doorway. It was the first thing you saw as a guest and I think it worked well. I started the party off inside the jar with a "wish" for couple so that other people would get what to do. You would be surprised. You could have, oh I don't know, a framed list of instructions on what to do sitting next to blank papers and pens, and they will still ask what to do. My favorite is the buffet candy that has bags, scoops and an invitation to eat and people ask me, "Hey. What's all this?"lol!

The seashells were in alphabetical order, weren't they just adorable?
Every one loved them including a couple who were walking into look at the venue really quick during set up. The bride was like....ooooohhh, what a great idea! I was all:
Yes, it is isn't it? My bride has impeccable taste:)

shameless.

So guests start arriving, I wait till a little over a third of the people are there and then go upstairs to get the couple to bring them down to mingle with the guests pre-ceremony. I love, love, love this because it goes against the grain in a good way, ya know? They didn't have a grand entrance and a big reveal to their guests. They were totally laid back and got a chance to greet and thank folk for coming out.
In fact, they walked down the aisle together which was very cool and unconventional for a wedding.

So here we are, ready to walk down the aisle and we all line up right on schedule, 5:50pm.
Get everyone ready, have ten minutes to cue the musician, ask guests to sit, walk through to make sure everything is good, and then walk back and wait for the musician to start the processionals music. 6 pm hits and the pooch, Ravioli goes first, then the parents are walking, then the party, then the kids. The little cutest angel, the flower girl, starts her walk, STEPS completely out of her Mary Jane shoes and turns around, starts to cry and looks at me
and holds out her hand.
Break my heart why dontcha?
So I met her halfway down the aisle, have her do an about face, her mom who was in the wedding party is signaling for her to go and I whisper in her ear" Go to Momma baby, it's ok"
and she walks down the aisle.
WHEW.

Then I as we wait for the ring bearers to go, I reach over to my couple, hand them a mint for a minty kiss, then send them down the aisle about two minutes later.

OMG. Look at this face. It's love I tell you, it's calm beautiful love.

I almost needed one of these!

15 minutes later, they are married!
My record was broken!

It's off to the reception and cocktail hour for the transition to switch lead roles with Andrea: I set up and manned the ceremony and cocktail hour, she took over at 7:30 for dinner and dancing.

I placed the bridal bouquet and pomanders on the head table.

Bridal bouquet was stephanotis, succulents, hydrangea, thistle, and dendrobiums
with a lace handle.
I also inverted the pomanders on the vase so that the ribbon hung down just for an added detail.

Look at how beautiful the night turned out to be...

I condensed the table down and kept running gifts and envelopes up to the room so that they would have an easier time at the end of the night.

The whole Inn at this point is dark and romantic with candle light.
Even in the daytime, it's dark in there and I joked with the gal up at the reservation desk that I felt like I should have a tan and black in my hand to which she replied "Me too!!"

We waited for the photo booth, Fotomio, to come and set up. He was the nicest guy, I saw some of his work from the wedding yesterday and I can fully recommend him to you. If you are looking for a photo booth in the Bay Area you must contact Moses at Fotomio.

I took a picture of him after he took a test shot of himself.
Kinda cool huh?

Then it was time to go, I couldn't resist one last picture. Doesn't this look so homey and intimate?

I felt a little CHRISTMAS CAROL-y but it was cute. I loved working this wedding and I thank the bride and groom for letting me a part of their day. I wish you both much love and success in your marriage, and I can dog-sit Ravioli anytime! :)

{And they lived happily ever after}