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...}

Orchid Wedding Bouquets

My goodness these were good enough to eat!

One of my instructors, who was a past AIFD president, once told me that when you pick out flowers, it's like picking out fruits and vegetables. They should be firm, green, fresh and good enough to eat. If the stems are brown, soggy or the petals were a bit limp~ pass on it.
Would you eat a salad that way?
Huh. Good point.
So since then I remember this jewel she dropped on me and these orchids were so bright and fresh I thought, I could eat this freaking bouquet! lol

This bouquet was a slightly forward cascade with the folded Ti leaves in the back to give it a nice shape. I normally don't do cascades, but this one begged for it and when the flowers speak,
I listen.

The grooms boutonniere was a simple loop of the ti leaf and a single cymbidium orchid with a matching chocolate brown ribbon.

The happy couple went off to get married at the San Francisco City Hall ( My 4th City hall wedding this month!) and she looked so gorgeous in her dress with these flowers in her hands. I just know the other brides were jealous! HAHAHA! no, seriously, they were.

Much love and happiness to the happy couple and I can't wait to work on the big wedding later this year!

Raspberry and Navy Blue {Part Three: Reception number 2 }

Part One
Part Two

Hello there! Here is the last post on my Raspberry and Navy Blue Wedding.

So what happened to my car? Who knows, but it didn't start and thank goodness a good Samaritan from the church where we were setting up heard that awful clicking that happens when a car doesn't start and came over to give me jump. He told me it was my alternator and I thought-no, it sounded the same as when I got stuck waiting for my Lavender Bride, and thankfully when he gave the car a jump start, my car started! Turns out I didn't have to sell orchids to make it to the next reception, hehe, but can you imagine your florist getting STRANDED on your wedding day with your flowers?????

knock on wood I have a wedding this Saturday.: ( Jinx! just kidding universe....

We finally made it to the Hillsborough Racquet Club in Hillsborough California where we would be setting up a second reception for the friends and family of the bride and groom. We had a combination of high and low centerpiece. I used local seasonal flowers for the low centerpieces which included the gorgeous hot pink dahlias, some magenta phalaenopsis, super green roses hot lady roses, some fuchia stock, some lime and fuschia cockscomb, a bit of the hot pink vanda orchids and few pieces of myrtle. They sat low on the tables in a ti leaf wrapped glass cylinder vase to match the taller centerpiece.


Now I don't know where you live, but in the San Francisco flower market there was a shortage of cut Phalaenopsis Orchid stems. Normally they are everywhere and they are readily available, but the week of this particular wedding there was a shortage and NO ONE was able to fill orders for the magenta phals. My own guy who's always has them called me Monday(5 days before the wedding) and apologized that for the first time in years he was not able to fill it. They said the greenhouses were out and that I might have to buy plants at 12-16 per stem. Umm...$15 x's 20 stems =$300 x's 7 centerpeices wholesale???
No way.
Sure enough I walked around in circles and asked everyone and finally brokered(read:begged) a deal with a guy in the market that had 9 bunches left and promised to get me 15 more in the next few days. I trusted him and showed up in two days to these lovely ladies.

Not uniform in color but hey, they were all mine! He explained that he had the most difficult time filling this order and when they finally came in he had a hard time saying no to people who were willing to pay him TRIPLE what I had paid him.
All because the greenhouses were depleted.
So we made it but let me tell you it was scary...

The taller centerpiece were tall 30 inch cylinder vases that were filled with dendrobium orchids submerged in water and bunches of phalaenopsis stems in pinks, magenta's, and a variegated pink and fuchsia.

These were spread around the room and in that white room they really popped!
I wish I had better photos but I have not been able to get my camera to properly work for me and my photoshop is also compressing my pictures down. Sorry!

This was a 16 foot garland that was draped along the edge of the HUMONGOUS fireplace.

Outside of the venue there were these cool horse heads that greet you as you walk up the stairs to the reception area so we decorated this area with two simple hand held bouquets that we secured to the horse mouth using the navy blue satin ribbon.

The stairs were lined up with simple cylinder vases with gorgeous dahlia heads in deep burgundy, magenta, fuchsia, and hot pink.


Ok I saved the best for last.
The dessert table that made me stop in my tracks and say to the gals setting up
Goddamn that's a great spread!
The cake? So cute I wanted to scream. Something told me this might go over well so instead I snapped pictures to share. Check out the orchids on this cake! I gave them a few blossoms of the dendrobiums, the vandas, and the phalaenopsis and they did there thang!

The cake stand and decor werein the wedding colors of Raspberry and Navy Blue of course and would ya look at the tiers on that cupcake holder? The polka dot ribbon, the cheesecake pops, the f*&^ing caramel apple bites????stop it! I was so jealous.

But no time to relax just yet we had to make it back to the other reception to move stuff around.

Except the car wouldn't start again. :(
I was so stressed I jumped into one of the other SUV's we brought with one of my assistants and I left two other members of my crew to deal with whatever was going on with my Pacifica...(nodding head)all bad.
But luckily I was able to reach the DOC by phone, she moved some stuff for us and we got there in time to snag one picture of the wedding party and double check the centerpieces in the main reception room.

As we were leaving the reception, the rest of my crew was pulling up and were literally jumping out of the car to attack the centerpieces, but we told them that everything was already done and it was time to go. :) They sure are awesome. Allison, Mary and Debbie~you rock! :D

So my couple went on their honeymoon and I wish them the best of luck! The wedding(s) were beautiful! I wish you much love and success in your marriage, thank you for letting me be a part of it.

{They lived happily ever after...}

Lime Green

Chartreuse, Citron, Lime- whatever! Me loves :)

Yep, I love me some lime.
My wedding colors were Chocolate Brown and Lime Green and my business cards are as well.
So naturally I'm drawn to these arrangements and ribbon.

I made this little guy for my viewing pleasure at home.
I like to make myself stuff that I haven't seen anywhere and that doesn't necessarily follow the rules of what flowers are "supposed" to look like.
Kind of looks mushroom-y right? But I like the clean color of the yellow cymbidium throats (Don't worry- I don't usually kill my cymbidiums mob style, I'm working on something and these were the broken cymbidiums that couldn't be used) and the green kermit mums and the ivory urn.

I've been a happy camper buying up the cool ribbon in the dollar section at Michael's lately.
I usually buy ribbon from the supply stores at the Flower Market but these fun patterns have been catching my eye.

I hold on to these whimsical ribbons in case anyone ever says they want some super cute ribbon but sadly no one has been adventurous enough yet.

I like the look of a solid ribbon, don't get me wrong.


Simple is quite pretty, too.
This is a simple kermit mum accented with tips of green larkspur and ivy, then ribbon wrapped with a thin yellow satin ribbon.


But then again, take a look a this pink boutonniere. It has a little pink larkspur, some pink cockscomb and some hot pink cockscomb. The white ribbon has gold, fuschia and aqua designs on it and I love it!

I love that cockscomb looks like velvet:)
Nature sure is sweet.

Ahh the colors.........

Blue and yellow is fine.....



But isn't magenta/fuchsia, yellow and blue better?
Or is it just me?

These are yellow mini calla lillies and Celosias – also known as cockscombs



I've been meaning to make a celosia arrangement to see how a monochromatic three piece arrangement would look. They look like Carnations Pomanders no?


It's killing me that I forgot the name of this plant, but it was dyed fuchsia. It has this cool metallic look up close, I tried to capture it on film but couldn't quite do it. It looks pretty cool either way and I am hoping to run into a bride that would like to use this in her boutonnières. I love the way it looks in my Pottery Barn Chartreuse Vase.

Flowers Pictured:
Mini callas and celosia