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

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 =)

Silver+ White+Yellow

Bride: Do you do "Handpicked" looks?
Moi: Why, yes I do. Step into my garden.....
I do it with a twist. I hope you like it ; )

Mock up for a silver, white, and yellow wedding.

These white and silver floral arrangements will be the bouquets/re-purposed centerpiece.
Feverfew flowers, lambs ear, scabiosa, dahlias, and sweetpeas.

The Bridal Bouquet will have the blue and the centerpiece will be a multi vase flowers that I will post Sunday. Happy Friday the 13th!

My Pink City Hall Bride{the Bouquets}

I was such a blogging roll till July came and it was all about these crazy big weddings that nearly gave me ulcers. Seriously, all I could do was focus on flowers, vases, fire permits, ribbons, colors swatches, and such. I went to NYC for the 4th of July again and when I got back it was on!!!
I did manage to lose one of my memory cards that contain a beautiful white wedding, a garden style wedding, and some simple mock ups that I planned to share but what-evs...what can I do?

I can share with you my biggest wedding to date, that's what! : )
I ordered 2000 roses, 250 phalaenopsis, 200 hydrangeas, 300 spray roses, and almost $1400 worth of vases. DEAR GOD. It was humongous but I now have the experience to run a big production like that.

I will start with a few pictures of the personal flowers for now. I wish I had taken pics of the 44 sets of corsages and bouts but there was no time. I worked 70 hours in 4 days. 19 on the day of...it was madness. Pink madness.


The Bridal Bouquet smelled *HEAVENLY*. Garden roses smell the best! Like real roses are supposed to smell like. They engineered thorns out of the commercial roses we all use, but along with getting rid of the thorns, they also got rid of that delicious scent. The only true rose that smells divine outside of garden roses are the Sterling rose, well, any purple rose really. Try it next time you go by a shop; smell a purple rose in comparison to the other ones and you will smell the difference.


The compose of this bouquet was Patience Garden Roses, cream garden roses, Pink Sweet Akito Roses, and Bridal Akito Roses.

The Maid of Honor Bouquet was a mixture of hot pink and blush pink to match the gorgeous dresses they wore.
In this bouquet I used Pavoratti roses, Rosita Vendellas, hot pink spray rose, and Lydia spray roses.

This is a shot of the Bridesmaids bouquet, the Bridal bouquet, and the Maid of honor bouquet.

This is a top shot of the pink and cream bouquet for the MOH and the Bride.

The bouquets were all tied off with pink satin and ivory satin and pinned with some clear crystal.

I just received some pics in the mail so I will be posting the crazy(19 hour) set up and reception pictures in the next two days. Thanks for taking a look!

Yarrow, Scabiosa Pods, Dahlias...These are a few of my favorite things.

I love the Farmers Market.
Unfortunately due to most of my weddings always landing on Saturdays, I can't go. :(
But if you truly want to see what flowers are in season,
the true seasonal flowers are always showcased there.
Most flowers you can get year round...if you are willing to pay a price that is.
But at the farmers market you can get a reasonably priced flowers without a badge, super fresh, and from a local farm. All pluses in my book.

This bouquet reminds me of a farmers market...I actually wish I could do a photo shoot there and am working on making that happen in the next 6 weeks.
This bouquet has dahlias, scabiosa pods, bunny tails, tulips, and yarrow.
This reminds me of Country Time Lemonade for some reason,
but who names their flowers that...right?

I made a little boutonniere( still can't spell that right on the first try) made out of a scabiosa pod, a fuzzy bunny tail(that's what I call it) and the white and yellow yarrow that makes me want to scream, it's so damn cute. I finished off the wrap with a little gold bouillion.

Blue and yellow together ROCK.

The bouquet can later be dropped into a tall container
and in the words of a wise sage named Emeril:
BAM! its a friggin centerpiece.

This ceramic cream container I bought at Goodwill for $3.99. HOLLA!

I love a great deal almost as much as I love it when I get a bunch of roses and there are no duds....has this ever happened to you? You go home and open up the roses and 1 or 2 rose heads are broken...I hate that. So when nothing falls out I give my roses a pretend hi five for being good gals. : )

Something Blue...

Something Old

Something New

Something Borrowed,

Something Blue.

This one started with Mrs. M emailing me to see if I could help with flowers for her son and DIL (Daughter in Law...
I have a friend who reads my blog and always asks me what the heck MIL or FH mean exactly? )
Anyhow, she was going to host the wedding at her house and it was going to be blues whites and silver. The happy couple live out of state so the planning was a little tricky because of the time difference and we were swamped with events, weddings, the dress for the museum, ect. But we finally found something that worked.
Her bridal bouquet was a compose of dahlias, white lisianthus, roses and spray roses, lime cymbidiums, green and white hydrangea, snow on the mountain, and blue tweedia for that something blue accent.

The matching boutonniere( you know I always have to spell check boutonniere?)
was a single white avalanche rose with blue tweedia accent wrapped in white satin.

The bridesmaids bouquets pictured here are unwrapped since I was going to use some fabric from the dress that the bride provided for me once I got to the house.
The bridesmaids bouquets were white, blue, and green hydrangea, white roses, white lisianthus, lime cymbidiums, blue delphinium, and white spray roses.

When I arrived to the house Mrs. M had set up shop in her garage with the flowers for the tables, so I made self a little station. My portable workstation consisted of hasami's(Japanese shears) newspaper, and a towel.


Here they are with the fabric from the dress on the handles of the bouquet. The color is what I would call "Lake".

Mrs M decided she would make the reception flowers herself.

Now that's love right there because it's A LOT of work.
I mean the processing, the vases, the cutting, the foam, the cleaning, the design, the set up, ect.....and then you have to get dressed and get your nails/hands decent to shake hands and take pictures for the wedding that you are hosting in your house???

She's a rock star.

Check it out...she made blue hydrangea terrariums. A woman after my own heart.
Doctor by day; Florist by night.

She found a local grower to get her blue and white hydrangeas and she then picked out some amaranthus and kangaroo paws along with some phalaenopsis orchids.

Look at these colors! My camera could not capture the shocking blue of these gorgeous hydrangea heads.

Blue popcorn hydrangea in all its glory.

Look at the backyard...I only wish I could see it lit up at night.
The tent had hanging lanterns of all sizes that would make it look like mars at night under the moon. The weather was at 82 when I left so the night would be perfect for them.

Thanks for letting me be a part of your big day!
I wish you much love and success. : )
Mrs. M...if you ever want to make floral arrangements...you know who to call! ; P

{And they lived happily ever after...}

Quinceanera Flowers

A long time a very smart lady told me to apply my weddings skills to funeral work and I must say that I am very thankful to her. I figured I would do the same for a request for Quinceanera flowers.
The rite of passage in the Latino culture for young girls is the Quinceanera , or Quince, that is similar to the sweet sixteen, excpet the girls are 15 years old. Most of the Quinceanera's have a court that consists of either 14 couples, with her and her "chambelan" making up the 15th couple~ or she has 7 girls and 7 boys with her as the 15th person in the court.
Either way, that's a lot of personal flowers.

So here is a bouquet that is left for the Virgin Mary at the altar. It's typically the showiest piece in terms of personal bouquets so we made this one a bit bigger than we usually have for say a bride or a bridesmaid. My daughter is the model for the day. ; )
Its a bouquet with scented geranium, stock, lisianthus, and spray roses, and greens.

This smaller bouquet was the matching green and white floral bouquet for the
Quinceanera to use.

Since there were so many couples, we decided on a simple three rose compose of flowers for the girls to use. Three red roses, geranium, huckleberry, and a red eucalyptus berry.

This was the mothers corsage which was just a single rose, the berries, small sray roses, and bit of the huckleberry.

I hope the Quince had a lovely day and may God bless her always! ; )

Green Dianthus Ball Bouquet

Getting ready for Thanksgiving!!!!

I'm excited and happy that I have a few things to do this week that give me creative freedom.

First up is a sample of what I consider green and white with a bit of gold.
I love this green dianthus ball{AKA green carnations!}
I refer to is as a Horton Hears A who flower ; )
This bouquet has light green hydrangea, green dianthus, gold cockscomb, and white avalanche roses.

.

Similar to the idea in my previous post I made this bouquet so that it would drop into a vase that has equisetum( horsetail) in it.

I think it allows it to double as a bar arrangement, check in table, escort card table, or bathroom arrangement.

This vignette is to show how we incorporate levels using simple white vases. The ones I used I bought at Ikea a while back to hold short stems on my counter.

Here is the unconventional masculine boutonniere.
banding the horsetail like in the vases earlier and just using a bit of the dianthus with the cockscomb for color.

Here's a quick table number idea for a bride who wants something a little different.

I'm proposing we do this on a HUGE level.
Carry the idea of banding horsetail together with gold flowers, in this case orchids, so just give it some color in small placements.

These are left over escort cards from my own wedding I had lying around.
They were simple Crane&Co. envelopes in a 2x2 with black embossed lettering in the back that says "TABLE" and the front that says the name of the guest,
who didn't ,ahem, show at my wedding : /
Then finally the insert is a Martha Stewart stamp that has the table number in it.

Succulent Bride {Part One: the Bouquet}

My succulent Bride and Groom contacted me about 7 weeks before their wedding with a fabulous request; Can you make a bouquet with succulents? YEP!

So we met one Sunday after noon and sketched out a bouquet and after the easiest hour of my life, we came up with a gorgeous bouquet and centerpiece we were all excited about. :)

The bridal bouquet was composed of three types of succulents, lotus pods, cream spray roses, Blizzard roses, china berries, yellow oncidium orchids finished off with an ivory satin ribbon.

I have a lot of pictures to share but I will be MIA this weekend with an event that requires almost 100 different pieces!!!

Have a great weekend!