Becca's Red and White Wedding

Okay, so it was GORGEOUS! Completely eye catching with the dramatics of red and white and black. Becca has great taste! I know this post is late, since the wedding was in June, but I guess part of me wanted to save it for later, since I miss doing flowers so much.

Pictures by Melissa Burnett Photography. - but flowers done by

Rachelle Ellis of Abloomin' Daisy!

Becca had a lot of bridesmaids, so rather than get a bunch of bouquets for each one, she made a money saver move. She just asked for a simple large red gerbera daisy for them each to put in their hair. Unfortunately my mother has those pictures on her camera.

Cute little Bentley in her floral crown.

So you can sort of see the throw bouquet, but another cool thing about the photo was is the little umbrella. I totally made it! I had this grand design, but when I got to the location, and realized the space on the table and the time, and materials... I couldn't make it work. I will have to save that design for another time.

The evolution of the umbrella if you care to know. I tore the fabric off of a normal umbrella to it's skeleton, gesso-ed the doilie my great-grandmother made, so it would be whiter and stiff, then laid it on the skeleton umbrella overnight to shape and dry. My mother and John liked the idea of modern meeting the vintage, but for some reason, I just didn't like the little plastic handle, and had to find another way to make it happen. So I took the bamboo used for floral design, to match the shape, and created the umbrella. I was going to set it up high-ish and thread flowers with fish line to hang over the guestbook, creating a floral canopy..... like I said, I will save it for another time.

The Bride's bouquet included red ranunculus and little red spray roses, white stargazer lilies and some salal leaves. I had to make a repair from the temple pictures to the reception since the lilies are fragile and since they were white they show thieir folds and bruises well. The boutonnieres for these ring bearers were small white spray roses, while the groom's were ranunculus blooms to match the bridal bouquet and the flower girl's crown. The groomsmen and fathers had mini white or red gerbera dasies, and the mother's had large red gerbera wrist corsages with black beaded wristlets- very formal. I learned a lot from this event, but as always really enjoyed working with the flowers!

Peacock Wedding Beautiful Kaitlyn

Kaitlyn and her sweetheart, have some awesome taste! They chose to go with a French Theme, That's where the peacocks came from.
Can I just say? This was probably the most challenging wedding to date! I stewed weeks over whether or not it would work out the the way it did in my head, and then stressed over Kaitlyn's approval. I designed the bouquet 3 times before I felt I had it right. Well it turns out, she loved them, and it made me feel so good because of how much time it took to achieve it, (twice as much compared to other weddings I have done.)
The peacock feathers were a real challenge because of thier shape. They are one sided, flat and tall. The callas are considered a "tall-headed" flower head, the 3 inches height make out for a larger radius on the head of a bouqet. So the two combined, made it difficult for me. But it certainly paid off! The cascade shape looks great with the tear shaped callas.

This is the Maid of Honor's bouquet, and the Throw Bouquet was something similar.

I didn't go set up at the reception for this one, but here are the centerpieces. I am sorry, I don't know the photographer's name, or I would give credit.

And these are the Mother's Corsages, and please excuse the picture taking- my bad, but these use mini calla lilies.

The Mara

I should be able to get some professional pictures. I just wanted to get some pictures up. Here ya go!

So usually, I come up with a name for particular arrangements... and this one was named after it's bride: Mara.

Awesome, her colors were purple and black. Originally we planned to have some purple poppies with black centers, but they weren't available. Instead I substituted the orchids, and I'll bet you agree, they look amazing! Better than any poppy. I think Mara loved it too.

Bridesmaid bouquets were smaller but very beautiful, with a thin black wire and black ribbon as an accent.

Above is the bride's bouquet, and instead of plain black wire, there are black beads, which are also in the Throw Bouquet (below).

10 Centerpieces, very simple and beautiful. Each with a simple dark purple (black) calla lilly, and glass pebbles. At night they lit floating candles which made for a very romantic atmosphere.Above is Jae's (the groom's) bout. Unfortunately it blends a little too much into the jacket. But I Love the simplicity of the calla lilly and two grass blades. Below are the groomsmen bouts, a simple dendro orchid, with salal leaves and a couple of black beads.

Above is a Mother's corsage. Women's have at least two flowers in them, and these have small purple (or blue) aster blooms.

Here is the cake done by the awesome Granite Bakery, which by the bride's request, I topped with some fresh flowers.

Garden Topiary

I had so much fun doing these. Every once in a while, I'll buy a bunch of flowers, and then make little things to give people.

This was created from a knock off idea of the "red head" topiary- but more simple, and definitely more cost effective.

Rose Bowl 2008

Yeah, not like football. This is something I did in floral design school. It's a bubble bowl with 5 roses and curly willow. It's pretty simple.

Well it looks easy, but it's tricky because the roses want to float to the top, so you have to trap them!

I asked my partner next to me to stack her's on top to see what it would look like
And I thought three really looked cool.