Saturday, February 27, 2010

Name That Flower

For those of you still pondering, the answers about the flower names are below!



Upper left is Hyacinth, upper right is a Dahlia, lower left is a freesia, and lower right is Agapanthus. Aren't they lovely?! Such fun flowers to work with too. Enjoy knowing the names of a few more flowers that you can ask your florist about!


For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

What Flowers Come In My Color?

Every bride considers flowers for her wedding day...who doesn't want to have some gorgeous flower confection in her hand for all of those photos?! Bouquets are great for so may reasons...it gives such a great color splash, it nods to the style of the rest of your event, and, in the end, it's just something for you to do with your hands! But, what flowers to use?

Can you name any of these?


Most people can pick out a rose, a lily, a tulip and a daisy when you ask them, but there are hundreds of flowers out there and thousands of combinations that you can choose for a simple bouquet, and that can get overwhelming! Google Images is a great way to look up flowers...but you have to already know a name that you can type in before a picture will pop up. So, how does a normal person find fun flowers for their wedding?

Flowers.Org, of course! Flowers.Org is a British site dedicated to everything flowers! Link to their page and you can look up flowers by season, style, and even by color. As you're looking at a list of names that fall within the purple category, you can even click on the name and take a look at a picture of that flower! It's a fantastic site to help the flower fundamentals in putting together some ideas for a unique and beautiful bouquet using more than just roses and daisies.

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Wrapping Up Imagination

So many of my brides order a bouquet with wrapped stems and think nothing more of it. I smile every time that I surprise girls by asking them what KIND of wrap they may prefer. Huh? How many different ways can a bunch of stems BE wrapped, you ask? I haven't stopped counting! To get these girls started thinking about the kinds of twists, bows, pins and colors they can use in wrapping their bouquets, my fantastic husband helped me put together a brochure to demonstrate a few of the more common wraps I've used over my career. We didn't want to stiffle any imaginitive new options, but feel free to use these as a springboard to more fun that is entirely your own!


Click on the image to view an enlarged view!

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Calle and Dustin



Yes, I am asked to use daisies often. I'll admit that they didn't use to be a favorite for me, and I would groan inwardly when I got requests about the blooms. When Calle came along, I thought it would be more of the same...oh, how wrong I was!

Not only did Calle have a very specific idea of what she wanted her wedding to be, and what she wanted it to look like ten months in advance of the date when we met with her, but she stuck to those ideas right to the very end! Choosing daisies in a citrus combination of a melon pink, orangie-orange, lemon yellow, and her signature lime green, the combinations were so fun to see! She wore a single orange daisy in her hair at her engagement session on the Heber Creeper Railroad. At her bridal session at Lagoon she made sure to wear her green-bottomed shoes, carried a lime green umbrella (which came in handy through the small showers we experienced), but she also got her choice of cars and seats throughout the park, and every time she chose the green car closest to her! She was always aware and prepared!

For her wedding, each of the bridesmaids wore coordinating tracksuits and flip-flops during the decorating hours and then put on their gowns which had been tailored specifically to coordinate those colors again...matching their flowers to their dresses. If the maid wore a green dress, her accent colors of ribbon, heels, and flowers were white. If she were in pink, the yellow accents showed up through every detail. It was planned down to the last tiny thing, and I was thrilled to be included in something so well designed!

A couple of other sweet touches to the day were a tiny green boutonniere for her four year old son as well as small photo frames attached to her bouquet of her mother and brother who had both passed away, but who were loved and remembered. Thanks so much again to Calle for all the amazing fun, fantastic design, and the beginnings of daisy love!





For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Weddings and Women's Basketball?

Forget that most atttendees at a University of Utah vs. Brigham Young University Women's Baseketball game are parents of the team or 10 year old girls of school alumni...the U of U combined forces with our friends at Bride Access to throw a really fun wedding show! We were invited by Bride Access to present a booth on the concourse of the Huntsman Centr during the game, and we had a nice afternoon rubbing elbows with other vendors and handing out treats to the attendees of the game. Today, we got video footage of the half-time fashion show courtesy of The Perfect Dress...models escorted by Swoop. Fun stuff!

Monday, February 8, 2010

Summer and JD



What a great summer for our fantastic Yellow Rose of Texas, Summer! It takes a special girl to choose bright sunny yellow as her wedding colors, but Summer was certainly up to the challenge! (She did one-handed cartwheels in her wedding dress...both at the bridal shoot as well as on her wedding day, and check out the sassy yellow cowgirl boots!) The amazing group of people in her wedding party were also a huge amount of fun, and seeing every one of them in dresses, tuxes, and holding flowers at the Salt Lake LDS Temple was amazing! The rain threatened, and Summer teared up herself to think that her fantastic outdoor reception could be ruined on account of the weather. But, the sun shone down at just the right time, and the entire event, from the candles floating in the pool to the paper lanterns hanging from the trees, was beautiful...with Sunmer as the perfect smiling centerpiece, and a smiling JD at her side.

Simple yellow roses combined with hydrangea, gerbera daisies, and tulips for a beautiful set of arrangements, but the bride kept the monkey's tails for herself and the groom...a fun way to set their flowers apart from the rest. Summer made the vases for the centerpieces herself, scrapbooking pictures, phrases, and fun from her courship with JD, and adding flowers to it all brought the whole look together. Thanks, you two, for allowing me to be part of such an amazing and completely fun event!!!





See more great flower photos at my Florilista website!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Silk Flower Fun!

Most artificial flowers aren't necessarily silk anymore, simply for the fact that there are so many shapes and colors that can be created with so many other substances, but I still love the sound of "Silk Flowers." It brings to mind beautiful memories of luxurious dresses from the 40’s and French couture from any era.

It's come up several times of late...brides that have multiple events who don't want to pay for two separate fresh flower weddings...or brides that just love their flowers and want to keep them for more than a day or two...what if you want fake flowers?

Over the last couple of years, I've actually made several fake flower bouquets, just for the fun of making them. A good number of them have ended up in bridal photos shoots done by my husband when one of our clients were so focused on hair and makeup or the wrinkles in the dress that they just happened to forget the flowers for the bridal session. Most people are surprised at how realistic some of these arrangements can look on film, and I really enjoy that surprise! Here are a few examples of how fake flowers can be fun, pretty, and pretty realistic.