Katie and William

Heaven knows that I love it when a bride makes choices that are different from the norm. So when Katie approached me with a couple of REALLY different ideas, I was hooked. Katie had very little flower knowledge, but she knew that she wanted something that had never been done before, her colors were bright and vivid, and she had some stone and wood accents created by her father that she wanted to incorporate into the centerpieces. I can work with that! The only other restriction that she had was a hard-rocking fiance named William who was sporting waist-length hair, multiple piercings and tats including sleeves, and a very small desire to deal with flowers even on his wedding day. Hmm. So we need to 'man up' the flowers, so to speak? Challange accepted!

We used bright red and yellow sunflowers, violet orchids, blue thistle, spiney protea pins, and celocia...it's the one that looks like brains! I even included a small yellow sphere called a billy ball in honor of the groom. Weeds, tropicals, brains and balls?...add in some silver metal wrapping around the flower fun, and we ended up with some truly different, unique and incredibly cool arrangements! Thanks again, Katie for the awesome experience, and you too, William, for enjoying the manliness with us!



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Credit where due...

My husband was the initial photographer on the Vegas shoot, but was really magnanimus enough to share the time with a couple of other photographers attending the same convention who had a workshop that they needed to fill. Julie Parker and her cute crew joined along for a couple of our first locations and then got Andrea and John to go back out later on (John had ditched the suit by then, but Andrea took every opportunity to flash the eyes, hair, shoes and glam!) and they got some more great photos. Julie is so great in her fashion focus photography, and I'm so flattered that she mentioned my flowers in her blog of the fun.

More of my hubby's great photos to come, but enjoy a different look at the fashion side of Vegas Bling!

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

Peacock Bling in Vegas

John and Andrea were married in a quick Vegas ceremony 14 years ago. This weekend found them in Vegas again, but this time they had a designer dress, custom suit, fashionable flowers, and a fantastic photographer!

I was lucky enough to get to put together the flowers for the shoots, and the only requests Andrea gave me were peacock feathers and bling! YAY! I couldn't narrow down the design ideas, so I built one bouquet of simple dark purple lilies and aspadistra leaves, with golden brown trailing beads and feathers tied in purple and green ribbons. The other bouquet utilized a silver holder and had cybidium orchids, cream lilies tinged in purple/pink, orange spray roses, plum freesia, and antique green hydrangea. There were silver and clear beaded leaves, more peacock feathers, and tiny diamond butterflies that I made to hover over some of the roses. I had way too much fun!

You know it's good when the bride can't decide which one to carry and so shoots with both bouquets! Great fun!

Thanks so much to John and Andrea for all of the Vegas fun, and for being such great fun to shoot!

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

I Scoured The Valley!

My wholesaler is awesome. Anytime I order flowers, and run the six blocks over to their location to pick them up, I can rest assured that anything else I may possibly need will also be there waiting for me. Ribbons, pins, floral tape, vases, foam...ANYTHING. They have a perfectly appointed and fully stocked bunch of shelves that carry everything from fake flowers to feathers, and baubles to butterflies. Well, for the first time in four years, today they didn't have what I needed. Ack! Apparently, the feather supplier had come in that week at a crazy busy moment for the shop, and in the press, the peacock feathers were forgotten. Not a single turqouise eye peering at me from any corner of the store. Curses!!! What to do?

I'm heading to Las Vegas tomorrow for a fashion shoot on Saturday, followed by a bridal shoot on Monday. My bride for Monday had only two requests...Peacock Feathers and Sparkles! I have several options on the sparkles, but I only had four peacock feathers in hand, so the search began. Even if my wholesaler didn't have them this time, I had to find them somewhere.

Several stores that I tried had no feathers, and the ones that did carry them were hugely overpriced. I finally found exactly what I needed at a Michael's craft store of all places, out in the midst of West Valley, Utah. (West Side...Represent!) Now my bags are packed, my floral sheers are sharpened, and I'm confident that this new wholesaler (recommended for freshness by my current wholesaler) in Vegas will have lovely flowers for me bright at early on Monday morning. Ahh. My drive tomorrow will be so much more enjoyable now, and I can't wait to post the pics of the peacock fun!

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!