John & Maree - fastest decorator in the West!

My latest project included paint, paint, ribbon, earrings, and more paint!

Maree was/is a fantastic bride to work with! We met a few months ago in preparation for her wedding, and we had a blast figuring out ideas to incorporate her wedding colors...black, white, and a soft peacock/teal/turquoise blue. She brought me a picture of the bouquet she wanted that was all black roses and asked if we could make it happen. Of course! She looked nervous when she asked if I’d ever worked with feathers...specifically peacock feathers...and I just laughed and pulled out a bouquet that had blue, green, orange and brown flowers in it with peacock feathers poking out! Whew! She was so relieved to have someone to play with when it came to her wedding! Black, white, and blue, eh? Hmm. So, black roses, that’s decided. Let’s add some feathers, blue ribbon, and some white curly willow! She loved it!...and then we went a step further with her centerpieces.

We had three events over two weeks that her centerpieces were going to have to work through, and she didn’t want to waste a lot of money on fresh floral arrangements that were all going to die and cost more and more for every location. My solution for that whole process was to use curly willow branches in some tall vases and hang some of their most amazing engagement pictures (thanks to Jon!) from the branches.

I mounted about 100 of their photos to black and turquoise paper with contrasting black and turquoise ribbon and came up with a great way to use earrings to hang the pictures from the tree branches…but…being me…I had to go the extra step and paint the branches white to make sure they were one of Maree’s color choices. I had no idea how many cans of spray paint it was going to take for eight bunches of willow, but after getting started, we realized that it was going to take about ten cans. No lie. Jon hit WalMart for me, and we both spent the next hour and a half spray painting branches…breathing in too many fumes and cursing the cold weather.

Still, the final effect was worth it! I found some turquoise vases and black hanging jewels at Tai Pan Trading (one of my all-time favorite places for inexpensive touches), I matched the ribbons and backing paper exactly, and matched the photos to the paper. We also ended up with enough branches to handle 14 vases/centerpieces. For such an incredible statement that lasted through three events with a price tag of less than $400?!...Yes...everything together turned out beautifully!

At all the events, I had such fun watching every pair of eyes go wide as guests walked into the room! They all spent some time talking to the bride and groom, but then most of the people wandered for another half an hour around the tables looking at every arrangement and photo. You know you’ve done a good job when people forget the cheesecake and spend their time looking at your decorations! YAY!

Thanks for making it so different and fun, Maree!