Bowls, Magnets, and Barongs!

     I hate hot June days when delicate flowers are involved. I do. I admit it. I take it personally when the flowers succumb to the heat and lack of moisture (desert area of Utah). Camille smiled sweetly at her bouquet for her formal session a month before her wedding and said it was just fine. We had talked and emailed and finally narrowed things down to everyone's satisfaction. Her wedding flowers in July were truly going to shine and be something to get excited over, but a formal photo session where the focus was the dress?...flowers weren't so budget worthy. We ended up agreeing to a simple clutch of hydrangea, but spray painted in a dark purple to bring in some of her color choices. Hydrangea. Such a great option, but trouble. Hydrangea is truly temperamental even on their own, but to add paint and heat? It was admittedly not my best work, though I did the best I could with what we had. She still looks beautiful, doesn't she?

     Flash forward a month to the day before the wedding in July, and imagine the happy grin on my face when I walked out of my wholesaler with indestructible orchids, ripping roses, lovely lilies and some happy healthy hydrangea...no pain this time. Both the bride and the groom being part Filipino, wanted to bring in vibrant colors and tropical sensibilities to their flowers...deep maroon purple and acid green being the most prominent choices.

     Their entire event was one of fun and family. After the initial ceremony where the men were in suits and ties, the reception toned things down and all the boys came out in traditional Filipino barongs...a light, cotton and silk shirt embroidered with a little shimmer. 

     The trouble with a thin regular shirt that has no lapel like a suit jacket? Where do you put the boutonniere? How do you pin it to the shirt?

Can you see a pin?

     Nope! No pins! One of my favorite new things for cases such as this are magnetic boutonniere inserts. They work when there are young children in the wedding party who don't want to get poked and for ladies with pretty dresses too, keeping pin holes out of your gowns.

     Such lovely easy placement too! You don't have to be good with the pin worrying that you're going to pop off a rose head, snap out the stems, or make the groom bleed. Place it and let the magnet pull itself into place. Good stuff.

     The rest of the event was just as beautiful with floating dendrobium orchids over striking damask table cloths, a gorgeous cake that needed very little floral embellishment, and pretty though simple bouquets for the bridesmaids and for the tossing portion of the evening.

     It came together so beautifully! I'm so honored that Camille wasn't worried when her first bouquet didn't live up to its potential....we'd worked together and she knew the wedding day would be worth the wait!

And it was!

 Thanks so much again, Andrew and Camille for all the amazing fun of your gorgeous day!!!

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

Time Lapse Flower Wedding?

There are a lot of advantages to having a photographer for a husband...amazing portraits of our family, LOTS of job options in different avenues of photos, as well as the fact that he possesses a great eye for color and design which means that his opinion always brings some weight to what I do too. The down side?...millions of pictures of me in the most inopportune moments. I can't count how many pictures I've seen of myself asleep on the couch or that were just supposed to be test shots for his lighting set-up on a fashion shoot, but that he keeps for his own amusement.

Well...a new option on his camera has created an interesting education for both of our jobs...time lapse. I did a wedding a couple of weeks ago, and Jon set up his camera on a 30-second timer and cranked out a time-lapse look at how I work. As you watch, understand that I work into the wee-small hours of the morning making sure that the flowers will be at their peak for delivery times...which means, yes, I'm in my sweats and my hair is pulled up so that I can tumble into bed once everything is in the cooler. Yes, he also shifted the location of the camera at one point, so I apologize for the shots of my behind, and thank you for assuming that, yes, I'm starting to look pregnant...that explains the belly.



Jessica's cute pink and green daisy, rose, and ranunculus wedding was a treat, and there were a couple of highlights! While waiting for the bride at the Salt Lake LDS Temple, some other patron stood looking at the flowers we had brought and asked how we got them green. My husband knows quite a bit about flowers at this point, and started to answer that there actually are a few varieties of flowers that grow naturally green...when I had to stop him and inform them both that those green ranunculus they were discussing were spray painted. Many compliments about how clean and natural they looked followed the disbelief, and that is always great! Also, the bride in front of Jessica carried a similarly sized bouquet, although the stems on her flowers massed together, and I will refer you back to my previous discussions on 'claw hand'. Her colors were similar, although more pale than bright, and she even had similar flower choices to Jessica's bouquet, so it was a great boost to the ego for both of us when the bride in front looked back a little wistfully at Jessica's bouquet and said that she wished her bouquet looked like THAT one. Excellent fun!

I hope you enjoy a little look, not only into the final product on the day of delivery, but at the process of time it takes to repetitively create a cohesive wedding floral spread like Jessica's. A little more understanding about why you hire pro for this part too, eh?...no bride wants to cut into her beauty sleep if she can help it.

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!