Sending Smiles ~

There is one question that I get all the time from brides. Want to guess what that is? It's "how much are my wedding flowers are going to cost", of course! That is such a difficult question to answer, and not because we florists don't want to answer it. The truth is that some brides want lots of flowers and others want the bare minimum. I find that most fall somewhere in between. Taking the time to find out what the bride envisions for her day along with any budget she has set, is priority #1 during first consultations with me. The issue that have is that most families have not set an overall budget for their weddings. This is not good!!! Not setting a budget allows for overspending. You wouldn't ask your realtor to show you houses without telling them how much your mortgage was approved for, would you? You don't go car shopping with an open checkbook? Planning a wedding will be one of the most expensive "purchases" you will even make and I can not i...

"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other." Chinese Proverb Lovely Lilies: I would not want to do event designs or wedding creations without them in my bag of "floral tricks". Large blooms that come in many colors, some fragrant and others not. People often confuse Asiatic Lilies with Oriental Hybrids and so below is a bit of an explanation regarding what makes them different! Asiatic Hybrids: The Asiatic hybrids are among the earliest to bloom, and also the easiest of lilies to grow! They have the broadest color range of any division, including whites, pinks, plums, yellows, oranges, and reds. Their flowers can be up facing , outfacing, or pendant, and generally are not scented. This variety general has a low cost than Hybrid lilies! They are also easy to use in hand tied bouquets and smaller sized centerpieces. Floating in a bloom or two in a small bowl makes an easy, elegant floral centerpiece. ...

Recently I wrote a blog singing the praises of the color Pink for wedding flowers. Now it's time talk about yellow. In the past 2 months alone, we have done 6 weddings (including one that we are doing this coming weekend) with yellow as the predominant color theme. For our bride Jihan we mixed lavenders, creams and buttery yellows using a mixture of hydrangea, tulips and roses for an elegant spring mixture and an accent of lime green foliage softened the look. Another dramatic combination has been yellow and steel grey. Our bride Jen used a mixture of forsythia branches, roses and orchids in shades of yellow to create her beach themed wedding. Accents of platinum along with soft yellows were an unexpected but gorgeous combination. Even her bouquet carried the theme using fragrant yellow freesia. A very convenient aspect of using this color theme is that there are so many gorgeous flowers that come in various shades of yellow. Orchids, roses, freesia, tulips, dahlias, mum, carnati...

Last week I had the misfortune of bending over in just the wrong way and whamo!! Snapped my back right out of whack. Not a fun way to spend Memorial Day Weekend. It would not have been so bad if it weren't for painful spasms that kept me up and walking around the house most of the night. It's amazing how quickly you can get to feeling pretty sorry for yourself. I sure did. During one of my many strolls around the house my mind wandered to balloon bouquets. I know that sounds strange but in one of my moments of "self-pity" I thought about a big bouquet of helium filled balloons. Colorful hearts, stars and circles. How fun! Sayings such as Thinking of You, Get Well Soon, To Cheer You, You're Special not to mention, silly Smiley Faces with colorful hair came to mind. I mean, I'm a florist and work with balloons everyday. I tried to detached myself from my business and imagine what it feels like to receive one of these fun, high flying bouquets of balloons. I qu...

I met Ava and Harry one night quite a few months ago to talk about their vision for their wedding. Almost 3 hours later I felt like I had a clear picture of what they wanted their wedding flowers to look like. I also felt like I had known them forever. We really had a nice time talking about flowers, work and life. It's amazing how brides and grooms come and go but there is a piece of each one left behind inside of me when the wedding day is over. I was especially excited to do their wedding because Ava wanted us to create a cascade bouquet for her. I love hand tied bouquets but truth be told we do so many of them, it's more challenging to do a good, old fashioned bridal bouquet. My prediction is that we'll be seeing more and more cascades. The same weekend we did Harry and Ava's wedding we did two others and 2 out of three brides choose a cascade style bouquet, so it seems to be a trend that is picking up momentum. Ava's beautiful bouquet was very simple but so str...