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Showing posts with the label roses

A November Wedding for Brides Andrea and Suzan

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 What a difference a week makes. Last week it snowed and this week, although chilly, the sun was out. Today we created and delivered 2 weddings, one for Suzan and David and the other for Andrea and Kyle.  Above is the hand tied bouquet we created for Andrea. What lovely color, don't you think? What I loved about what she chose is that her bouquet not only contained a very cool mix of flowers which included Heart garden roses but also purple carnations, yellow mini calla lilies, Tango pincushion protea accented with chocolate cosmos and foliage's. From there we jumped to each of the 3 brides maids who carried a single type of flower but all different ones. This bouquet is all obviously all roses but what a rose it is. You've heard me talk about my love for Circus roses and this time is no exception. Don't they look like a fiery sunset all bundled into one small package? The second brides maid carried a bouquet of all yellow mini calla lilies accented with s

Some of Our Recent Favorites

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 No two the same, it's what I always say, no two weddings we do are ever quite the same. Just a look at these recent wedding bouquets proves my point. Take the brides maids bouquet above for example. Roses, gerbers and dahlias in red, accented with deep sapphire blue delphinium, green garden roses and accents of fresh buplurium make for a colorful bouquet. If you like the way they look in our design area, you should have seen them up against the sapphire blue brides maids gown! Wow!  This bouquet is set to be delivered for bride Kristen even as I type the blog. The colors are amazing and what makes this bouquet even more special is the unstructured design. With an eye towards it not being overly round or symmetrical, this bouquet delights in different ways from different angles. I love, love, love, pink and brown together and how simple is this brides maids bouquet of light pink roses accented with chocolate brown cosmos. Yes, those are a flower that are a deep chocolate

Purple Haze Rose

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Today's wedding had us using a brand new variety rose (well, it's new to us) called Purple Haze. Judging by the number of kind comments on our Flickr page, it seems like this rose is going to be heavily used in our design work in the coming months. A lovely shade of lavender with a hint of magenta on the tips (or at least that's what I might call that color), there's no way this rose could ever be called boring. Purple and lavender still remains strong in our event design, especially weddings, so it's nice to have such a lovely new variety to offer to our customers. To see more of our designs visit our website at www.sendingsmiles.com or our facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/localflorist

A Weekend of Weddings

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Labor day weekend is always a busy wedding weekend for us and this year was no exception. With 1 wedding on Friday, 3 on Saturday and 4 on Sunday we sure had our share of fun creating amazing wedding bouquets. The bouquet above was created for bride Darlene for her sea themed wedding at the Camden Aquarium. White roses accented with rhinestone starfish (that she found online) and skeleton leaves along the outer edge really gave a beach feel but in an elegant, more formal way. Darlene is the third sister that we have done flowers for! Bride Liz had us create this elegant hand tied bouquet of Peach Donna roses. What I really love about this rose is how full and lush it opens. Not only is the shade of peach anything but boring but it also has more than one shade on the petals going from a paler peach in the center to a deeper shade along the edges. Bride Maggie's bouquet is just so bright and fun, just like she is. Ivory roses, green berries, rhinestone accented stephanot

How About a Spray Rose?

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Don't you just adore these tiny buds of perfection? We love designing with these clustered spray roses that come in shades from whites right on up to deep burgundy. Each stem has between 3 and 6 tiny rose buds and we often use them as a single stem flower in party and wedding centerpieces. Other times we use the buds in corsages and boutonniere designs. They are wonderful to use in our every day designs too and sometimes what you see on our website are clusters of spray roses and not the larger, long stemmed ones known as tea roses. The next time you stop into your local florist to buy flowers for yourself or as a gift, why not consider a bouquet of these elegant little flowers?

Saying it with flowers

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Have you seen the cover of today's Princeton Packet Newspaper? Well, yes, there I am, yours truly in all my "floral" glory. What fun it was to have the "Press" at the shop. It was wonderful of them to put flowers right on their cover and I was honored to be included.  Valentine's Day and flowers - perfect together. Have you noticed how everyone feels a need to say "Don't send flowers this Valentine's Day - send our product instead"? I'm thinking that as florists we should take that as a compliment that we are so often targeted in ads. Marketing 101 - if you have to put down someone elses product, you just might not have a good product yourself. Enough said. For those of us who sell flowers, stand on our own merits. People, especially women, love getting flowers.   No bashing the folks that sell jewelry, chocolates, cell phones, fruit, teddy bears, etc, etc.  Because flowers let you say what's in your heart why not send flowers t

Texture and Color

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A meeting today with bride Adele got me to thinking about this blog topic. Working with brides to create floral bouquets that they absolutely love has as much to do with the "texture" the flower combinations create as the "color" theme of the flowers. For example, these bouquets were mostly shades of orange but had these been made using a single flower such as roses or even the dahlias, they certainly would have looked completely different. A bride that likes "texture" will usually love bouquets that have flowers in different shapes and sizes and even though they might be monochromatic, mostly one color like these, the flowers themselves might have slightly different shading with in the same flowers. These bouquets used both roses and tulips that showed mostly as orange but hints and lines of yellow. Take that color away and again, the look would be completely different. Anyone that has ever had a wedding consultation with me knows I generally attack the

Pink Roses

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It's funny how often I get asked what my favorite flower is. I wonder if people ask the pizza maker what his favorite pie is. Anyway, roses, roses and more roses. I love roses. I love everything about them. This picture taken at Longwood Gardens on Christmas Day by yours truly shows my fascination with this perfect flower. This bud is just a day or so away from blooming fully and although I generally am not fond of roses that are still buds, this one just spoke to me and forced me to take a photo of it. I wonder if it was mocking me for all the times I've told brides that roses are most beautiful when they are they are fully bloomed. I stand corrected, roses are beautiful at every stage!!

And then there was one...

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Do you have trouble deciding what flowers to send to your mom? Can't decide on what type of flowers to use in your bridal bouquet or in the floral centerpieces for your corporate function? Looking to make your floral purchase seem more grand for the dollars being spent? Sometimes the simple way is the best way! Simple means one or maybe two types of flowers and one color. What better way to showcase a gorgeous bloom by multiplying it by 10 or even 20? Creating bouquets that are all one flower, really allow the shape and texture of the flower being used to stand out. If you love a particular flower by itself, chances are you'll love it if many of the same bloom are grouped together. Keep it to one color and it really makes a strong statement! Do you love the softness of hydrangea? Hydrangea is the perfect flower to stand alone in large groupings of 10 or 20 blooms. What drama unfolds as they burst out like little pink, blue or lavender clouds! What about using a single flo

I'm Ready for My Close-Up!

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As you may know by now, I've recently purchased a new camera. Oh my poor staff. I hunt them down and photograph them all day long! One of the things I'm really enjoying about my new toy is the ability to get really great detail shots. I know that I'm a florist, yes, true but I am also a lover of anything beautiful and flowers are beautiful. Those of us that get to work with them day in and day out are extremely lucky. As floral designers we get to touch them, smell them, look at them up close and how awesome is that? Yes, flowers eventually die but so do all living things. What an amazing gift to enjoy them when they are here. Yes, wedding flowers are for the day but they will be forever immortalized in both photos and memories. Yes, your house may be nicely decorated but isn't it wonderful to have lovely, colorful flowers as accents here and there. Bring living "things" into the home transform the air and the mood. Yes, I may be a florist, and yes I'm on

Inside the Design Bench! Part 1

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I guess most people would think that all the flowers for a wedding come in on Friday and get delivered on Saturday. There could be nothing further from the truth. Luckily for us, flowers take time to hydrate and open but also the process of designing is a much longer and labor intense one than most people would realize. The flowers above have just arrived for our bride Erin, who gets married this Saturday. Stock, delphinium, roses, hypericum berries and hydrangea will all be masterfully arranged into her bouquets and centerpieces! A team effort is definitely necessary and most weddings take about 2 or 3 days to create from start to finish! With three or four weddings each weekend, it's necessary to plan our time efficiently! Designer Rocio is doing the next step to the centerpieces which is adding the lovely assortment of greens such as seeded euc, geranium, ruscus and mint. These centerpieces are already gorgeous before even on single flower gets added! Working in assembly line