Baptism Floral Arrangements (the WORK)

Ya know.....I had a little how shall I say it? "moment" in class this week.
So this woman is in our class, and I overhear her telling the teacher that she is only signing up to figure out why her florist is charging her so much for her wedding flowers. Why is it so expensive?

Good question right?
I walked by the desk right as she was asking our instructor this and my outside voice turned on by itself and said "labor" as I walked back. I was thinking about how sore my fingers were from wiring all the orchids in this wedding, about lugging my sleepy butt to the flower market at 4am to pick flowers, packing everything in a car to taken to the site, about how many times I have burned myself hot gluing ribbon to handles or boutonnières and really about how much time is spent the days before the event.
Yes, this was all in a matter of the 1.3 seconds before I could rein in my outside voice, hehe.

But really, now that I am in this industry, all I can say is I'm lucky I love it! Why else would I spend so much time pouring through weddings blogs, sites, photographer blogs and site, and wedding books galore? Hours driving to and then walking around the flower market, hours stemming, cleaning, cutting processing flowers, and finally designing the days before. The nights before an event I average 3 hours of sleep. It's nuts, then I work to load up, deliver and set up, sometimes breakdown only to come back to my studio to clean up the mess I have made and put all my supplies away.

Why do this?

Only because I adore it, I love being around flowers, I love seeing my flowers come to life and I love the look on a brides face when I hand her the bouquet.
I truly love weddings! That's why I do it. Right now as a freelance floral designer it's a lot of work. I am doing most things WELL BELOW retail costs....but you know what? I love it. I know that I will some day be able to live off of my work and I feel like I am working towards sharing my gift with the world.
So people if you are wondering, yes it's expensive, some more than others, but it's a service and the person on the other end is working their butts off to make sure your flowers look flawless and that you are happy! It's a lot of work :)

OK, vent session over.....

Lets start from the beginning. Check out my flowers drinking water

I put my cream Alstromerias in this tall container just to give me an idea of how high the flowers would sit.
I'm kinda diggin it.

From this shot it looks like a brides maids bouquet for a brown wedding doesn't it?

I started to think that maybe lining these down the center of a long table at a wedding would look really gorgeous.

Here are the two arrangements that I made for tomorrow's baby shower.

This one will go on the cake table or gift table.

This one will go on the bar.

And NO that is not babies breath...it's rice flower....I was just thinking in the pictures it LOOKS kinda like babies breath...or it it just me?