Silver and White Phalaenopsis Wedding {The set up}

If you live in San Francisco, 70 degrees is what we consider a really nice day, 75 is "hot". So imagine our surprise when today the weather was 83?!??!? OMG. It was waaaay too hot for me! I was DYING.
Yesterday in Rohnert Park it was 90.
90.
I was working so hard I hardly noticed until we left and sure enough as we hit the Golden Gate Bridge it was down to 53 degrees. Crazy.
Anyhow, just had to get that out of my system, lol. :P

Unfortuantely I don't have quite as many pictures as I normally do of the set up or the ceremnoy, or the wedding because my camera broke(I will be sans camera for 3 weeks! What will I do with myself?) and the chip I used had the smallest capacity in the world, so bear with me.


{Silver Wedding}

I met my Phalaenopsis bride in a far far away land called Weddingbee.com.
She seemed really nice, so I gave her some tips on DIY florals and then she delighted me by asking if I would be available to do her floral work, to which I replied demurely:
Hell yes!
So we went back and forth and then one day she asked about the beautiful Phalaenopsis Orchid and we started to create her wedding flowers around this moth orchid as some people call it. I like butterfly personally, but anyhow, she wanted a green hydrangea bouquet with white orchids for her bouquets as well as the brides maids.

Here is the Bridesmaids bouquet, it was smaller than the bridal bouquet and it was ribbon wrapped with left over fabric from their bridesmaids dresses. The biggest most beautiful green hydrangeas came in from Columbia so it only took 2 large heads to make the bridesmaids bouquets. The Phalaenopsis orchids were individually wired in.

It was so incredibly scenic out there. I mean I'm not kidding you! Look at this picture.

Here I am taking shot of the ribbon collar on the bouquet and there's a duck just taking in the view in the background, hehe. I couldn't have staged it better.

The flower girl would carry this green hydrangea pomander down the aisle. I decided to add in orchids to this pomander to match the wedding party and I accented with a silver ribbon handle and a simple tie at the base. I could have gone all cute with a ribbon but the orchids are the stars of this pomander thank you.

We arrived to the location which was Foxtail Golf Club in Rohnert Park and started to set up the centerpiece. I blogged about them earlier this month here and once constructed we set up 19 tables. The centerpiece was a potted Orchid with hydrangea at the base of the centerpiece, the white pots were ribbon wrapped with
silver satin and they were placed on a moss mat adorned with a single phalaenopsis flower.

I had extra orchids that weren't used and so I gave one to the banquet manager to wear in her hair. Pretty cool, huh? Pretty soon all the other gals working the event had orchids in their hair!

Here is the shot of one of the boutonnieres. Simple phalaenopsis orchid with a green hydrangea floret and bouillon wire around the stem.

Here is a shot of the corsages. Double bloom orchids with a little fern, some silver decorative jewelry and a silver satin bow.

Then it was onto the gazebo. Here we just decorated the top of the archway with a floral spary that consisted of pittosporum, lemon leaf, dendrobium orchids, chrysanthemums, stock, amaranthus and alstromeria.

Then just when I thought it was time to go home, the groom me and asked me about the cake.

To which I replied, huh???? Ok, so I was more eloquent than that but in my head I was like HUH?

Turns out the cake person left and didn't decorate the cake. No one saw them come in and set up and no one was there to call me or even the couple.
I was asked to decorate the cake and here is what it looked like.

I didn't have a picture or anything, I just knew she needed a certain amount of hydrangeas and orchids so I did the best I could!

Then it was time to leave and I left the couple and from the parking lot I stopped to watch her walk down the aisle. She actually ran down the aisle, I bet when she sees the video she will know she was running to her man!!! Too cute, she was all smiles ans she looked lovely.
Cool as a cucumber in that heat I tell ya.

Thanks for letting me be a part of your wedding J & B, much love and happiness to you both!

My Pink and Chartruese Wedding{Part One: The Set Up}

Formerly known as my Google wedding.
It was too pink not to be my pink wedding I decided.


{Pink and Chartreuse Wedding}

First of all let me say, in the words of Outkast,
"You can plan a pretty picnic but you can't predict the weather."
True that.
I cannot tell you how shocked I was to go to the market and pick up my Blush pink flowers, all 400 of them and arrive to find out they had only 160 of them and they were in PEACH.
I smiled when he told me because I thought he was pulling my leg. I mean who orders pink in advance and gets peach??? Certainly not me....right?
WRONG.
He didn't have my flowers and I ran around to all the vendors in the market and was only able to find 72 in the color I needed.
Do these things happen? Yes.
Do we freak out? Absolutely.
Do we have to make something happen? You better believe it.
This is when it gets scary because you have to do something to make it better because you can't show up with the entirely wrong color or worse, nothing at all. Sooo I gathered myself and found flowers in the pink family and made some choices with deeper shades of pink and lighter shades of green.

I found these great rununculas in varying shades of pinks and was happy to find these pink and white varigaited rununculas that are a bit more uncommon.

The roses were to die for. Ecuadorian roses called Esperance are just a ridiculous species. They open up pink and green and are tinged on the edge in hot pink and are just fabulous.
They were HUGE!

My son came by to visit and he wanted to smell the roses and just look at the size of his little face next to that humongous rose! Haha, it looks like it could eat him up :)

While the flowers were hydrating and sitting pretty I made a faux pomander.
It was a silk pomander made out of white, green and pink hydrangea florets and it actually photographs well I think.
Brandon is so cute, he kept walking carefully around it and I finally said so what do you think of the pomander? He said it's nice, it matches perfectly, I'm trying to be careful around it.
I laughed and said, dude it's fake, relax!

To make this hydrangea pomander you simply buy a Styrofoam ball, maybe the size of a tennis ball, and then you buy 2 green hydrangea stems, 2 white stems, and three pink stems. You have to cut off the florets and insert them into the ball. I wanted to make sure they were secure so I put the florets on picks then used styrofoam glue to secure the picks to the foam. I finished off with a pink satin ribbon and bow.

Next it was on to the centerpiece.


I do a quality control where I basically design the florals and then line them up and go back and fill in holes and make sure they are balanced.



Here are they ready for transport and then packed into the back of the truck.


Once we arrived at the Pacific Althletic Club in Redwood Shores it was a matter of unpacking the truck and beginning to construct the parts of the centerpeice.

What the heck are we looking at you ask?
Rose heads that were strung together to float inside the vase of course!


They were made to hover over the bear grass inside these 30 inch glass cylinder vases. The inside of the container had gel that looked kind of like glass.


Here are what the tall centerpiece looked like once constructed.

Those things were HEAVY! High style floral centerpieces add so much drama to the room and once you have some low centerpeice along with the high centerpeice they make a room look really good! Add some linen and some lighting and you are in wedding heaven!


We had 9 high floral centerpeice and then 8 low pink and green centerpiece.


Here is the sweetheart table. We decided that we would keep it simple.
I just lined it with two types of bud vases and filled in with different shades of rununculas and rose petals.


The cocktail table centerpiece were hot pink, chartreuse green, a little white with a chunk of wheat grass peppered with some brown fiddle ferns. Super cute, really small, stylized and fun.
The foam was covered by making a leaf pattern.

So when I was told there would be a wrought iron door and was shown this picture I fell in love.
The Ikebana in me screamed out loud and immediately I thought ok, we need something that will give it color, interest, but less is more because these doors are just gorgeous.
So as much as I wanted to design the doors myself, I just had too much to do and delegated this to Brandon. I told him ok, just make a design, start low and move up, making it a little thicker at the bottom and then slowly becoming more sparse almost wispy towards the top.
He did a FANTASTRIC job and I really loved it. The pictures do not do it justice. They were rununcuals that were placed in water tubes with some decorative coil and then just strung up.


This was my favorite thing of the day. The wheat grass escort cards.
The groom made thesecontainers! Are they great or what? I dropped the wheat grass in the container with some foam along the edge and designed the flowers to face the front of the container.

Jen of GreenQuince made all the paper products and they were all gorgeous and I wanted to steal them away for myself! She outdid herself and you MUST go to her Etsy shop and check her out. She's fabulous. :)

So here is the crew: Mary, Brandon, and Debbie.
Alison is not pictured but she was there.
Thanks guys, Icouldn't have pulled off a wedding without you all and I thank you for your creative juices and help!




Next up is the PARTY!

How do they get those on the pews???

Mr. Pew meet Ms. Chenille P. Cleaner

I swear this little pipe cleaner has saved me many a time. I have used them to secure Martha Stewart Paper Pomanders, I have used them to secure hanging crystals from a bouquet (which incidentally I forgot to take pictures of the bridesmaids bouquets with the hanging crystal)

You can kind of see them here at the edges of the pictures. I used them in the first, second, and fourth bouquet. I looped fish line into the crystal and tied it on to a chenille wire that is the same color as the stems so you can't really see them. They hung just in front of the handle so when they held the bouquets they hung in different lengths right in front without being crushed.

You also use them to secure floral arrangements to just about anything that you want to.
For example, you have your pew and its flat.

{here}

It's not all pretty like this chair that has a place to hang stuff off so it makes life easy, no, the pew is flat.

What to do, what to do?
It's actually simple. Buy some pew clips which cost like $10-16 bucks for 12-24.
(Or less if you really shop around for a deal)
They can be purchased from any floral supply store or retailer, the above pictures are from sav-on-crafts which a lot of people are familiar with so I will link it here.

Anyhow, you can attach whatever you want to the clips with the chenille pipe cleaner and viola! Pew decorations become endless....

Here is a picture that Sav On Crafts offers to illustrate how to use floral foam to make your own floral decorations. Pretty self explanatory.

I came across this picture on someone's inspiration board a long time ago so I don't have a source (sorry!)
But I loved the look of the buckets and a mass flower with coordinating ribbon. They used the pew clips here to hold them up right in the middle.


See? you can't even tell right? But they are there!
Ready to hold up anything you want to attach to your pew: cones, ribbons, flowers, programs, pictures, lanterns, whatever you can think of!


This last picture from Instyleweddings kills me every time I look at it....I WISH I could get married in front of a tree JUST so I can hang ribbon from it. Isn't it stunning? I mean I love the lush rose petal aisle and the brown and white chiavari chairs and the simplicity of it all, but the ribbons with the lanterns just do it for me.

baptism+communion+birthday=fun

I have a party that I am doing the arrangements and decor for in May. It's a party in which everything is rolled up into one big affair instead of celebrating three different events at different times. I think it's better that way and since its Spring and they are two sacraments it can be done in light colors and pastels and I am pretty excited to see what we can do with it.

Pomanders a la Martha Stewart are making an appearance.
They are easy to make, make an impact, and are super inexpensive.

{greengelato}

{msl}

Alternating from the beams will be these balloon flowers

{msl}
Directions on how to make are here


I bought these cute little white pots.


I think I am going to make little miniature pomanders with carnations and tie a cute ribbon around the belly.

{JKM Ribbon and trims}

First though I am going to make some with silk flowers to see how many flowers it takes and if it's going to be more economical that way.

I am going to make her a collage of her kids pictures to put around the hall to give it a personal touch and I am thinking we will have two tables. One with the communion/Baptism cake. The other a princess theme for her daughters birthday so when they look back at pictures they will have a first birthday picture.

She already got the favors but how fun would these be for favors?
I just love Bakerella!

You can get instructions here.

They seem pretty simple to make and mark my words, you will soon see a post about how they tuned out for me. :)