Hot Pink in the Red Barn!

So, Yannos and I went to a lovely wedding last weekend. The weather was beautiful, the party was fun, the venue was cool, and I did the flowers!


First, check out how cool this farm is. It was so pretty.

Here is what the flowers looked like when I picked them up from Potomac Floral Wholesale, which was awesome. They were so helpful, played with the kids, loaded my car, and even offered Zoe pizza.

Hot pink, pink, and white gerbera daisies and carnations with one bunch of tiny roses for the bride. The bride's bouquet was mostly dark pink, the bridesmaid's were hot pink and pink, and the mother's carried light pink and white bouquets.

First I stripped the leaves and got them all in water

Then divided them into possible groupings.

I've never done this many bouquets before (12 total) so planning them out was key.

Even Zoe got in on the action using the old flowers from last week's baby shower after she demolished 3 pink carnations and was fired from child labor.

Some of the finished products...

Action shots...

The happy couple (I did the cute little boutonniere too, but only one for the groom).

But my favorite part was when the bride went up to the hay loft to throw her bouquet and instead of throwing it into the crowd of ladies, she threw it directly into this light...

And it exploded into a hundred pieces...


...along with my heart.

Being a florist

Sometimes I like to do wedding things. Creative and fun wedding things. Like decor and flowers and photography. I told you all about the time I became a wedding planner. I have also photographed a friend's wedding before and maybe I'll even tell you about that some time. But this is about the time I became a florist.

The bride was interested in succulents and deep purple dahlias. Here was a picture she sent me a year before the wedding of her brainchild.

It started with a trip to the San Francisco flower mart, which is the coolest.

Here is the bride walking away with all her goodies.

I swore that the next time I made wedding flowers I would take a ton of progress pictures in order to show how to actually make them. Guess what? It's really hard to take pictures and hold flowers at the same time.

So this is what you get. Deal with it.

Bouquet making chaos!

Bridesmaid's bouquets

Bride's bouquet

Corsages 

The boutonnieres were awesome, but I don't have any real pictures.

  To this day I don't actually know how to spell the word boutonniere. 

Auto correct often thinks I am talking about tambourines.

The leftover flowers made a nice little flower arrangement and were used to decorate the cake

 

 After the wedding I lined all the bouquets up on the ledge behind the bride and groom.

I had nothing to do with these, but aren't they cool? Nice job Andrea and Justin.

How long does it take me to edit 400+ pictures from San Francisco?

Apparently one month.

Remember that time I was a wedding planner?

We are in the middle of a very busy wedding season. So I thought I'd tell you about the time I became Jennifer Lopez a wedding planner.

Our friends had their wedding at a park pavilion that had never been the venue for a wedding before. I have the firm belief that you can have a fantastic wedding no matter the setting, so it seemed like the perfect challenge.

This story starts with this picture...

That is the ginormous maple tree in our front yard being taken down. It was sick and too close to our house/cars for comfort.

What does this have to do with a wedding? I'm so glad you asked! The first major decision made was to serve pie instead of cake.

The problem was making 12 pies look like a coherent and decorative centerpiece instead of just having 12 pies set out on a table.

ENTER THE TREE!

I gave my lovely husband a diagram for him to chain saw pillars for the pies to stand on. Add flowers in the color scheme and we came up with this.

I also had him cut smaller branches to give some varying height to the table decor. Good thing he is handy with a chainsaw.

Here was the overall look. Cream linens on picnic tables with shiny gold and red runners. I used more red on the tables with gold runners, and more gold and cream on the red runners.

There were 4 different centerpieces. I was working within a tight budget and had to use everything I was given...some red votives, a bunch of varied glassware, and red ribbon.

The 4 centerpieces were pillar candles (from Ikea) on gold chargers I already owned, tied with a red ribbon

4 red votives in square glass

What I called the "messy flowers", which were larger bloom flowers arranged in a spherical shape

And what I called the "square flowers", which were 9 mini-carnations arranged in a tightly packed square. I don't have a close-up picture of it, but it looked like this from the top...

The ceremony flowers were my favorite part, because I got to make boutonnieres for the first time and they are so much fun to play around with.

The groomsman wore these...

 This is the only picture I took that you can see the groom's boutonniere

The bridesmaids carried these

The bride's bouquet was red daisies, red carnations, and red roses wrapped in gold ribbon. 

She added a picture of her father.

 Up close of the bride's bouquet

The picnic pavilion had bare bulbs hanging from the rafters, which just wasn't going to cut it for me. We got a bunch of white paper lanterns at Ikea, and I hung them in clusters to make it more visually pleasing than just hanging one over the light. I splurged on the large red tiered square I came across at World Market, because it was too perfect to pass up and it added just the right pop to the center of the pavilion.

Here is a night time picture that really captured the ambiance

The wedding was held at Turkey Run Pavilions, which has now hilariously updated their site and added weddings to their list of events they hold. Check out the website...

"Yes, we do Weddings! Looking for something a little different than a hotel or church? Our facilities are ideal for beautiful outdoor weddings. With professional planners to help you plan your big day and the ability to hold the ceremony AND reception at the same location, there is no better option!"

Professional planners?! Apparently.

Next week, I'll fill you in on how we actually turned a picnic pavilion into a wedding venue in only one hour. It seems impossible looking back on it.