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.

31 days of 2012 - Day 23

Could there be more fun? I think not.

31 days of 2012 - Day 22

 Endless walking

31 days of 2012 - Day 21

Curious kids are the best!

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.

The worst, best trip

Oh San Francisco. Thanks for being the hardest trip we've taken in Zoe's 14 month existence. Do I need to remind you that we have flown this child on a 10 hour trans-Atlantic flight, done a 7-hour time change for only a week, and driven on a 1600 mile road trip?

But this trip to San Fran has all three of us in tears and saying we will never fly anywhere with the baby ever again.

No time soon at least. Right now we're baby shell-shocked. Parents know what this means. When you listen to your child cry and scream all day; even after they calm down, every noise they make terrifies you.

You think a coo is going to turn into an hour of screaming, a cough sends you into a panic. You hear phantom babies crying all over the place.

One time, Yannos accused me of only posting pictures of Zoe when she is adorably happy. This will not be one of those times. The truth is she is a pretty happy baby. Not that anyone on our 4 flights or in the state of California would believe that sentence.


Exhibit A

She spent most of the trip rolling around on the ground screaming. If not that, she was following Yannos around throwing things at him. Notice, I didn't include myself. I was off gallivanting with the bride doing fun wedding related things.

But Yannos, poor Yannos, was stuck with this...

Even when not crying, she never really looked that happy

Oh back to crying

Actually, that one isn't really fair. Apparently the baby gets carsick on winding mountain roads. She puked all over the place. I had no change of clothes for her and nothing to clean it up with. So, instead of enjoying this view off of Rt. 1

I was shoveling grape and potato puke out of the car with my hands. It was awesome. At least this time, she didn't throw up as a direct result of something I did to her.

Yannos couldn't even attend the wedding we flew to the west coast for. He had to sit in the hallway because of our crazy screaming baby.

See that patented Zoe back arch? Sums up the whole trip.

Picnic Pavilion to Wedding Venue

We had one hour to turn over the pavilion from a company picnic to a wedding venue and it was tough. Luckily I had lots of help. Here are my tips.

1.) Know the Site Well

Visit the venue as many times as it takes for you to be completely familiar with it. I went 3 times before the wedding day. When we ran into logistical issues, like needing an extra table or getting a huge metal trash can out of sight I knew where unused tables were stashed and good hiding places.

2.) Organize Your Help and Delegate

Know who is helping you and what they are capable of. Figure out who you can trust with more artistic things like flower arranging and who needs to just light the candles. Don't give people more than one thing at a time to do. I found we got a lot more done if people just came back to get their next task after they completed the first one instead of asking one person to do 3 things. This gives you the ability to re-prioritize and keep moving. Be direct with your requests.

3.) Set Up An Example

We had 20 tables to decorate. I set up one and then asked someone to replicate them. It was a big time saver to take 3 minutes of my time to make a visual example in order to take the entire task off my plate.

4.) Pre Light Candles 

Have you lit an brand new candle before? It takes longer than one that has been previously lit. That wax coating has to burn off the wick before the flame actually catches. The day before the wedding, I lit every candle that we were going to use. In a situation where every minute counted, saving a few made a huge difference in not feeling rushed. This is a good tip for anything that can actually be done ahead of time. Sure, cutting a piece of string doesn't take that long, but cutting 30 while standing on a ladder is going to waste valuable time.


5.) Transport The Finished Product

Bring things to the site as completed as possible. It takes more space and you have to be more careful in transit, but it saves a lot of time. We had all of the flowers arranged, all ribbons tied, and all centerpieces ready to go.

6.) Plan And Prioritize

Know your game plan backwards and forwards. I had charts, diagrams, and explanations for every task that needed to be completed. Start with the most important part first. We had one pavilion for the ceremony and one for the reception. This meant that we got to keep working on the reception pavilion during the ceremony for last minute touches. Let things drop off your list if you are running out of time. I wanted to tie back the big plastic weather curtains with decorative ties, but I ran out of time and that was OK. Start with the things that will give you the most visual impact and work down from there.

7.) Stay Calm And Flexible

People are going to need you to do things you weren't planning on. I had to pin boutonnieres and find flowers for the bride's hair. This is why delegating is so important...it frees you up to complete unexpected tasks.

Check out all the pictures from this wedding here!

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.