Flowers

Wendy was surprising her parents with a party celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary! The big bash was held in the Oceanside room at Shutters on the Beach, Santa Monica. This is one of the most beautiful spaces at Shutters – perfect for an intimate party of 50 or so people.

Wendy made up fun little quizzes for the guests to play and spread out pictures of her parents from back in the day!

To coordinate with the blue walls and white trim, the flowers were all white in white wooden boxes for the long dining table. And for the cocktail tables, Wendy requested light blue and white in silver containers. In the main centerpieces, we used hydrangea, roses, stock, china mums, and peonies. For the cocktail flowers, we brought in the nice light blue color with some amazing hydrangea.

We placed a white cymbidium orchid on every place setting.

What a fun cake!

A swell was in one clear sunny Saturday in May and the surfers were out in full force. At the end of the Malibu Pier, Liz was having her graduation party in the Surfrider room at the Beachcomber Restaurant. Here are some pictures of the floral arrangements we provided. The color theme was orange and pool blue and Liz thought having actual oranges in the arrangements would be a lot of fun. I couldn’t agree with her more! We also used fun, bright orange gerbera daisies, yellow craspedia, peachy-orange roses, and accents of light green bupleurum.

Happy New Year 2011! Merry Christmas 2010!

Sorry so slow!

Here are a few images of a private Christmas brunch held at the Jonathan Club we did last year. That Sunday was also “Snow Day” at the club where they created a miniature hill made of snow for kids to sled down. And not too far away you could hear the crashing waves of the ocean! What a way to confuse the senses!

We attached clear water tubes to sandblasted grape wood branches and filled the tubes with water. Each tube then held a couple stems of paper whites. We arranged 3 branches on each table on a bed of smilax vines.

After the party, the centerpieces came apart easily for guests to take home!

(You can also find this post on WeddingAces)

Even if you don’t plan to hold your wedding on Valentine’s Day weekend, you can still have beautiful, romantic bouquets in multiple shades of pink and red. Accent with deep purple or peach for something a little different. Adding ostrich feathers makes a dramatic and glamorous statement. And little sparkling rhinestones glued onto roses and calla lilies or just placed between the flowers add a little bling bling edge.

Lots of different soft textures evoke romance and love, so plan to have a bouquet of various types of flowers in the same color family.  Flowers for romance include roses, of course, as well as the multi-petaled ranunculus, cymbidium orchids, fluffy peonies, mini calla lilies, and sweet peas.  You can also decorate the bouquet handles with lace overlays, rhinestones, or large satin bows.  Let your bridal bouquet speak the language of love!

Have you noticed that when you buy fresh cut flowers either from your local grocery store or flower shop, the blooms just don’t really smell all that floral? They smell more like “fresh” – like leafy vegetables – but not quite like perfume and soaps that are actually floral scented.

What’s going on? Well, as growers continue to cross and breed and create hardier cut flowers that survive the long, arduous journey from farm to plane to auction to wholesaler and finally to shop and customer, we begin to substitute fragrance with longevity. We are left with gorgeous and long-lasting blooms that come in new and interesting colors but without much fragrance. Which might be a good thing for some people, but sometimes scents and fragrances can really set the mood and complete the memories of your wedding day. And isn’t it natural to just stick your nose into your bouquet to smell the flowers?

Well, lucky for us there are still many flowers with lovely scents that our human noses can enjoy! Some pretty strong that they may actually bother some people (lilies, baby’s breath), and some might not be all that pretty in smell (narcissus, poppy), and some smell like you’ve walked into a kitchen (dill, allium). Some really beautifully smelling flowers include perfect for bouquets include freesia, lilacs, sweet peas, gardenias, tuberoses, stock, and some roses have a lovely faint scent. Most cut orchids do not have a scent, but cymbidium orchids can smell quite pretty. Chocolate cosmos, already stunning in a dark velvety brown, also smells just like their namesake – chocolate! So request some of these flowers for your wedding décor for a memorable and deliciously fragrant day!

Read the rest on WeddingAces!