Last weekend, Candice and Brian tied the knot at Waverly Chapel in Santa Ana in a VERY cool Halloween inspired wedding that totally captured their style and personality. I was only doing the personals so I didn’t get the whole picture of the wedding until the day of, and boy was I impressed! Candice brought me a swatch of her dress fabric and some Halloween scrapbooking paper to decorate the girls’ Blumeboxes with, but I had no idea how detailed they would be in following through on the theme.

Candice’s bouquet was made of Black Magic and Black Baccarra roses, Monkey Tails, and Mini Callas that I spray painted black. Black feathers accented the collar and Candice provided a monogrammed handkerchief and rhinestone cross for the handle. The bridesmaids were dark purple Mini Callas with lily grass sprayed black. I also did some black curly willow and rose petals at the reception.

Waverly Chapel is situated in a cemetary, and there was actually a funeral going on next door when I delivered the flowers. You will see some of the graveside shots they got from photographer Jim Kennedy, who sent me these images even though he’s in Mexico for two weeks shooting back to back weddings. Thanks Jim! Check out his blog for more images.

The reception was at Orange Mining Company, and I brought in some of the Black Magic/Black Baccara rose petals as an accent, but Candice did all the rest! The place cards were on a tree with each name on a bat hanging from the branches, the cards were collected in a coffin, their toasting flutes were goblets that said “Poison”, favors were little coffins of candy, linens were black and purple, table names were 5×7 drawings with names like “Hearse” and “Haunted Mansion”. My favorite was the cake topper, a skeleton bride and groom! The linens for the cake table were like spider webs.

Candice and Brian’s wedding was certainly the most unique I have seen in a long time, and I was honored to be a part of it! Knowing the couple, I couldn’t have imagined them doing anything traditional, and they pulled this off with a lot of class and creativity. I give them much kudos for a job well done – and Happy Halloween everyone!

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Maggie and Raymond at the Hyatt Huntington Beach

Maggie and Raymond are a beautiful couple who returned to Southern California from Missouri to get married in the presence of their friends and families in Huntington Beach, CA. The ceremony was held at St. Simon and Jude Church, and the reception at the Hyatt Huntington Beach. The details were flawlessly executed by Susan MacDonald of SuMac Productions and images were captured by the always wonderful Joel from Studio EMP.

In Chinese culture, its very important that there be no white flowers for corsages and boutonnieres, so we made doubly sure that we would have beautiful pink cymbidium orchids and red roses for the parents and grandparents.

Maggie and Raymond wanted orange and green, which is a very popular and beautiful color combination. We used ‘Milva’ roses, green cymbidium orchids, green hypericum berries, and ‘Mango’ mini callas as the basis for the designs. Accents of green hydrangea, ‘Kermit’ poms, and curly willow were interlaced throughout.

There is a picture of me in here as I am about to decorate the cake. There was a bit of a mixup with the cake, because TWO cakes showed up for this wedding! I still don’t know the story behind this, but we had to wait and make sure we were poking into the right cake since both a square and round one were delivered. Decorating the cake is one of my favorite parts of the event, as its usually the very last thing to be done and signifies that we are almost through with executing another fabulous event!

There are some images in here that we took ourselves and aren’t professional. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell just by looking, but I made sure to mark them so that you don’t get it twisted up with Joel’s fabulous work, we don’t want to make him look bad and have you thinking some of the not so great ones are his!

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Katie with her bouquet of peonies, roses, tulips, hypericum berries, bells of ireland, and rununculus

Katie was one of our brides this year who was personally very committed to having eco-friendly flowers for her wedding. She had the opportunity to visit a flower farm in Colombia in 2004 and heard first hand from some of the workers there about their plight for improved labor standards in the floral industry. You can read more about Katie’s wedding and see more pictures on her Featured Wedding page in the Floral Gallery.

I was so happy to be able to offer her VeriFlora certified flowers for her wedding! The main colors were orange and coral, and we used ‘Ad Rem’ tulips paired with ‘Wow’ Roses for half of the centerpieces, and ‘Professor Rontgen’ novelty tulips paired with ‘Milva’ roses for the other half of the centerpieces.

Katie’s bouquet featured beautiful coral peonies, bells of ireland, orange rununculus, green hypericum berries, and a mixture of the roses and tulips previously mentioned. It was big and heavy, but I just love the colors and style of the bouquet! The bridesmaids carried bouquets of the tulips and roses, with green hypericum berries to accent. We had also incorporated oranges and kumquats to make it a true celebration of Orange County, CA.

I also loved seeing the images of Katie and her wedding party on the grounds of the Island Hotel (formerly the Four Seasons) in Newport Beach, CA. That is where Darrell and I’s wedding reception was and we also took our pre-ceremony shots in the same place! If you look closely, you can find the elusive Kelly Aguilar from Social Butterfly Events, who got caught on camera doting on the bride and groom!

These images are from Will and Naomi Henshall, whom you can check out at www.henshallphotography.com. Thank you for the beautiful images!

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Darrell and Christine Saunders

I mentioned last week that Wednesday was one of those days when I just love my business and the lifestyle of being a business owner. There are so many challenges and so much work that goes into keeping this engine running, and we are often behind the scenes, all sweaty and gross and sneaking around so no one sees us, that its nice when we get a chance to take a step back, dress up, and take advantage of some of the perks.

 One of those perks is working with some of the BEST wedding professionals in the industry, and Joel from Studio EMP is one of them. He shot a wedding we did the flowers for earlier this year (which I don’t have up on the site yet – I’ll blog it soon) and I was so impressed that he was very proactive in sharing a CD of flower images for me to use on my site, blog and web portfolio.

Sidenote to photographers out there – florists and other wedding professionals LOVE when you send a CD of images pertaining to their field on weddings we do together, it gives us an opportunity to share our work with future brides and our brides get to see your work too! Of the 42 weddings I have done so far this year, I have received CDs of images from the photographer on SEVEN of them. That’s right - SEVEN, or 16%. Imagine if you shot a wedding and only 16% of the images came out, or you mailed out Christmas cards and only 16% of them were delivered, or you invited your friends to a birthday party and only 16% of them showed up. You see where I am going with this… So PLEASE send images to your vendors! Ok I am done begging.

Joel is one of my lucky SEVEN for 2008, so last week when I knew I was going to have hair and makeup done for a video interview, I called him up to see if we could do some fresh headshots and he was so wonderful to oblige. His studio is in downtown Fullerton, right by the train station. Darrell takes the train to and from work from the Fullerton station, and I was going to make it to Joel’s studio about the time Darrell got in, so we expanded it to somewhat of a headshot/portfolio/delayed engagement session for us.

Actually, Darrell and I just celebrated our five year wedding anniversary, so I convinced Darrell we should take these pictures together because when we have our 40 year wedding anniversary and our future kids want to put together a slideshow of us (or whatever other crazy technology they have in 35 years) that they will be asking us for pictures like these! We put together anniversary slideshows for both sets of our parents – BOTH still married after 42/43 years – so he had sympathy on our future children and humored me.

So here is a gallery of images of us courtesy of Joel at Studio EMP, check him out, he’s really good, and he actually got Darrell to relax a bit by the end of our shoot – HUGE shout out to Joel. And I’ve already designed our holiday card with one of the images of us in front of the wall with the big white square, I wonder if they project movies up there or something during the summer?

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Today was an early morning and my assistant Esther and I took a road trip up the coast to B and H Flowers in Carpinteria. B and H is VeriFlora Certified and also has a crop of USDA organic gerber daisies, one of the first in the country! Scott Fulton, VP of Sales and Marketing, showed us all of the practices they use on the farm that demonstrate their commitment to producing environmentally friendly and socially responsible flowers.

We saw how they use beneficial pests to naturally manage harmful pests and reduce the use of harmful pesticides, how they grow the gerbers hydroponically to conserve water, the energy efficient boiler that heats the greenhouses, and the water reclamation pond that captures runoff, condensation and rainwater that is sterilized and recirculated into the system. Scott showed us the prototypes for new packaging made from SFI Certified fibers and corn-based sleeves.

One of the most intriguing aspects of our visit was really understanding the difference between USDA organic and VeriFlora, which is a very common question asked by clients and florists. I will be uploading a ton of pictures and going into this topic in-depth on the Sustainability Program page. Here is a preview of some of the things we saw on our tour today, check back for more content on the Sustainability Program page in the next week or two.

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Because that means its over!

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind and I have so many blog posts waiting to happen. In my mind I have been sharing every detail of the last few weeks on my blog, but really its still all in my head. Well tonight is the night to open the floodgates! I prefer to write a separate blog post about each topic, which I will, but there have been many highlights (and lowlights) since the first entry on my new blog about the Emmy’s.

A quick recap – since the Emmy’s on September 21, we have had five weddings and a funeral (seriously), corporate events, parties, an anniversary, a fundraiser event, had a private Lit concert, designed flowers for Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DiRossi, booked new weddings, attended networking events and workshops, won awards, retreated to San Diego for a couple of days, and someone even ended up in urgent care. Its been non-stop action!

But here is why I don’t want to wash my face: not only do I look really good, today was one of those days that make it so gratifying and exciting to run my own business. I started the day with an overly ambitous 7am car service appointment that I showed up at 8:30 for… but I had a Starbucks in hand so that made it easier. I reviewed drafts of my upcoming ad campaigns from my graphic designers, consulted with a bride by phone from New York City, scheduled a creative meeting with the Production Designer and Art Director for a wedding movie I will be doing the set decor for, strategized the color scheme and linens for an upcoming photo shoot, booked a retirement party for next week, lunched with my boss from my last corporate job and was reminded of why I am so glad I left, had two scoops of ice cream , had my hair and makeup professionally done, was interviewed on camera for a business award I recently won, had a photo shoot with Joel from Studio EMP that was a mix of headshots, website content, “engagement” session with my husband (five years late that got a little racy!), and attended a Ladies Who Launch roundtable with Jen Sincero that finally got me started on my book proposal I’ve been wanting to do! What a crazy fun day after a crazy couple of weeks and there is no end in sight to the craziness… so stay tuned! So now I sadly have to go wash my face and go to bed, tomorrow is another day. I’m driving up to Carpinteria to do some research and a photo shoot at a VeriFlora Certified farm to add to my web content.

But since no blog post is complete without a few pictures, here are some from the Ceremony Magazine party for Southern California advertisers and wedding professionals that took place at Nixon Library in Yorba Linda a couple of weeks ago.

Shawni Hartman, Christine Saunders, Karla Flores, Dawn Hansen, Richelle Davidson

Marianne Lozano, Christine Saunders, and Sandy Shirgaokar

Christine and Darrell Saunders

Christine Saunders and Christy Sanchez

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