I hope you had a great Valentine’s Day!

Our V-Day at The Spiraled Stem was very special because my very good friend since the 7th grade, Carly, got married to her Valentine DJ. We were honored to have done the flowers and to be part of such a special night. Here’s a picture of Darrell and I after all the work was finished and we were dressed up for the reception (and our Valentine’s date – two in one!).

Carly and DJ chose a beautiful location in Del Mar (San Diego area) called the Powerhouse, which is right on the beach! We were a little nervous on Friday because it was POURING, but the forecast called for clear skies on Saturday, and while it was chilly, the rain stayed away and it was a beautiful day!

Here is a picture of me just after I finished making the Maid of Honor bouquet on Friday.

Darrell and I started setting up the reception in the afternoon. Carly chose the beautiful and very popular submerged orchid in the tall glass vase centerpiece, with a floating candle on top. I have a lot of brides doing this centerpiece in 2009, and I can tell you since I was at the wedding that all of the guests loved it. Its classy and elegant, without being overdone and you still get the height of a tall centerpiece at a much lower cost than the big arrangement on top. We used two different colors of orchids, brown and burgundy, to reflect the African safari theme of their honeymoon destination.

Here are some more ambiance pictures from the reception. Since it was Valentine’s Day, they had a candy bar with all kinds of tasty treats!

It was a special treat for me too to see my friends Ali (since 1st grade), Elizabeth (since 7th grade), and Carly’s friend Shea – who were all Spiraled Stem brides! Well actually, Elizabeth and myself both got married before The Spiraled Stem was officially in existence, but it still counts since I did the flowers. So here are all of the wives – welcome Carly as the newest to the club! I also dug up pictures from each of our weddings, but luckily pre-2003 isn’t digital so I’m not going to dig those junior high school prints out!

Elizabeth – August 2002

Christine – September 2003

Shea – August 2005

Ali – September 2005

Carly and DJ – Married 2-14-09!

I don’t have any pictures of the couple from the wedding day because I snapped all of these pictures before i realized the camera had no memory card… I’m a florist not a photographer! So I pulled this from the archives. I hope to add some wedding pictures of them soon when I get them from the  real photographer. In the meantime, congratulations to Carly and DJ and have a fantastic honeymoon!

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Hello everyone! I have been on a bit of a hiatus. On Monday of last week, Darrell decided at the last minute to fly to Atlanta to be with his parents and sister for the Thanksgiving holiday. I was already committed to a project over the weekend and wasn’t going to be able to go, and I planned to spend Thanksgiving with my family in San Diego. Well, on Tuesday morning my project for the weekend got cancelled and all of a sudden I was free to go to Atlanta! We left early Wednesday morning and stayed until Tuesday of this week.

Yes, six days of sleeping 15 hours a night, eating home-cooked meals (though it was the same Thanksgiving meal over and over and over…), taking naps, shopping, reading (The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama and The Pagan Stone by Nora Roberts – I’ve been waiting months for that one!), and did I mention I took a lot of naps?

Since I basically slept through the last week, it wasn’t until I got home Wednesday that I realized there had been this whole situation going on in Thailand. Have you heard about it? Check out some of the stories from today here and here. I checked in with my orchid supplier this morning when I was at the flower market, and that confirmed what I had figured… the cooler was EMPTY and they hadn’t been receiving their regular shipments of dendrobium, aranda, and oncidium orchids from Thailand. They were able to receive about half their regular shipments for standing orders, but they had to be driven 16 hours by truck to a different airport in Thailand, and they were a little worse for the wear.

This is a perfect example of how flowers are truly a global trade and disruptions in other parts of the world can affect us here. Since most florists know that situations like this are a remote possibility, brides will often find a clause in their contracts like the one in mine -

“Every effort will be made to secure the exact items as described. However, if a specified item is not available at the time of the event, the Florist may make a comparable substitution in value and substance.”

This situation in Thailand is case in point of the meaning of this clause, so please understand that sometimes things happen that are completely out of our control! A takeover of an airport and ousting of a prime minister is an extreme situation, but sometimes factors such as weather, transportation, high demand (like the time I went to the market and just about every pink rose in existence on this planet were bought for some huge crazy event – I’d love to find the pictures of that one!) can disrupt flower supply and we have to find an appropriate substitution.

In September of 2004, Miami was hit with consecutive hurricanes for 4 weeks and the airport was shut down, and Miami is the hub of the floral trade from South America. I had ordered 40 bunches of red roses – 1,000 stems – for a wedding and didn’t get ANY of them. After I picked myself up off of the floor, I walked to the wholesaler next door and they had EXACTLY 40 bunches of local red roses. I was SO LUCKY to get those given the situation.

So what about the green dendrobium orchids I wanted for Sunday’s wedding? Well, there were no green dendrobiums ANYWHERE, so we are using the pink dendrobiums I tracked down at the market early this morning, which look smashing in the centerpieces and chair decorations. Its late Friday night and all of the flowers are done and in the cooler, ready to go for Sunday. The wedding is in San Diego bright and early Sunday morning, I’ll be sure to share some pictures when all is said and done! In the meantime here are a few pics from a wedding a few years ago that featured green and white dendrobium orchids. Have a great weekend!

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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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