This Friday and Saturday February 27-28, the Brides Against Breast Cancer Nationwide Tour of Gowns stops in Anaheim! For two days only, brides can shop from a huge selection of wedding dresses in all sizes and with prices at 25-75% below retail. These beautiful wedding dresses have been donated by past brides, designers, salons, and manufacturers so that proceeds from the sales go to benefit Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation, a non-profit organization which grants end of live wishes for terminally ill metastatic stage IV breast cancer patients.

Power Hours
Making Memories will host special morning hours of operation to offer brides a “sneak peak” and first pick of the thousands of gowns available for her one special day. “Power Hours” are on Friday, February 27, 2009, from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm – admission is $20, advanced registration is required, and space is limited. Visit: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/275961408 for Power Hours registration.

Here are the details on the Brides Against Breast Cancer Wedding Dress Sale:

Location
Anaheim Marriott Suites Hotel
12015 Harbor Blvd
Garden Grove, CA

Hours
Power Hours:
Friday, February 27, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Gown Sale:
Friday, February 27, 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Saturday, February 28, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Registration
Power Hour: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/275961408
Brides: http://www.makingmemories.org
Volunteers: http://www.bridesagainstbreastcancer.org

Payment
Cash and credit cards are welcome. General admission is FREE.

BONUS!

A coupon worth $50 off any gown over $500 or $25 off any gown from $250 to $499 will be printed in the Orange County Register and the LA Times – Orange County Edition on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for additional savings! Brides must present the coupon clipped from the newspaper to redeem the discount.

View the Brides Against Breast Cancer Dress Sale Press Release.

View the Brides Against Breast Cancer Dress Sale Flier.

View the Brides Against Breast Cancer Dress Sale Coupon (you must bring in printed newspaper coupon to redeem!)

The Spiraled Stem Floral Design is honored to be the volunteer local coordinator for the Brides Against Breast Cancer wedding dress sale, so we will be on site for the entire sale. We are still taking volunteers so please contact me at christine@thespiraledstem.com if you are interested!

I learned about BABC last year as part of The Green Event Studio launch, and we were happy to host the launch as a Pink Envelope Project event. I also pledged to donate my wedding gown in support of BABC, and that is just what I did last year.

My dress professionally cleaned and boxed had been sitting in my closet for 5 years.

My dress ready to join the thousands of others waiting for a new owner.

Me with my dress before we part ways.

Yes I had to try it on just one last time.

No it didn’t still fit! Be careful girls, this can happen to you too!

If you are a recent bride who would like to donate your dress, you can bring it to the sale and we will accept donations, just like how I did last year. For dresses that are really damaged or are non-sellable for any reason, there is still hope! Brides Against Breast Cancer will still accept the donation, but they use the fabric for quilters to make fabulous quilts that are worth thousands of dollars, and the proceeds of their sale go to Making Memories, just like the dresses!

For all the brides who are still shopping for a dress, or for past brides who want to donate their dress to a good cause, we look forward to seeing you this weekend!

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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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Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Orange County is hosting a “BIG” night on Thursday January 22, 2009 from 6-8:30pm at the Oakley Headquarters in Lake Forest.  It’s a fun, no-pressure opportunity to learn more about becoming a Big, meet current Big Brothers and Big Sisters and grab some delicious (and absolutely free) food and drinks.  This is your chance to check out Oakley’s unique facility and even get a behind-the-scenes tour of the Oakley factory.  And that’s not all – the evening will feature a talk with Pro Skateboarder and X-Games winner Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins.

I’ve been a Big Sister for 8 years (has it really been that long!) and its a great program to be involved in to mentor a young child. This could be a great way to respond to Obama’s call to service! BTW I was glued to the inauguration coverage all day today. Please go to the event if you can, or contact them directly for more information at www.bigbrooc.org

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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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Thank you again everyone who has checked in with us. Finally things are back to normal. Shown above is a picture of a spot right off of Weir Canyon and Santa Ana Canyon in Anaheim Hills, down the street from my house about a mile. Last year I took head shots in the brush alongside Weir Canyon, and the fire burned right up to it! I think that is the closest it got to us.

My mom had pnemonia and was kept in the hospital for 4 days to recover, and she was released yesterday. She is feeling much better! The upsides are that she got an all expenses paid vacation for 4 days while being waited on hand and foot, and since she was up here in the hospital, I had my dad at the studio for a couple more days to do some projects.

Our latest project is a walk in cooler! We are so excited to have even more space to keep flowers cool. It can get really hot in the studio, so we are always running flowers up to the air conditioning in the consultation area and stashing them in the reach in. Now we will have a lot more cool space! When the staff heard that we were getting a cooler like this, they asked if we could just put the work stations in there.

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Ours started at 3:30am, my parents are up in Anaheim visiting from San Diego for the weekend so my dad can do some work at the studio to install a walk-in cooler (yay!). My mom woke us up because she was having back pain, fever, and cough. The paramedics were at our house at 4am, she was generally OK but my dad took her to the ER, where they admitted her and she is staying at least overnight and is undergoing all kinds of tests.

I checked in with them at the hospital at 9:30a before swinging by the flower market to pick up flowers for Monday’s orders. By the time I got back to the studio at 10:30am, there was a huge fire burning to the east, which is now the Freeway Complex fire, and directly to the north of the studio, which is the Brea fire. With fires burning all around us, Darrell and I packed up the car for the wedding and took off for the setup in Long Beach at 11:30am. By the time the ceremony was set up at 2pm, I was getting calls from my family in San Diego that my neighborhood was being evacuated, the fire had jumped the 91 freeway to the southwest and was going into Anaheim Hills. Homes and apartments were burning within 2 miles of our house and we were in the path of the winds.

Since everything was under control at the wedding setup, I left Darrell and Esther, my all star crew, to finish the reception set up while I tried to make it home to grab whatever I could. Well, I never made it because they closed the freeway off ramp just a few cars ahead of me, and I was stuck for about an hour off of Lakeview and the 91. I finally got off the freeway but all of the surface streets towards my house were closed. Since I couldn’t go home, I went back to the studio to pack up my computer, files and stuff. My friend met up with me there to help with whatever he could, and we ended up eating dinner in Yorba Linda and there were fire trucks and police going back and forth in convoys, it was crazy!

I was on the phone with Darrell checking in on the set up the whole time, and everything was coming together they had finished and were taking pictures. Big thanks to Amanda Auer from In The Now and her crew for being such a great team with us today to get the job done for our fabulous couple Kelly and Jasson. I got reports back that everyone thought the brides bouquet was “bangin’” so that was good… I can’t wait to see the pictures and will post them here when I can. Darrell took a ton today but my computer is packed in the car in case of evacuation (I’m on Darrell’s laptop) so I’ll have to upload later.

Once the wedding was all done, Darrell met up with me at the hospital to check in on my mom, who is doing OK but just waiting for test results tomorrow to determine whats wrong. We decided to try to get home, and finally got back in at 9pm. Even though I am exhausted and Darrell is passed out on the couch next to me, both of us in our Spiraled Stem uniforms that reek of smoke, I am glued to the TV and checking the internet for current fire info. Right now, we are sandwiched between two evacuation areas, though we aren’t currently under evacuation orders.

We are going to try to get some rest, please pray for all of the people who are evacuated and have lost their homes in the fires burning all around Southern California. There are two wedding industry friends that I know of that I’m pretty sure live in the evacuation area in Anaheim Hills, Jill from Jill Parkin Designs and Young from Wildflower Linens. I hope that they are doing OK too. I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures of either the fire or the wedding to share, its been quite the day and I just wanted to share the experience and again thank everyone for checking in. You can see coverage of the fires at www.ocregister.com I will try to do an update again tomorrow!

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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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