FlowerDIYvas is hosting a FREE Seminar on how to do your own wedding flowers at our Anaheim location on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 from 6:30pm-8:00pm. Visit our website at www.FlowerDIYvas.com to register and for directions.

Please help us out by Taking Our Survey and we will mail you a free copy of Serendipity Magazine!

At the FREE seminar, you will see demonstrations on some of the items you will learn and practice making at the FlowerDIYvas workshops.

Attendees to the FREE Seminar will receive a VERY SPECIAL introductory rate on their Spring 2009 FlowerDIYvas workshop registration.

This is a very limited time offer available to brides who come to the FREE seminar. This price is an excellent deal and won’t last forever – take advantage of our introductory rate and you will be on your way to saving HUNDREDS by doing your own wedding flowers.

email at info@FlowerDIYvas.com or call us at 714-632-6885 for more details or to register!

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2009 is already off to a crazy busy start, and I am dying to share with you what I have been feverishly working on for the last few weeks. Two major announcements: both are designed to help brides who are struggling with their budgets but still want beautiful, quality flowers for their weddings. In addition to our full service and reasonably priced custom wedding flowers where we create your vision together and you leave all of the work to the professionals, we are now offering our brides two additional options:

Announcement One: FlowerDIYvas!

I have partnered with Dawn Hansen from Lavender Hill to offer FlowerDIYvas, DIY wedding floral design workshops for brides who are considering doing their own flowers. I did my own flowers back in 2003, and even with the experience of 7 years in the floral business and having done several weddings, there were things that I did/didn’t do that made my life a lot more difficult than it had to be during those days surrounding our wedding. I’ll tell you the full story some other time. In the meantime, brides who are thinking about doing their own flowers to save money can learn from our years of experience – we will help you have a gorgeous, polished, and reduced stress wedding for less! Visit www.FlowerDIYvas.com for all of the details and to register!

If through the workshop experience a bride realizes that she will be in over her head and that DIY flowers are not for her, she can apply a portion of her workshop fees to full service wedding flowers. Or for brides who know they don’t want to do their own flowers but are still looking for a great low price for their flowers, The Spiraled Stem is now offering a lower priced collection. This leads me to… 

Announcement Two: the e collection!

Wedding flower collections that are easy on the environment and your budget.

I designed the e collection for the bride who is looking for uncomplicated design, a personalized touch, and a great value for her wedding flowers. The bride chooses her color scheme and preferred accent flower, and our designers do the rest – we select the freshest VeriFlora-certified sustainably grown flowers available and create a perfectly coordinated collection for the bride’s special day.

All collections feature VeriFlora-certified roses with the bride’s choice of accent flower and color scheme. Standard accent flowers are spray roses, tulips, freesia or rununculus (as seasonally available); premium accent flowers are mini callas, cymbidium orchids, or dahlias (as seasonally available). Prices are the same for standard vs. premium accent flowers, there are just less of the premium accent flowers in the arrangements.

All collections range between $1900 to $2300 and are based on four attendants for each the bride and groom and ten reception tables (100 guests). Choose from three options for the ceremony setup – a gazebo, an arch, or two pedestal pieces – and three price points for the centerpiece – $30, $40, or $50. Visit the e collection page on our website for all of the details!

With both FlowerDIYvas and the e collection, brides with all ranges in budgets will be able to have The Spiraled Stem touch on their wedding flowers. Please help us spread the news by posting about FlowerDIYvas and the e collection on your blog or website, and Contact us today for a consultation!

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Happy New Year! I hope that your 2009 is off to a fabulous start. There are some exciting things going on here at The Spiraled Stem Floral Design, and I will be sharing them with everyone in the next few days. My new years resolution is to blog more consistently, so lets see how far I can go before falling off the wagon. And I need my readers to keep me accountable, bug me for new blog posts!

First on the list are new publications… The Spiraled Stem is featured in the premiere issue of Serendipity Magazine, Inspirations for the Asian Bride, and the gorgeous hard-bound, full color book Green Wedding, Planning Your Eco-Friendly Celebration. Lets start with the details on Green Wedding.

Green Wedding, Planning Your Eco-Friendly Celebration, is written my Mireya Navarro, New York Times Style Correspondent. The book is available at all major booksellers (I got mine at Borders for $35) in the wedding section, or you can go to Mia’s website www.mireyanavarro.com to order online and view excerpts. It is a beautiful and classy book on how to have a green wedding without sacrificing style, and has tips on everything from food, flowers, decor, attire, invitations, registry, honeymoons, and living a green lifestyle after the wedding.

I was honored to have been interviewed by Mia for the book last January, a whole year ago, and to have contributed photos to the book as well. They printed 15 images of my flowers! Its also way cool that my name is indexed - that’s right - you’ll find me under S on page 206, just below Sasawashi (a sustainable fabric) and just above Arnold Schwarzenegger, our environmental crusader governor who gets scolded for commuting to Sacramento from LA by private plane. Spiraled Stem Floral Design is indexed too! Mia also included me in the acknowledgments as one of the “several pioneers in the green market” who offered invaluable guidance and “are as much educators as they are business people”. Its a privlege to be in that company!

I was also able to point Mia towards one of my green wedding brides from 2008, Katie Malouf. Her wedding has been featured on the blog here and also in our photo gallery here. Katie is featured in Chapter 6: The Decor, Natives or Jet-Setters? and Mia shares how Katie wanted to use grass for her centerpieces before she knew there were eco-friendly, VeriFlora-certified flowers available through me. Be sure to turn right to Page 94 for the story!

I am working on scheduling a book signing with the author to take place here at the studio in the next couple of months, so stay tuned for that! You can pick up a copy and have her sign it here for you. Books would also be on sale at the signing, but don’t wait until then.

As a bonus, I am offering one free book to the first person to comment on this blog post with the names of the two varieties of VeriFlora Certified roses that were featured in Katie’s wedding.

The next new publication The Spiraled Stem is featured in is the premiere issue of Serendipity Magazine: Inspiration for Asian Brides. In 2008 I had the opportunity to work a lot with Caroline Chang from Serenity Events. She was working on launching a new magazine that catered to an underserved market, the Asian bride. This resulted in a beautiful new glossy magazine that will publish twice a year. Several of our favorite bouquets are featured in the Beautiful Florals article on page 38.

They are not currently available in bookstores, so please email me at christine@thespiraledstem.com with your name and current mailing address, and I will get a copy in the mail to you as a gift from me!

We are honored to have been featured in these fabulous publications, what a great start to 2009!

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Angel and Jonathan were married this summer at quite the unique venue – the Houdini Estate in the Hollywood Hills. The wedding was coordinated by Echo Jenqs of Pink by Echo, and she was a pleasure to work with! The colors were pink, blue, and yellow. The bride and groom wanted clean lines and though we were using tulips, hydrangea, and mini callas, we were avoiding a garden-y (is that a word?) look.

For the centerpieces, we opted for a trio of graduated-height tall glass vases with alternating pink and yellow color schemes per table. Each table featured a stem of cymbidium orchids, calla lilies, and tulips. The brides bouquet was full of VeriFlora Certified pink tulips and mini callas, and each of the bridesmaids had a different coordinating variety in blues and yellows.

This venue is nestled on a hill in Laurel Canyon and while its beautiful and unique, there are definitely logistical challenges to working there. Here is some insight into our behind-the-scenes setup situation so that if you do an event there, you can be prepared too! One driveway leads in and out, so it was constantly blocked by parked cars and there were a few times we had to hike stuff up the hill because we couldn’t drive all of the way up. There are several little nooks and plateaus that are connected by narrow and winding staircases, so no carts will work here, everything is hand carried! Since we were filling up tall vases with water on-site, the only water source other than the shower in the bathroom was a hose spigot (sans hose), so we filled up buckets and transferred the water to the vases. All of these things add time to the setup, so we had four of us on site to get the job done in the time we had. We even had a few minutes extra at the end of our setup to explore the grounds a bit, definitely a cool place!

All photos are courtesy of the fabulous Evoke Photography, thanks Emi and Michael!

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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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Kelly and Jasson were married on November 15, 2008, the day the fires raged all over Southern California!  A cloud of smoke and ash in Long Beach didn’t detract from a beautiful day for them as they began their lives together. The wedding was coordinated by the fabulous Amanda Auer from In The Now Weddings and Events. Check out her blog for more photos! The reception was at Club V20 in Long Beach. The bride and groom were searching for a suitable reception spot that was a club/restaurant and changed their venue and date a couple of times as things weren’t working out very well early in the planning. I had referred them to On Broadway in San Diego as an example, and it turns out that the same people that own On Broadway also own Club V20. I’m glad it worked out!

Here are a collection of images from the reception, that Darrell and Esther teamed up on and rocked the setup while I tried to get home ahead of the fires. This is exactly why its so important to have such a great team, and to book a florist who has such a team working for them! They totally had it under control, great job guys!

Kelly also sent me a wonderful note after the wedding, she said:

Christine,

I can’t thank you enough for the BEAUTIFUL job you did at our wedding. Our centerpieces were jaw- dropping! They were the all the rage that nite, everyone was talking about how amazing the room looked. I never thought my wedding could’ve looked so magical. From the cake to the place cards, it was perfection! Thank you so much for all your hard work and talent. You truly are an artist!

Thank you,

Kelly & Jasson Gilmore

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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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I was honored that Architectural Digest Magazine invited me to return for an encore floral performance in the Architectural Digest Greenroom at the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards. I first spoke with AD100 designer Mark Boone in August, when he described the diamond aesthetic for the room in honor of the diamond anniversary of the Emmys. The palette was very neutral with silver, platinum, and clear glass that would accent the focal point of the room, a diamond chandelier! The flowers would be sitting on a “shattered” glass table directly below the chandelier, as well as accenting the cocktail tables.

My original thought was to use ‘Amnesia’ roses, which are a beautiful silvery gray, mixed with dusty miller and lambs ear. About a week out I found out that I wasn’t going to get the roses I wanted from a VeriFlora certified farm. I desperately started calling and emailing the VeriFlora certified rose farms in Equador to confirm that I could get three sets of 100 ‘Amnesia’ roses over a 10 day period for the three installations I have to do to accommodate the filming (last Friday), press day (Wednesday), and the actual Emmys (Sunday).

I wasn’t able to get them for Friday’s installation and used ‘Sterling’ roses instead, which are much too lavender and didn’t work well enough with the room. Later that day I scoured the flower market looking for at least one bunch of ‘Amnesia’ to take back to the Greenroom to test the color, but its not a common rose and was nowhere to be found. I must have looked a little crazy as I was walking the streets of downtown LA asking the vendors “Do you have Amnesia?”

In my enthusiasm in calling the farms to get the ‘Amnesia’ roses I needed, I ended up with two sets of the order from two different farms! Then we made a last minute decision to go another direction altogether and use ivory roses. I am so glad we did, as you can see from the slide show below. Finally seeing the diamond chandelier was simply breathtaking, how exciting to have the flowers I designed underneath something so spectacular! I have also included the press release that has more information about the AD Greenroom, and of course watch the Emmys on Sunday. I really hope Mary Louise-Parker wins Best Actress for Weeds, I am certainly addicted!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Christine Saunders

September 19, 2008

714-632-6885

christine@thespiraledstem.com

ROSES AND DIAMONDS: QUINTESSENTIAL HOLLYWOOD GLAMOUR IN THE ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST GREENROOM AT THE 60^th PRIMETIME EMMY® AWARDS

Sustainably Grown Flowers and Conflict-Free Diamonds to Shine Brightly on Emmy® Night

Anaheim, CA – September 19, 2008 – In an encore appearance, The Spiraled Stem Floral Design has been selected to create the floral arrangements for the Architectural Digest Greenroom at the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards, which airs Sunday, September 21, 2008 from 8:00 to 11:00 pm (ET/PT) on ABC, live from the Nokia Theater L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles.

Architectural Digest AD100 designer Mark Boone was inspired by the diamond anniversary of the 60^th Primetime Emmy Awards to combine the romantic and sculptural qualities of the rare mineral with the glamour of high quality sustainably grown roses. The focal point of the room is a spectacular Hearts On Fire® Diamond Chandelier, made with over 3,300 perfectly cut diamonds from conflict free sources totaling 1,000 carats.

Resting just below, on a “shattered” glass table, is a sparkling white floral centerpiece, designed by Christine Saunders, featuring more than two dozen VeriFlora Certified Sustainably Grown ‘Amelia’ roses, lisianthus, and tulips in a clear square glass vase. Hydrangea, freesia, and snowberries complete the monochromatic color scheme while seeded eucalyptus, scabiosa pods, lambs ear, and dusty miller add just a touch of silvery green to the palette. Accent floral pieces abound on top of Mimi London’s cocktail tables fashioned from reclaimed walnut wood.

Christine Saunders, owner of The Spiraled Stem Floral Design, is a leading expert in green floral design and uses environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional products, materials, and practices available in the $20 billion floral industry. A cornerstone of her green practices, she sources VeriFlora Certified flowers – grown, harvested, and handled using practices that improve farm working conditions, protect eco-habitats, conserve water and energy, and yield fresher flowers – which help to protect the environment for generations to come.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Christine Saunders to develop the floral concept for the Greenroom,” says designer Mark Boone. “Christine’s floral designs add elegance and romance to the space. Diamonds and roses are an irresistible combination!”

The 60th Primetime Emmy Awards, produced by AEG Ehrlich Ventures LLC, airs live on ABC on Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 8:00 pm (ET/PT).

About The Spiraled Stem Floral Design

The Spiraled Stem Floral Design specializes in environmentally sustainable floral design and offers Green Flowers. Available in Every Color™. Owner Christine Saunders’ dual passions for floral design and sustainability were recently merged when she decided that The Spiraled Stem would “go green”. She uses organic and eco-label flowers, eco-friendly containers, alternatives to traditional floral design tools and materials, and more efficient office and studio practices. Christine has quickly become a leading expert in green floral design, and has been featured in Florist’s Review, Plenty, OC Metro Business and Orange County Home magazines.

Press Contacts

The Spiraled Stem Floral Design

Christine Saunders

714-632-6885 christine@thespiraledstem.com

60th Primetime Emmy® Awards/Academy of Television Arts & Sciences

Robin Mesger, The Lippin Group

323-965-1990

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