So VERY Excited

I have been waiting for this to arrive for weeks now. I found about these Floral Fan Decks by John Henry a couple of months ago and I finally bit the bullet and bought them. They are so cool. They are decks of cards arranged by flower color and they show a picture of the flower on the front and the seasonality (and other useful information) on the back. For brides (or just the general public) that don't know much about flowers this is the perfect thing to have on hand. If the bride is planning a purple/lavender wedding I can hand her the Purple Floral Deck and have her look through and point out all of her favorite flowers in the deck. I cannot wait to use these for my next client meeting!!

There are 8 decks in all. The colors are divided into white, green, yellow, orange/peach, blue/lavender, purple, red, pink/magenta.

Here is what it looks like in front.

On the back it has the picture along with details about the flower. It talks about availability, colors, lasting quality and characteristics.

I thought these were cute: Kangaroo Paws found in the yellow deck.

Green Deck

Magenta/Red Deck

Purple Deck

Red Deck

This is going to be what I look through before I go to bed for a long time. My husband refers to it as my "flower porn".

Bella Intima

Patty Lee of 8events is hosting a bridal charity event called Bella Intima. This is a charity event with proceeds being donated to the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. I'm hoping to drop by and check it out myself (and I might bring my little one too!). Hope to see you there!

Flower Workshop III

I had my 3rd Huckleberry Flower Workshop a couple of weekends ago and it was so much fun! I had a great group of people that came ready to make beautiful bouquets, corsages and bouts. I have to say that this group is quite talented and I was very impressed with the fellas. They made some really cool bouquets. I forgot my camera (booo!) but my assistants Caroline and Annamarie came prepared for me (yeah!). So here are some photos I have from Annamarie.

Flowers we used: variety of roses, spray roses, orchids, calla lilies, hydrangea

Here are some bouquets we made:

One of the guys made this one. Isn't it cute?!

My lovely and very talented students!

And I received a very nice thank you from one of my students:

Hi Karen!

Thank you so, so much for the workshop today. Jesse and I can't believe we actually made these amazing bouquets, boutonnieres, and corsages. You've empowered us so much! I was skeptical that we could pull off DIY flowers for our wedding, and now I have total faith that it can all work out. I learned so much and feel so confident now that I can create the flowers we really want for our wedding. We took pics of our finished products and sent them to our family members. They thought we were pulling their legs when we told them we had made them ourselves. They kept saying, "You're kidding! You couldn't have made those! Those look professional!"

Thanks so much again!

Dawn

Dawn and Jesse were also kind enough to send me some great photos they took of the flowers they made from the workshop! As you can see - these do not look like DIY flowers at all :) Great job you guys and I can't wait to see what you create for your wedding!

Here I am with Dawn and Jesse!

Bride's Choice Award

WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced that Huckleberry Karen Designs has won the 2009 Bride’s Choice Awards™!

In its inaugural year, the Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and honors vendors from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellent quality of service, responsiveness, professionalism, value of cost and flexibility. This year’s recipients represent the top three percent of WeddingWire’s vendor community, which includes over 100,000 wedding vendors from across the US. That means Huckleberry Karen Designs is one of the very best with flowers and decor.

Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the company, the Bride’s Choice Awards are determined exclusively by recent newlyweds through surveys and reviews.

Huckleberry Karen Designs would like to thank our past clients for speaking on our behalf and helping us win the 2009 Bride’s Choice Award!

Table Scape Five - Sophia

Table Sophia was all about the bling. I have noticed one of the hot color trends for this year is the color raspberry. Lisa really wanted to use the black and white linen and I thought raspberry would be a great accent color so that's how Table Sophia was born. I created a tall centerpiece to add some glamour and decorated the chairs with some crystals.

The centerpiece had at least 75 roses and 25 dahlias in there. That's a lot of flowers!

Here are some more photos by James from James + Lisa Photography.

Cool Aisle Decor

I had a bride ask me about different aisle decor and it got me thinking....there's gotta be more than just rose petals right?! The answer is yes. Check these ideas out.

Love the colored aisle runner.
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The rose petal swirls are very cool. Not good for a windy ceremony location though.
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Monogram Petal Aisle
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If your wedding is indoors - a Gobo with your initials?
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All of these pictures got my creative juices flowing and I'm thinking why not make patterns with the rose petals like the swirly ones? You can make polka dots, stripes, diamonds....so many shapes to think of and if you add in different rose petal colors the possibilities are endless. So I'm wondering if there are any brides daring enough to allow me to try this idea out :)

Table Scape Four - Lisa

This table scape was the brain child of Lisa from Bellissima Vita Weddings - thus the reason why we named it Lisa. This was her favorite table concept and we had fun being creative with the place setting, napkin treatments and flowers. This was my chance to do something different. The color combinations we used were orange, sky blue and chocolate brown. Get ready for a lot of pictures!

These photos were taken by James from James + Lisa Photography

Stationery designed by Cards de Luxe

I LOVED these arrangements. Simple yet stunning.
All it took was a leaf and orchid.

Carnation Love

These poor abused flowers. I feel for them. They are always overlooked and often misunderstood. When I meet with clients I always ask them what their likes and dislikes are in terms of flowers. Many times the carnation gets listed under the "dislikes" category.

I can see how you might be tempted to dismiss the humble carnation as little more than a cheap and tacky filler for all those pre-made arrangements you know well enough to avoid. Ugh. "How awful," you think. "I don’t do carnations. Ever." After all, it is unlikely that you envision your centerpieces to look like this for your wedding:

I'm here to convince you to give carnations another chance. If you group these beauties together in a tight cluster you get something stunning. The ruffled edges give a wonderful texture that appears to be lush and rich.

They make beautiful bouquets.

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They are great in pomanders. You can hang these up for the ceremony and then reuse them for the reception.

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If you like the lush look of flowers and want to avoid greens, carnations are a great flower to use to add texture and fullness without breaking the bank. Here you see a centerpiece with dahlias and carnations mixed together. You can barely tell the difference between the two flowers.

And another huge plus about carnations? They are ALWAYS in season and come in every color you can imagine--and everything in between.

Table Scape Three - Olivia

This table scape was created by Lisa from Bellissima Vita Weddings. She's coordinated many weddings and she said that one of the most popular item at weddings are the Candy Table Buffets. The problem is that it can get pretty hectic at the table and re-filling candy while maintaining crowd control can get pretty chaotic. So we thought we would showcase a table where the candy is the centerpiece and the guests only need to elbow 8-10 other people to get their favorite treat versus 140 people. A great way to kill 2 birds with one stone!

Since the candy was mainly the centerpiece I made some smaller accent arrangements with gerber daises and carnations.

Photo by James + Lisa Photography

Stay tuned...I have two more table scapes coming up and both of them were my personal favorites!

Table scape Two - Hannah

The Hannah table scape was inspired by an outdoor wine country wedding. We wanted to do something low key (like a barbque) but with an upscale touch. So we came up with table Hannah. We wanted to use a lot of color for the flowers so we chose neutral linens, flatware and chargers so that the colors would really pop. Who says red, orange, yellow and purple don't go together?! Show them this and prove them wrong :)

I used 2 different types of glassware. One were glass milk bottles that Lisa from BV Weddings had. The others were Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider glass bottles where I took off the labels. The flowers I used were different colored anemones, tulips, billy buttons, fern pods (monkey tails), roses, freesia, ranunculus and some eucalyptus greens.

Photo by James from Lisa + James Photography

Table Scape One - Claire

Table Claire featured the colors yellow and green. We wanted to do something summery with lemons and limes. So I got a cylinder vase and filled it with lemons and limes, turned it upside down and used it as a stand. I wanted it to look like a cake!

Photo by Lisa + James Photography

A Good Chuckle

This really has nothing to do with flowers but I found it so amusing that I had to share. A girlfriend of mine sent this to me and it's pretty funny.

Happy Monday!

Peony Love

I went to the flower mart last week to buy flowers for the Lovely Details Bridal Event. The last time I was there was October of last year! Time sure does go by fast when you have a little bambino. Anyway, I saw that one of my favorite vendors had some peonies (which is a miracle this time of the year) and I made a point to NOT look at them. But of course I could not resist. I looked. They called out my name, "Karen, Karen, buy me!" So I basically paid an arm and a leg for these. I should feel guilty about it but I don't. They are gorgeous. I'm still enjoying them in my house! To make myself feel better I am showing you a lot of pictures of them.

Here they are at the Lovely Details Event.

Here they are a couple of days better. As you can see the color faded a little bit. But they are still beautiful!