Bouquet Breakdown

This is one of my favorite bouquets I made last year! The pink colors and variety of textures really popped from the bride's dress.

D + J Wedding | Sofitel Hotel | Pacific Athletic Club Part II

Dominique and Jason had their reception at the Pacific Athletic Club in Redwood City. It's a beautiful room with floor to ceiling windows. The walls and carpet are neutral colored so you can really bring in your own style and colors without worrying about it clashing with the room!
Here are some pictures of the reception that my assistant Beth took for me.

Tall Centerpieces with mazanita branches, hydrangea, roses, dahlias and orchids.

Low centerpieces with green broccoli hydrangea, white hydrangea, white dahlias, vendela roses, green hypericum berries and white stock.

And here's a picture of their adorable candy buffet table!

My next wedding feature fall colors in oranges and reds!

Featured on SF Daily Candy

I am beyond thrilled that I was featured on Daily Candy's SF Fall Wedding Guide. I have received a lot of inquiries for my next workshop and just wanted to give a quick update. My next workshop is scheduled for late January or early February of 2010. However, I have received a lot of interest to have one in December. If I can get enough people signed up then I'm happy to host one sooner. So drop me an email line and let me know if you are interested!


Here's a link to DIY Floral Workshop II and Workshop III I hosted in the previous years. In the workshop you learn how to make your own personal flowers that include bouquets, boutonnieres and corsages. I teach you how to pick and prepare your flowers and give you a list of tools and supplies you need to get started. You get to take a resource packet home along with the flowers you put together. The cost of workshop is $75 per person. Hope you can make it to the next workshop!

D + J Wedding | Sofitel Hotel | Pacific Athletic Club

I loved the colors we used for Dominique and Jason's wedding. Chocolate brown, Tiffany blue and cream always makes for a great color palette. Dominique wanted a full, romantic and fluffy bouquet so we used a lot of garden roses and dahlias. Thanks Dominique for sharing the professional pictures with us!

Bride's Bouquet: Garden roses, majolica spray roses, dahlias,
vendela roses, and cymbidium orchids

Groom's Bout: White spray roses with green hypericum berries

Dominique wanted to attach a picture of her grandparents to her bouquet. So sweet!

Bridesmaid Bouquets: Blue hydrangea, dahlias, vendela roses, spray roses

Pictures of the reception decor coming soon!

Bouquet Breakdown

Hi! Sorry for the delay between posts - I took a little vacation down in Southern California to visit my family and to celebrate my son's 1st birthday! I can't believe that he's one. Anyway - I'm back now and getting ready for the next 6 weddings coming up in October and November. It's good to be busy!

I love this all green bouquet. One of my bride's found this on The Knot and sent it to me as inspiration for her green and white wedding last year.

C + C Wedding | Castlewood Country Club | Pleasanton

Catie and I met about 9 months before her wedding. She sent me pictures of centerpieces that had dahlias grouped together in mason jars and she wanted to achieve the same look. So we both collected bottles and jars for months so we would have enough for each table. Catie also wanted bright, fun colors so we went with different shades of dahlias and Gerber daisies. I love how it all turned out!

Bride's Bouquet: Garden roses, peonies and freesia

Bridesmaid Bouquets: Cherry brandy roses, dahlias, freesia and spray roses

Mum pomander for the flower girl.

Here is the piece I made for the Church altar.

Writing on Vellum

Have you ever tried writing on vellum before? It's a total pain. And I love vellum paper. This all started when I was sending out birth announcements last year and I really wanted to use vellum envelopes. But I had a problem finding the right pen to write on them without smearing. So I searched around and finally found something that works!

I contacted Kimberly from Tokyo Pen Shop and she was so nice! She helped me choose the right pen for the job. She said that this was the best pen to write on vellum and she was right! I love it. You can buy it here.


And if you are looking for some cute gift ideas you should take a look around the shop. I bought these cute little ladybug note cards to keep in my purse just in case. I think this would be a really cute item to include in bridesmaid gift bags.

I love this!

And now I'm trying to find an excuse to buy these adorable holiday paper clips. They have a bunch of different animal shapes to choose from. Check them out here.

Bouquet Breakdown

J + N Wedding | New Dehli Restaurant | Union Square

I never get tired of the pink and chocolate brown combination! Jaclyn and Nick got married at the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco and celebrated at the New Delhi Restaurant in downtown San Francisco.

Bride's Bouquet: Peonies, roses, dahlias, and phaleonposis orchids

Bridesmaid Bouquets: Dahlias, hydrangea and roses

Groom's Bout: Single vendela rose with tuberose accent

Groomsmen Bouts: Single green cymbidium with loop grass accents

Centerpieces: Dahlias and orchids in a low box filled with spagnum moss

Bridal Tour

The Dream Bridal Tour presented by Dream A Little Dream Events
Sunday September 20^th
10:30-3:30pm

Tickets for the third installment of the Dream Bridal Tour have been released, and will take place on Sunday September 20^th in San Francisco with wedding planners, Kathryn Kalabokes and Brittani Waldman of Dream A Little Dream Events. They have so many fun stops scheduled, we know it will be a blast! The day will start with a champagne brunch before heading on the shuttle to different stops throughout the city. You will be able to taste desserts and cakes, learn about photography, view invitations, try on makeup and accessories, check out the new trends in bridesmaid dresses and much, much more! Plus, you get to meet and hang out with other brides in a casual, no sales environment on a Sunday.

There are only a limited amount of brides that can take part in this unique and informative tour through San Francisco, so sign up to get your tickets today. Tickets are $50, and for a limited time, if you enter the code CITYDISH, you will get $10 off each ticket that you purchase. This event is open to any brides, bridesmaids, moms and friends. Ticket price will include brunch, refreshments throughout the day, transportation and a swag bag full of goodies from all our vendors!

Bouquet Breakdown

After I introduced my blog series Bouquet Breakdown, one of my readers Lia sent me some pictures she wanted me to breakdown. I was very excited! So here is one of the pictures she sent.

Hope this helps Lia. I'll post another one next week!

Amy + Elias Wedding

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon when Amy and Elias got married. They had their ceremony at the Portola Valley Presbyterian Church and the reception at the Quadrus Conference Center in Menlo Park. Amy wanted bright and bold colors with shades of purple and magenta. I really liked how the color combination turned out!


Amy wanted something bright with magenta and purple blooms for her bouquet. So I used roses, dahlias, calla lilies, freesia and stock.



The bridesmaid was wearing a bright colored dress so we went with a white bouquet for her. I used hydrangea, roses, dahlias, freesia and stock.

For the reception centerpieces we did traditional floral arrangements and floating flowers. The arrangements had stock, stattice, a variety of dahlias and roses. I also want to thank my assistant Beth for taking these awesome pictures for me!

I also received a very nice thank you note from Amy's mom after the wedding. What a sweet family!

Dear Karen,

I just met you for a minute as you delivered flowers to the church on Sunday. As I live in the Kansas City area, I wasn't able to be with Amy when she met with you. I just wanted to thank you for the beautiful, beautiful flowers. The bouquets were wonderful, and the flowers at the reception venue were absolutely stunning - but also simple and elegant - just exactly what we wanted. Thank you for helping us keep a reasonable budget and also sharing such beauty. We greatly appreciate your talent and efforts.

Thank you!

Nancy Hirschman