A & C Wedding Part I

I have been waiting months to blog about this wedding. It all started with one of my floral workshops I hosted last year (April 2008). Annamarie (the bride) signed up for my class and did a great job. She definitely had an eye for style and I remember liking the bouquet she created. I asked her to help out with some of my weddings last year and we soon became good friends. She recently sent me some pictures of her fall wedding where she (along with her fiance, friends and family) created all of the flowers and decor. She did a phenomenal job. Seriously amazing. I have some great pictures to share with you so get ready!

Let's start out with the lovely couple Annamarie and Chris!

Annamarie did not only take on her own flowers but she also had a lot of DIY projects that added a lot of personality to their wedding. Here are some ceremony details.

And of course the flowers!




Annamarie mentioned that she forgot to bring an extra set of clippers with her so she could trim the bouquet handles so that's why they are so long. I think they still look beautiful!
More pictures of the reception and details to come! Trust me, you don't want to miss it.

Flower Torture: Peonies

Many of my brides come to me with a stack full of magazine photos with bouquets and centerpieces they love. I would say that at least 75% of those photos showcase, in one way or another, the peony. Peonies (pronounced pee-o-nees) are beautiful, fluffy flowers that truly encompass what a "wedding" flower should be.

But alas, these elusive flowers are difficult to get. They are only truly in season 4-6 weeks in the year. And when those 4-6 weeks will be? No one knows except for mother nature. Peonies are considered to be in season late spring or early summer which technically is mid-April to late May or early June. That's really not a long time. You can get them a few weeks sooner or later, but you would be paying a pretty penny for them.

A lot of time I feel like peonies are another form of torture.

I am often the bearer of bad news. I have to tell these hopeful brides that the chances of getting peonies will be unlikely (though not impossible). The good news, though, is that I can offer up some other deliciously fluffy flowers that nature has graced us with.

Ranuncula (Spring flower available from March to April or May). Comes in a variety of colors including white, pink, hot pink, red, burgundy, orange, and yellow.

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Garden Tea Rose (Mostly in season during the summer months including June, July and August). These come in a lot of colors also including white, pink, red, burgundy, peach, yellow and orange.

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Dahlia (Summer Flowers available late May to October). These come in a variety of colors, and the later in the season, the more colors there are. Most popular ones are orange, red, pink, yellow, white and burgundy (dark red).

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Hydrangea (available in the spring and fall). Colors include pink, green, blue, lavender and white.

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Lisianthus (in season during the spring and summer months). Colors include white, pink, and lavender).

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So if the in-season of peonies doesn't happen to fall under the 6 weeks you happened to be getting married, hopefully one of these flowers can take its place!

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.