Wilshire Grand Hotel, West Orange Part II

As promised here are some professional pictures of the floral arrangements I created for a beautiful Indian Wedding back in October....the colors are soo vibrant and came through much better than they did in my pictures!    The photographer was Leva Sireikyte, of Leva Sireikyte Photography.  She was super nice and I am very thankful to her for sharing these photographs with me.  She works out of NYC but is able and willing to travel to New Jersey for events.  

These to links will take you to the post from Leva's blog about the wedding  Part I and Part II


Happy New Year and Happy Planning!  

A Winter Wedding, Englewood NJ

You couldn't get a better day for a winter themed wedding. Seriously, it had snowed just enough the day before to stick to the tree branches, but not the roads. This = amazing wedding pictures.

I'm always a little jealous when I see beautiful backdrops, like this, for wedding photos...on my wedding day the remains of a tropical storm blew through.

The reception was held at the Women's Club of Englewood. A sweet place with enough room for a weddings of about 100 guests.

I took this picture from the stage where they can fit 3 more tables.

The brides colors were purple, white, and gold. So I used gold ribbon to wrap the boutonnieres and bouquets. There were three styles of boutonnieres. The groom: An anemone (white with dark purple center), a white rose, and a fiddlehead fern...this mirrored the brides bouquet.

The groomsmen: a white rose and fiddlehead fern....to mirror the bridesmaids. Two young ring bearers: a single purple anemone.

The brides bouquet: White Roses, tulips, ranunculus, anemone, and fiddlehead fern.

The bridesmaids: White roses and fiddlehead fern.

The centerpieces were 'snowballs', white pomanders of carnations a top 3 different mercury glass stands/vases. Some I had picked up for the bride on my shopping travels months before the wedding, the vases with the crystal on the outside and the snow flake design I picked up the day after Christmas at Peir 1. They have the best blow out sale, and while the big snow storm began to roll in, I was hoarding all the holiday vases I could get my hands on

I had ordered the floral foam spheres I needed to make these with what I thought was plenty of time before the wedding. I ordered some other stuff at the same time...the other stuff got to me 4 days before the wedding, but I was waiting for the spheres. I kept thinking "They will be here tomorrow...the other things I ordered came..so it must be on it's way". I tried calling customer service, but they have the wackiest hours...so I waited some more. The day before the wedding I realized they weren't going to come. I was planning on making all the centerpieces the night before...so that plan was scrapped. Day of I was up at 4:30 am to travel to a floral supply warehouse to buy some more, then home to make the boutonnieres and bouquets...which my assistant (aka husband) delivered for me so I could finish the centerpieces...then off to deliver and set up those. All in all I was finally finished and home at 5pm. What a day!

And BTW....still waiting for those spheres to show up!

The Stone House, Warren NJ

First I know I've been slow in posting. I can't even believe how swamped I've been over the past month and I even had a point where I was embarrassingly behind on emailing brides and even had to put out an automatic response apologizing! But hopefully the wait was worth it because it was so much fun creating everything for this wedding which was on November 6th.

Sometimes when I am in the thick of a wedding I don't realize how beautiful something is that I have created. My husband always gives me a raised eyebrow look when I emerge from the basement with a bouquet and ask him what he thinks. The flowers I was working with here were not the typical white, pink fluffy flowers. It was a ton of fun working with them and I was really pleased with how things turned out, especially now looking back on the pictures.

The reception was held at an amazing Frank Lloyd Wright inspired venue called The Stone House, owned by the same people who own the Liberty House in Jersey City. It's about 1/2 hour from my home but I feel like I'm transported to the mountains in California every time I go there. Seriously, you have to stop by here for dinner, the food is innovative, original, and amazing!

The Bridal Bouquet was white roses, patience garden roses, scabiosa pods (these are so cool), ligustrum berries, and seeded eucalyptus.

The Bridesmaids carried a bouquet of white roses and seeded eucalyptus.

The Boutonnieres are probably my favorite of all the boutonnieres I've made so far. Fiddlehead fern, with scabiosa pods, seeded eucalyptus, and these really funky ball things with furry 'leaves' if you can even call them that.

The centerpieces were completely different and were almost edible! With purple artichoke, succulents, pink sedum, green kale, green hydrangea, scabiosa pods, seeded eucalyptus, and dusty miller I was worried they looked like salads! In the end though I really loved how they turned out.

Hopefully I'll be able to post my wedding from November 13th tonight too! Happy Flower Hunting!