Nanina's in the Park

Orchids and more Orchids.  

I love working with them for weddings.

They make fabulous boutonnieres and hold up great in the summer heat.

This wedding took place on June 10th at Nanina's in the Park, Bloomfield NJ.  

It was a beautiful location and the bride was looking to save money on the flowers but wanted something that would stand up to the grandure of the location

Here's what we came up with.

The colors for the wedding were Green, Yellow, and White.

The Brides Bouquet was very labor intensive, as each cymbidium orchid needed to have a stem created for it.  They grow on a stalk, with about 8-12 flowers per stalk.  It took close to 5 stalks to create this bouquet and it was by far the heaviest one I have ever created.

I think that all the time and effort was worth it though.

(In the picture you can also see scratch from the fight I lost with a rose as I was putting them in water for the backyard wedding I posted a few days ago!)

The Bridesmaids also had cymbidium orchids in their bouquets, theirs were yellow, with white hydrangea.  

Here are all the bridesmaids bouquets together.  There were 8!

Because of their size the Centerpieces had to be made on location.

The room had cathedral ceilings and the bride wanted to make sure they filled out the space.  After going through a few ideas and trying to work them into the budget here is what we came up with.

These arrangements are made of oncidium orchids with green hydrangea in the fishbowl.  I would have loved to use hydrangea the same color as the brides bouquet, a bright vivid green, but it just wasn't in the budget.  A lighter shade of green was chosen instead because it was grown domestically, the brighter green would had to have been flown in from Holland at twice the cost!

Here is the arrangement on the patio where we were making them.

Here they are placed on their pedestals inside the location.

Great tip...many reception sites have stands like these, but they usually charge a fee to use them...sometimes up to $300 extra! Ask them when you are booking if you can use them, if that's your vision, and many times..to secure your business, they'll throw the use of them in for free.

I always order a little more than I'll need.  You have to take into account that some of the flowers just won't make it to the big day.   The extra that do make it always come with me on site.  I look to see what needs a little something.

This was a sad card table with just the cards...I added some of the extra hydrangea to brighten it up.  

And I love this idea, at the guest book the bride included old photos from weddings in her family. 

So tomorrow I am off to invest in a nice camera.  Right now I've been using my little canon elf.  And while the pics aren't bad I know how much better they would be if I had a professional camera.  So we'll see if you can tell the difference in the photo's from the next wedding on August 29th.