Ikebana Bat Mitzvah

Yes...today I delivered arrangements for my first ever Bat Mitzvah. While I was working on my wedding at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens I received and email from a mother, who after planning all of the necessary details for a party, realized she did have money in the budget for the flowers. After having a wonderful conversation on the phone, exchanging a few emails, and talking to my suppliers to make sure I could get the flowers in time, I was able to create some pretty fun arrangements. While I love, love doing weddings this was a great chance for me to work with some more linear structured designs and just do something a little different. In my design I tried to imitate the ancient Japanese art of floral design called Ikebana, which was appropriate since the party was held at Japonais, a Japanese restaurant in NYC.

Ok so I am no expert, have only recently been introduced to, and don't even know if what I created can really be called...Ikebana. From what I've read Ikebana is about balance in an arrangement, but doesn't focus on symmetry..it's all about the shape of the of the flowers and materials in an arrangement. And from what I've read there seems to be a bunch of rules...I'll need to take a class!....ok I'm back I just stopped blogging to do a search for Ikebana classes in NYC and found an organization called Ikebana International and found a list of Ikebana schools and teachers in the NY area. I guess I really could take a class!

Here are the pictures of my attempt. I used all tropical flowers; Bird of Paradise, Protea, Heliconia, and Ginger.