Random pieces

These are just a couple random pieces I have done lately. The one on the left was for a charity function and the one one the right was from set of flowers for a Christmas dinner. I have 2 weddings this coming weekend so I will get those posted as soon as I can.

Rosarito Resort

So I know that every time I do a wedding I say that it is my favorite but this one really was. First off, I absolutely fell in love with the color scheme (brown and green) and the organic feel of the entire event. The wedding was held at Las Rocas Resort and Spa in Rosarito, Mexico. It was a beautiful event with a sunset ceremony on the cliffs and a reception in a room lined in windows to watch the sunset disappear. The bride liked the branch centerpieces from Angie's wedding at the EL Cortez wedding I did back in May. I changed them a little by placing the manzanita branches in a low box.

Hotel Del Wedding

Post of the day #2...this wedding was on September 19th and was held at The Hotel Del Coronado. The ceremony was on the beach and the reception was in the Ballroom. The look of the wedding was elegant shabby chic. Lots of crystal, light pink and cream colors were used with tons of candles to create a bedroom feel. I will have the complete portfolio of pictures on the website soon.

I dream in Purple

It has been a while since I have had time to Blog my latest weddings, and I have 3 NEW ones :), but I am back and here they are. This 1st "latest weddings" post is from a wedding I did on Sept. 6th. The ceremony was at The North Chapel at Liberty Station on Point Loma and the reception was in The Baja Room at Marina Village. The colors were Purple and Silver and the bride really wanted to use purple hydrangea. All the purple flowers together really popped off the purple bridesmaid dresses and of course my favorite as usual was the bridal bouquet which was accented by a vintage iridescent crystal brooch. However, the best accessory for a beautiful bouquet is a beautiful bride and this bride, Laura, is exceptionally beautiful.

The flowers I used for this wedding was, purple hydrangea, purple lisianthus, roses, purple freesia, dahlias and mini purple orchids.

The pictures are courtesy of Mandy Curo Photography, she is very talented and a great wedding photographer.

Shabby Chic Excitement

Just wanted to share this picture of the centerpiece that I am going to make for a wedding on the 19th of September. I can't wait till next week when everything is done and put together. The wedding will be at the Hotel Del and the decor will be Shabby Chic. The mother of the birde chose this centerpiece, a chandelier covered in flowers, a crystal candelabra with flowers and a low crystal bowl with a full bloom of flowers. Basically 4 different centerpieces but I am really excited and can't wait to see the finished product. I will post pictures sometime after the 20th.

I also need to post the pictures from the wedding I did on the 6th but I haven't gotten them from the photographer yet so as soon as I do I will post those as well.

Romantic Evening

Well these are photos from my most recent event. This was the 1st time I got to use my new candelabras and they were a lot of fun and I think they turned out PERFECT :). The bride wanted all white and cream flowers with just a tiny touch of pink. The bridesmaids wore pink dresses so she wanted to down play the pink. For both the candelabras and the pew flowers I used white hydrangea, vendella roses, blush roses, vendella rosita roses, white freesia, white lisianthus and white cymbidium orchids with a pink throat.

The other task I had for this wedding was to hand make the programs for the church, the place cards for the reception, the numbers for the tables and the menu cards for dinner. Here are some pictures of those as well. It was a lot of work but I was really proud of how everything turned out.

Martini Madness

This is just a 1 photo blog with a fun martini glass arrangment that I made for a bridal shower. I absolutely loved it and think it came out adorable if I do say so myself :). The theme of the bridal shower was a martini cocktail party and the mother of the bride made everyone custom painted martini glasses as the party favor and to drink out of that night of course. I even hear they had a very cute and entertaining bartender named Jack! Hope everyone likes this one :) This arrangement consisted of...gasp...carnations as the base, I know we all hate carnations but they provided a good base, roses on the top, orchids as accent and purple tulips to wrap around the side.

2 months later :)

Ok, so it is only 2 months later but I finally got the professional photos back from the wedding I did in May. Andy King of King Photography Studio was the photographer from this wedding and he took some amazing shots of my flowers...oh and of the wedding, the bride and her bridal party too :). The bouquets were a mix of hydrangea, cymbidium orchids, mini calla lilies, roses and wax flower. Here are a few shots, :)

El Cortez

This is my most recent wedding...it was held at the El Cortez on May 10th and was an absolute pleasure to put together. The main flowers of the entire wedding were cymbidium orchids and were used in every aspect of the wedding. Half of the centerpieces for the reception were dark Manzanita branches in tall vases which were filled with coffee beans and topped with little green button chrysanthemums. On the branches we place mini white and pink cymbidium orchids and hung votive candles for a glowing effect. The other half of the centerpieces were a trio of vases that incorporated food since the groom is a chef. The first vase was a tall cylinder with a white cymbidium orchid stem floating in water. The next vase was a medium cylinder with a shite candle surrounded by split peas. The last of the vase trio was a short square vase which was filled with 2 green apples and 2 limes filled with water and topped with a white floating candle.

My favorite part of the wedding was the bouquets but unfortunately we forgot to take pictures of them before we dropped them off to the bride and her bridesmaids. The brides bouquet was a mixture of white hydrangea, green cymbidium orchids, white cymbidium orchids and white roses. I wrapped it in white satin ribbon and added a silver and CZ broach to match the brides dress which was white with silver embroidery on the bodice. The bridesmaids wore dark brown dresses so Angie, the bride, wanted to lighten their bouquets up so that they would pop in the pictures. Their bouquets consisted of white hydrangea, white cymbidium orchids, tiny little pink-ish purple wax flowers and pink-ish purple mini calla lilies. They were wrapped in champagne ribbon and were very pretty. Hopefully I will get the pictures from the photographer soon so that I can post the pictures for everyone to see.Everything turned out beautiful and I hope that you all enjoy the pictures. I hope to have more up soon. :)

Stone House in Temecula

So you might recognize the design of the centerpieces from a previous post. This is the wedding for the 2 landscape architechts that I did up at the Stone House at the Temecula Creek Inn. I ended up using purple and white spider mums, orange/red cockscomb, orange, white and yellow rananculas, circus roses and purple chrysanthemums. I carried the flowers over to the arbor arrangement and added some large calla lilies and white roses. The bride and groom were very happy and loved the mix of colors.

Lily Lesson

Well I know that I haven't posted in a while but I have 3 new posts to put up. Tonight I will probably only get this one up and then look for the lother 2 in the coming days. This wedding was one that I did back in February and recently got the professional photos from the bride.

This was a simple wedding with orange asiatic lilies as the main flower and white flowers to accent with very minimal green or other colors as requested by the bride. The wedding was at Harrah's RIncon Casino in Valley Center and it was one that taught me a great lesson on asiatic lilies. The lesson learned was that asiatic lilies need to be ordered way way way in advance to ensure that they will be open. I ordered and picked up the lilies 3 days prior to the wedding but they did not open until 2 or 3 days AFTER the wedding...OK so here is the story, I ordered the lilies to be picked up on the Monday before the wedding which was on Friday. When I went to pick them up they had not been delievered. It had been very rainy and the trucks were behind schedule. So I came back the next day and out they bring 60 or so stems of orange asiatic lilies, only they weren't orange...they were closed tight and they were completely green!!! By wednesday when I realized that there was no way that they were going to open I had to have a new batch hand picked and brought overnight from Arizona where I picked them up Friday morning and rushed home to make the flowers.

It was a little stressful but it all turned out fine and I loved the contrast between the brown suits that the guys wore and the orange flowers. The reception centerpieces were very sleek and simple, just 5 large calla lilies in tall rectangular vases; they were very simple but very elegant.

Photo shoot

Ok, so I had my flower photoshoot yesterday and I think that all the pictures turned out really well. I made 6 bouquets and 2 boutineers and Gary Holley of Gene Pool Hall graphic design, the photographer, did an excellent job as did Jenna my model and friend. I have included a couple photos from the shoot but hopefully I will have my website up and running soon so that everyone can see all of them.



The first one that I am including is a little hand tied bouquet with green cymbidium orcids, green button chrysanthemums and dried lotus pods wrapped with dark brown satin ribbon. I made a matching boutineer and I love the contrast between the brown and green.



The next one actually turned out to be one of my favorites. It is a combination of sunflowers, yellow roses, yellow asiatic lilies and green bells of Ireland. I then wrapped it in yellow ribbon and rafia on the stems. It is a really good bouquet for a summer or fall wedding...I can see it used in an outdoor wedding where the ceremony is in a big open field.



The last picture I have included on this blog is a white bridal bouquet (note the beautiful bride Jenna, my willing model for the day). It is a mixture of white mums, white roses, and white stock. The flowers are on a silver bouquet holder which gives the arrangement a really nice shape.

Centerpiece Masterpiece

So a month has pasted since my last blog and a lot has happened for Exquisite Blooms...I have purchased the website domain name, gotten 2 more wedding jobs, I am getting my designs photographed so I can get the website up and running and made this new centerpiece sample.

This sample is for a wedding that I am doing this month on the 25th in Temecula. The bride and groom are both Landscape Architects so they are very picky with design and could not compromise on a design. After going back and forth and veto-ing each others ideas, they finally asked me to help out and I came up with this. The aspects that they wanted to incorporate were, sets of 3 (I didn't have the candles at the time that I made this sample so I made mock candles from manila folders :), roses, leaves and they wanted the piece to have a contemporary feel. I ended up using all of their required elements and added some large rananculas, dark dahlias and queen annes lace.

I really think that it turned out very nice and I accomplished everything that they asked for.

Looking Forward

This is my first blog so bear with me...I have created this blog to share my work with everyone. I have finally decided that I am going to concentrate full time on floral design with an emphasis on weddings. This has been a dream of mine for a long time and I don't want to pass this up. I will be posting pictures of my work on this blog and would love your feedback and referrals.

This piece is a sample bouquet that I made for a bride who is getting married on May 10th. The ceremony will be at the Greek Orthodox Church and the reception will be at the El Cortez!!! I am very excited to work at the El Cortez and can't wait. In regards to this bouquet, it is a classic hand tied bouquet made from green cymbidium orchids (my current favorite flower), magenta roses, peach/orange roses, dark purple ranunculus, light blush ranunculus, pinkish purple fressia and accents of green coffee bean. The freesia made the bouquet smell absolutely divine, they are much more fragrant than roses. It was wrapped in hot pink chiffon ribbon and pinned with pearl straight pins. I loved loved loved the dynamic contrast of colors. I think that all the colors popped and would be gorgeous with almost any color dress. I wish I could have kept it because it was just sooo pretty but I had to give it up :(. Needless to say, I got the job and am very excited to work on this wedding.

I will continue to post my work and hope that everyone enjoys it.

thanks, Sally :)