July 28, 2010
Hi There,
We’re having another Recessionista Bridal Workshop….if you are looking for ways to save money on your wedding, this is the place for you to be. We’re giving out Swag Bags filled with all kinds of goodies for you, door prizes, great hands-on experiences, food sampling and so much more.
Where: Tre Events, 1212 Howe Ave., Sacramento, Ca.
When: August 15, 2010
Time: 1:00 – 4:00 PM
This workshop is FREE to you and your guest, but you must pre-register at www.recessionistabridalworkshop.com
June 21, 2010
Okay, so are there really black flowers? Well, not really…the terminology “black flowers” is used loosely to refer to the darkest blooms and artificially dyed flowers. If you look closely at flowers called black, you’ll usually see that “black flowers” are such a deep purple/burgundy that they just appear black. Chocolate cosmos, which are really a dark chocolate brown, are sometimes called black flowers. The thing is, depending upon how and when you use these flowers, they can look black.
Here are a few pictures of “black” flowers:
Dark purple carnations, Black Lilies, Dark Burgundy Dahlia,Chocolate Cosmos, Dark burgundy mini calla, and dark purple tulips. These flowers are the closest to black that I am aware of. However, I noticed at fiftyflowers.com they have some additional black flowers, see below:
The first flower is a black vanda orchid and the second flower is a burgundy dendrobium orchid…neither of which I have ever seen or even heard of before writing this article….the hydrangea has been tinted and they call it oreo and the rose has been tinted black as well.
There are a few more varieties of black flowers and foliages…I have had black hollyhocks and black iris in a previous backyard. I have used black ti leaves and agonis greenery, which is a very dark burgundy color.
Chocolate Cosmos Bouquet here.
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Chocolate Cosmos and Agonis in this bouquet
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Dark purple Carnations in this bouquet
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So, as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, most of the flowers really aren’t black, but combined with the right lighting and other colors, they most definitely look black.
May 31, 2010
Hi There,
I’ve done a few “Indian” weddings before…well, the brides and bridal party wore sari’s….but that was about the extent of the “Indian culture” including in the wedding. This past Saturday, I did the most traditional Indian wedding I’ve ever done. The entire bridal party wore Indian attire, even the guys. The backdrop was a “mandap” …Indian alter. See picture below. In addition to the flowers attached to the pillars of the mandap, I also provided garlands of flowers (like Hawaiian lei’s) for the bride and groom (they are used during the ceremony), a bowl of flower heads (also used during the ceremony), lot’s of rose petals….used on the aisle, made into paisley’s, used on the mandap stage and thrown at the couple….see pictures below.
Gold and Burgundy themed Mandap
Rose petals were used to make paisley's which were the theme running throughout the wedding
May 22, 2010
Hi There,
As if I didn’t have enough to do…I have been entered into a contest to win my own television show on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). The top five vote getters will be automatically considered for a show. I need A LOT OF VOTES!!!! Please watch my video and vote for me as often as you can. Thank you!
http://myown.oprah.com/audition/index.html?request=video_details&response_id=1685&promo_id=1
In the video I make a centerpiece using white phaelenopsis orchids and white Siberian lilies left over from a wedding.
May 16, 2010
Hi There,
This a fun experience for anyone in the Sacramento, Ca. area….it is a fundraiser for the food bank. Teams compete in a scavenger hunt to find a $25,000 diamond ring! See below for more details. June 5, 2010!
Join us for the second annual Race for the Rock, Saturday June 5th 2010! This interactive text message based scavenger hunt will send you all over Downtown Sacramento searching for a hidden $25,000 diamond ring courtesy of Rogers Jewelry Co. Each entry will be a team of two people, and must be on foot or human powered transportation. Go to
racefortherock.com to see last year’s event and for details about 2010. All proceeds benefit Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services.
May 13, 2010
Hi There,
My new site is up and running…please take a look at it. There are four videos available for viewing at this time. Two new videos get added each week. If you want to learn how to arrange flowers for your home, for gifts, for dinner parties, for themed events or “as seen in the media” visit my new site. This week, learn how to make the centerpiece seen on the Ellen DeGeneres Show yesterday, 5/12/10. It is all white mini calla lilies in a long, narrow vase. Super easy to do!
April 27, 2010
Hi There,
Today I am borrowing an article by wedding planner extraordinaire…Ciara Daykin. Enjoy her words of wisdom.
Could You Go Green With Your Wedding?
By Ciara Daykin
When it comes to a wedding we all see the joy and the fun involved but do you see the waste? You probably didn’t even realize how much a wedding hurts the environment- not very romantic is it?
Can Being Green Be Sexy?
When most of us think of going green you start envisioning scratchy recycled toilet paper and everything in that beige, natural color. But it doesn’t have to be blah to help the earth while planning your wedding. In fact, going green for your wedding can be sexy!
Here are 5 Sexy Green Tips for Your Wedding:
1) Yummy Organic, Local Cuisine – Ask your venue or your caterer if they can help you go green. Choose food items that don’t have to travel very far and that are grown using organic methods. This will limit the pollution produced to get your food to your venue and the pesticides used to grow it. And organic food has sooo much more flavor and it’s super yummy!
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2) Rent Instead of Buy- I’m a huge fan of renting linens for a wedding. If you rent your linens from a rental company that follows green cleaning practices then you’re keeping the earth happy! And I just love the look of fabulous linens at a wedding.
3) Share the Beauty – Nothing pains me more than seeing phenomenal flowers being thrown into the garbage at the end of a wedding- yikes!! Instead arrange to give the flowers to your guests to take home and enjoy or donate them to a nursing home. You could also create centerpieces that don’t include flowers but rather use sticks or feathers. Don’t forget potted plants. You can replant these in your garden later- just please don’t put these on the tables with the ugly plastic bottom wrap! Pretty them up!
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4) Within Walking Distance – We know that most of the family will need to fly in for the wedding so the jet fuel isn’t exactly *coughcough* the best for Mother Nature. So once your guests arrive plan your wedding day to minimize car use and maximize the enjoyment of being outside! Hauling people from one end of the city to another causes pollution and breaks up the party. But letting people walk from the ceremony to the reception encourages conversation, fun pictures, and exciting adventure!
5) Meat and Leather Free?- One of the first weddings I ever did was entirely vegetarian and none of the bridal party wore leather shoes. And it totally rocked! If skipping meat is an option for you then you don’t have to feed your guests all salad. The meal was meat free but it was incredibly original and made to please even the pickiest foodie. Apparently cows are big polluters so you’re saving the earth there (and a few cows).
Ciara’s Bridal Advice
You don’t have to have a totally green wedding but it’s nice if you’re conscious of the impact your decisions make on the environment. Even just a couple of green tweaks to your wedding plans can make a big impact!
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Want to share this with the world? Please feel free to post this to your own blog or use the material in your own e-zine. We only ask that you please include this text with your post!
Ciara Daykin is the CEO of Firefly Occasions, Inc. a wedding and event planning company with offices in Calgary, Alberta Canada and Beverly Hills, California, USA. Ciara’s popular bi-weekly ezine newsletter is read by over 10,000 brides. Ciara is a frequent speaker at wedding industry functions and coaches other wedding planners across North America.
Ciara provides each bride she works with the haute couture wedding experience. Her planning website can be found at http://www.fireflyoccasions.com/ where you can sign up for her free report, “10 Tips to Take Your Wedding from Cookie Cutter to Couture.” She and her husband, Simon Daykin, are a husband and wife planning team and document their adventures on their popular blog http://sheandheplanweddings.com/.
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April 25, 2010
Hi There,
I came across this video today and wanted to make sure you all got a chance to see it. The video is a fashion show of wedding gowns coming right off the runway in New York.
http://news.yahoo.com/video/entertainment-15749636/latest-wedding-gown-trends-19290534
Some BEAUTIFUL designs! Enjoy!
April 22, 2010
Hi There,
Stephanotis is a bridal favorite flower, normally reserved for the bridal party bouquets and boutonnieres. It’s the small bright white flower with a tremendous tropical scent, sometimes called the “Hawaiian Wedding Flower”. 
Stephanotis is available year round, but is most abundant from late spring to early autumn. I once had a stephanotis plant in my yard. When I bought it at the nursery I bought a Madagascar Jamine plant. I was so surprised when it bloomed and I had stephanotis!
When you buy stephanotis, look for blooms that are bright white, waxy and firm. When they are old they will start turning yellow, get wilty, sometimes have mold on them or bruising.
Normally, you will find stephanotis sold by the box, with 25 flowers inside. These flowers do not have stems, per se, and once they are harvested they cannot absorb water through the tiny stem. That is why they are sold in air tight boxes with damp shredded tissue or other dampened material on the bottom of the box…to give the flowers moisture. Once in a while, you can buy stephanotis still on the vine, but that would be only at a professional flower market.
Stephanotis needs to be hydrating when you get in home…so float the flowers in room temperature water for 20-30 minutes then put in the refrigerator, still soaking, for two hours.
After soaking, shake the water off the florets and place them back into an airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to use them.
Because stephanotis don’t have stems, you have to give them an artificial stem to be able to use them in designs. You can buy “stephanotis stems” …..which have a cotton tube that is inserted into the flower to give the flower moisture attached to a wire. You have to soak the cotton tube end in water before inserting into the flower. You also have to tear off the tiny green stem of the stephanotis, which then gives you a small hole to push the cotton tube into. The cotton tube fills the center of the flower.
Often you will see stephanotis used in bridal bouquets with pearls inserted into the center of the flowers. That is done using boutonniere pins, cut down to about a 1/2 inch size and inserted into the cotton tube in the center of the flower.
During the really hot months of summer, I often dip my stephanotis in parafin wax to help them withstand the heat.
Stephanotis boutonniere
Stephanotis corsage
Jessica Simpson carried an all stephanotis bouquet when she got married. I read that the bouquet contained 500 stephanotis flowers….my guess is that her bouquet would cost between $3,000.00 and $3,500.00, if purchased from a florist. If you did this yourself, it would cost you about $400.00 plus A LOT OF TIME!
April 18, 2010
Hi There!
Roses are a bridal favorite whether they are in bright white or any other color. Roses come in so many colors, it is pretty hard not to find one that matches or complements your color scheme and for the most part, roses are pretty easy to get your hands on. Even the grocery stores sell bunches of roses!
How roses perform for you has a lot to do with how they have been handled before you get them and after you get them. For the most part, there is not much we can do to address what happens before you get them….if you are buying from a flower market of some kind, make sure you are buying from a reputable grower. But, I believe most of you are not buying wholesale, like I do, so you just have to go by how they look when you are buying them.
Have you ever seen somebody kind of pinching the rose heads….I do it sometimes….it is a way to see how firm the roses are….generally, the firmer they are, the fresher they are…..but NOT ALWAYS true. Some rose varieties are just softer because of the petal counts or the way the petals open. A rose that comes to mind is a POLO rose.
It is a white rose that opens up like an old fashioned rose, even though it technically is not an old fashioned rose. Those rose heads will typically be softer when you pinch them. They also are not a bright white. The picture above contains POLO roses.
Another soft rose is an Osiana, which is a beautiful shade of peach. It doesn’t have a super big petal count and therefore is typically softer to the pinch than other roses.
The Osiana rose is the rose on the right in this picture.
Besides the pinch test, there are other things to look for when buying roses. The stems should look and feel straight and strong, as opposed to limp and weak. The heads should be upright with no drooping petals. The foliage should not be yellowing or falling off. You’ll also want to be sure they don’t show signs of insect problems or fungal disease. If you see anything on the stem or just below the flower head that looks like gray mold…don’t buy the roses!
Assuming that you find and buy good roses, get them home as soon as possible and start processing them immediately. To process roses you want to strip all the foliage that will fall below the water line. I like to remove ALL the thorns as well. You really only have to remove the thorns below the water level, but trust me, you will be handling the roses above the water line and you don’t want to poke yourself with the thorns. Some varieties of roses have really tiny almost clear thorns on the top third of the stems and that is typically where I am handling them. Those micro thorns will get into your hands and fingers and wreak havoc, because you can’t see them to get them out. I normally will use a florist’s knife and gently scratch those tiny thorns off the stems!
Next you want to give the roses a fresh cut, cut at least an inch off the stem length and cut at the biggest angle you can cut. Make sure you are using really sharp sheers or knife. You do NOT want to damage the stem with clippers that can’t make a clean cut. The bigger the cut you can make, the more drinking surface you are giving the rose. Roses need to drink water and any obstruction in the stem will disallow the water to get all the way up to the head which will cause bent heads. Even an air bubble will cause the bent heads and roses are particularly vulnerable to this problem. There are many professionals who believe that roses should only be cut under water, because when you cut underwater there can be no air bubbles getting into the stem.
If you use a rose stripper, which I totally recommend, make sure you do not tear or scrape the skin of the stem, because this allows microorganisms (bacteria) to get into the stem and will impede the flowers ability to get that good drink of water it needs.
It is absolutely BEST to dip each rose stem into a dipping solution of a hydrating liquid before you put them in a bucket or vase with flower preservative. I don’t know of the hydrating liquids being sold at a retail level.
I plan on offering this product on my new website, www.flowerarranging101.tv under the products tab. I will be offering any products that I learn cannot be purchased at a retail store that I feel you need to be able to do your own flowers professionally.
Make sure when you transfer your roses to a bucket or vase that it is a clean bucket or vase. I use Clorox Clean Up to wash all my buckets and vases. A watered down clorox solution is fine too. You just need to be sure that you are killing any bacteria in the bucket/vase.
If you are not going to use your roses right away, the idea situation is to process them (remove thorns/foliage, give fresh cut and dip in hydrating solution) and then place the roses into a bucket of tepid (luke warm) water for about two hours. After that, it is best to put the roses into a refrigerator for at least another two hours (ideal temperature is 33-35 degrees). After that, do all the arranging your heart desires with your roses.
I know this sounds like a lot of work….if you want your roses to last, this is the process you should go through. This is what any reputable florist does before they sell the roses to you!
After you have arranged your flowers, make sure to change the water every other day and recut the stems. Always use flower preservative in the water as well.
When you display your flowers, make sure they are not sitting in direct sunlight or any other heat source. So, don’t put your roses on a table right underneath a heater vent when the heater is in use.
Enjoy your roses!
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