Showing posts with label flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flowers. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

A wedding and wedding flowers!

Saturday, I had the great honor of day-of-coordinating my friend Emily's wedding. Emily designed our invitations, RSVP cards, and programs and they were AMAZING. (She is an award-winning graphic designer and I'm always so impressed with her creativity.) When she did our design, we agreed to barter and I promised to someday coordinate her wedding. She met a very special guy 6 months later and the rest is history! (Very, very happy history! I have happy-cried so many times over their love story and wedding!)

image source: Beth Mathews (@bethmathews)

The ceremony itself was perfect (with a healthy dose of humor thanks to the tractor that zoomed by, fertilizing the field right behind the ceremony site) and so prayerful. They used the Book of Common Prayer for a lot of the ceremony so it was very beautiful. Spencer is a composer and even arranged the music for the string trio to play before, during, and after the ceremony. (These are some talented people, in case you haven't noticed!)

Every detail was so beautiful - her tables had reclaimed wood stretched down the center with candles, vintage cameras, and incredible flower arrangements (by Amanda Jerkins) placed in Emily's collection of vintage bottles and jars.

Since I was the last Nashville girl left at the end of the night after clean-up, I got to bring home some flowers. WOO!

flowers2

This is one of the bridesmaid bouquets that I placed in one of Emily's vintage carafes to bring home. So beautiful!

I played around with some of the loose flowers I brought home and could only find an old pickle jar to put them in!

flowers1

Amanda and Emily picked out gorgeous flowers! I love them.

I really enjoy playing around with flowers, but I wish I knew what I was doing for real. It was one of my goals to learn how to arrange flowers by 30 but I still haven't taken a class. I need to!

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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

What has been keeping me busy?

Oh, lots of things!

I have been loving plants and flowers lately and so I've been working more with them. Lucy (by way of her grandma Young) gave me a cute dog planter for mother's day and I got free* marigolds at Wal-mart the very next day, so I planted those.

marigolds

dog planter

So cute, huh? The dog looks pretty similar to Lucy and the head and tail bob, which is pretty darn cute. I put it out on our deck, which gets full sun, so the poor marigolds haven't been very happy, unfortunately!

Those aren't the only flowers I've been working with, though!

When we got married, I bartered with my hairstylist, Lauren. She did my hair and I pledged to day-of-coordinate her wedding in the future. She got married in April in a private ceremony and planned a super cute and intimate reception Sunday night at The Boundry in Nashville. My major duty was picking up the geraniums and cutting them and arranging them in tiny vases then transporting them to the venue. Lauren had everything under control and the reception was so relaxed and the Boundry staff were so amazing that I barely had any other responsibilities! I wish I could have done more for Lauren and Alex but they are definitely laid back and have the right attitude toward weddings and marriage!

Here are the beautiful geraniums I got to play with!

geraniums

And a photo of the cute vases, a blurry pic of one of my little arrangements, and another show of the whole bunch of them. It was nice to play florist in my kitchen for a little while!

geraniums2

The reception was a great success! Lauren and Alex are about to move to California (agh!) and I am really going to miss her friendship and talent with my unruly hair!!

These are just a few of the things I've been working on... stay tuned for more!


*Free marigolds - ha! Funny story and also the biggest waste of 10 minutes of my life! I was checking out and was asked if I wanted to donate to Vandy Childrens' Hospital. I said sure and the cashier told me that for donating, I got a free plant. She told me to show my receipt to the person outside and they would give me my free plant. I walked outside (mind you, this whole time I am pushing a cart full of stuff) and there was no one out there. There was, however, an employee corralling carts inside. I asked him if he knew who to ask about the free plants and he had no idea what I was talking about. (red flag #1!) He said to ask in customer service, so I pushed my cart back inside and stood in line at customer service. There was only one person behind the counter and the line was growing longer and longer. When it was finally my turn, she (surprise!) had no idea what I was talking about.

I suddenly felt like everyone thought I was trying to scam them into giving me a free plan. Just at that moment, an older British lady started asking a greeter about her free "plahnt." She said "The cashier told me I get a free plahnt!" So, I officially knew that I was not alone and was not pulling a scam. The customer service rep started calling people and trying to figure out what was going on, but in a tone that definitely still conveyed that she didn't really believe us.

A manager finally came around and told us that the free plants were the hanging baskets in the black pots. The British lady and I were like "Wow, a hanging basket? That's awesome!" (She probably said "brilliant" and not awesome.) We both hauled our carts back outside and the hanging baskets were $16 each. Neither of us felt very ethical taking a $16 plant for a $1 donation, so back inside we went to clarify. The manager said, "The $1 hanging baskets," and we assured him there were no $1 hanging baskets.

So, skeptical customer service rep came outside with us and led us to the little trays of flowers and said "These." They were neither $1 nor hanging, which is why we originally passed them up. I was so done with the whole ordeal that I just grabbed the first ones I saw, which happened to be these very cute french marigolds that are now, unfortunately, dying.

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Thursday, November 3, 2011

Vintage Decorating: Flower Arranging

One of my Thirty Before 30 goals was to learn how to arrange flowers. I haven't learned just yet - I would love to take a class in person. I d0 have a vintage flower arranging book (Better Homes & Gardens: Flower Arranging, 1957) and the new Design*Sponge book has a section on flower arranging, but I'm not there yet. I think I would learn better through hands-on experience, so I'm still on the hunt for a class to take.

In the meantime, here is a 2 page spread on arranging for autumn! You can click the images to see them much larger on flickr.





Personally, I love the last image with the teal tablecloth, yellow flowers, and mod plates!

Do you know how to arrange flowers? Where did you learn? Do you know of any great resources for simple arranging?