A Big Day Out

Following the saga of sourcing the flowers for this weekend's wedding. I had to face a big day out deliverying, setting up and moving flowers.

Now, this isn't something I would volunteer to do for just any wedding. But, this weekends Bride, is the third sister in the family whose wedding flowers I have had the privilege of designing. So when I have such wonderful families who keep coming back I will do just about anything.

Saturday morning started off bright and early with packing the car up and heading off to Sanctuary Cove with the wedding party flowers. I had a quick stop off, to give Sarah-Jane from Cake That the cake flowers and then it was straight down to Sanctuary Cove. It was a first time delivery to the Hyatt for me and I have to say it was just lovely, I could see that it would be a photographers paradise to photograph a wedding party around the grounds.

I had my two girls with me and they insisted that we stop and pat a couple of ponies that were on the edge of a property by the road. As well as everything else I had to do I was told that I simply must find a shop to buy carrots to feed the ponies on the way back down the mountain.

After the quick pony stop I headed straight to the ceremony location, Avalon Gardens. Another first time for me. I did get into a bit of trouble for driving in through the main gates and ever so slightly messing up their gravel driveway that they just raked, but it did go to prove that they are pendantic about provided the best for their Brides and Grooms. Avalon Gardens would have to be one of the most lovely garden settings that I have had the pleasure of setting up in. The gardens are lush and abundant, the grass is green and thick and wandering around the gardens is a real treat.

Here I had to set up two extra tall ceremony arrangements to be placed inside the ceremony space. As these were so large I did the actual set up on the grounds. My girls found a romantic love swing tucked away in the gardens and so were happily occupied while I worked.

The ceremony arrangements



The Ceremony venue


The Love Swing

We then had about 3.5 hours to waste until after the ceremony when I had to return, dismantle the arrangements and transport them back to Sanctuary Cove Country Club for the reception.

We went for a mini bush walk, my 2 year old managed to walk about 1klm of the 1.4klm walk so I was pretty proud of that. We then went to Gallery Lane for lunch and a poke about the shops, then I went to find the elusive carrots for the ponies and then back to the ceremony where the guests were enjoying drinks on the beautifully raked gravel driveway in front of the venue.

Bushwalking

I dismantled and loaded up the flowers and headed back to Sanctuary Cove, stopping to feed the ponies.

I had left Brisbane at 9.30 am that morning and arrived home just before 6.00 pm. What a day!

Phaelonopsis Orchids

One week after Mothers Day and I had a wedding to do using Phaelonopsis orchids. Now, originally when I booked in this wedding I had checked with my suppliers and I was told that I would defintely be able to source the phallies as they were going to force them to flower early for Mothers Day. I should have expected it, because when you are dealing with nature nothing seems to go to plan and sure enough things didn't work out and there were none available.

After an emergency meeting with my Bride, who was adamant that she have fresh phallies, I had a plan. I had to scour all the Bunnings and Big W stores on the northside and buy up every pretty much every flowering plant they had in stock for Mothers Day.

I did speak to one of Brisbane's leading orchid suppliers who did warn me that these plants would only be flowering because they had been grown in a cold room under special conditions and warned me not to be surprised if they simply turned to mush once they had been out in the real world for a few days. I had no choice and I had to take the risk.

Because, I couldn't get enough of the flowering plants and they were costing a lot more than purchasing blooms from my suppliers, my Bride opted for silk phallies for her hair, and to add white Singapore orchids into the Bridesmaids' bouquets, we also used the Singapores for the cake flowers and buttonholes.

I snapped up the plants the week before Mothers Day, because I obviously didn't want to miss out, so I had a long 2 weeks of watching over the plants in my workroom, thankfully some the buds popped open and I only lost one stem of flowers.

Late Friday afternoon I started work on what was one of my most stressful weddings ever. On top of everything else these bouquets needed to be delivered to Sanctuary Cove and then travel with the Girls up to Mt Tamborine for the ceremony and then back to Sanctuary Cove for the reception. I of course did every thing in my power to make sure they went the distance, using a couple of my secret tricks - the last time I saw the bouquets straight after the ceremony they were looking pretty damm good, if I do say so myself.

The elusive phaelonopsis orchid.

My Sisters Wedding

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of doing the flowers for my sister Katrina and Nigel's wedding. Being her MOH and the Flowergirls mum meant that I had a pretty full plate for the day, from the moment they announced their engagement, I knew that I would do all of her flowers for her, no doubt about it.

Working in the wedding industry I became their unofficial wedding planner. I am proud to say that they trusted my recommendations for quite a few of their suppliers and found some new suppliers that were all truly wonderful.

It was a pretty big week leading up to the wedding and I did work pretty every night until midnight in order to pull everything together. My run sheet looked a bit like this:

Brides bouquet
Matron of Honour's bouquet
2 Flowergirl posies
Neices wrist corsage
Buttonholes
Corsages
Tin buckets of flowers for shepherds hooks
Ceremony arrangements
Cake flowers
Table arrangements
Vases for fish
Candy bar
Rose petals for ceremony and reception

We set up the table arrangements the night before - large oval arrangements of full Perfume de Grande, Salinas and Honeymoon roses, freesais and lissies. In the centre were brandy balloons with goldfish. We also set up a candy bar with all pink and white sweets and this looked fabulous and went down a treat on the night. I then had to go home and do up the buttonholes and corsages so it was a very late night and very early start on the day. But, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Everything on the day went without any problems. I had to deliver the ceremony flowers to the Northlakes Golf Club and it was great to see Emma from Brisbane Wedding Decorators doing the chair covers. I have known Emma for many years but haven't seen her around for awhile so that was nice. Kellie from the golf club couldn't have been more helpful and super organised.

Now my little girl, Ella has been around weddings since the day she was born, I coundn't count the number of weddings we have delivered to where she has looked enviously at the little flowergirls getting ready and it has been a constant 'why can't I be a flowergirl' since she could talk. Well, Ella had the privlege of being Katrina and Nigel's flowergirl and she so enjoyed being a princess for a day. In her Elizabeth de Varga gown (nothing so special for me the MOH mind you) and her tiara and jewellery from Wendy Makin she definitely had a special day. Katrina's son Harrison was pageboy and he and Ella made a very cute couple.

There was no question about who was going to design the cake for the day, Sarah-Jane from Cake That! As always she did a stunning job. Sarah-Jane also very kindly did the fresh rose petals on the cake and candy buffet tables for me.

As all my Bride's would know the biggest complaint of the day is that it goes way too fast.

There are some beautiful photos of the day on their photographer's blog, ST Photography scroll down to Katrina and Nigel.



The ceremony - Shepherds hooks with buckets of roses, lissies and freesias. Rose petal aisle. Tall vases filled with lilies, orchids and willow.

On the way to the Ceremony.

The Cake.

A New Beginning

Unbelievably it has been almost 12 months to the day since I last posted. I was absolutely amazed when I logged on tonight and saw that it has been a year. So now it is time to get back on track and start updating as often as possible. It has been a year full of work, family and fun, I have had weeks where I wasn't sure if I could get everything that needed doing done.

This last weekend gone, inspired me to start blogging again. I did a lovely wedding, with my girls in tow and we simply had a beautiful day out together. More on the weekend to come soon.

So here goes, a new beginning of blogging and keeping it up.