Category — flowers

Tulips + Irises = a beautiful bouquet from my husband.

Broken up bouquet + my UO vase = love

Etsy + Letterpress + a mini card in French = The perfect Valentines Day card from B.

(amazing shoes, right?!)

(all images by Matthew Morgan)

Sara from onelove photography sent me this wedding the other day and I am so excited to post it! Not only are the pictures amazing, but there are peacock feathers! (And we all know my love for peacock feathers)

A little information about the couple:

Khara and Tony Tapia were married this summer at the Garden Pavilion in Sonoma, California. This private estate hosts less than a dozen weddings a year and is in very high demand, obviously – situated in the heart of Sonoma’s famous Carneros region it sits as a historic landmark. Built in 1856, with a generous wisteria clad veranda, It flanks the spacious lawn together with an elegant shaded pavilion for dining and dancing surrounded by an abundance of flowers, roses, and oleander trees.

Tony’s hispanic background infused with Khara’s vintage flair brought for quite a fun event, with a mariachi band playing as they walked down the aisle, guests ate paella for dinner and pies for dessert….the bouquets were gorgeous, flanked with bleached peacock feathers!! Amazing! and fun!

(all images by onelove photography)

(shot by matthew morgan. edited by me)

We decided to go with a framed poster for our guestbook:

I bought the poster from etsy seller SparklePower, though I can’t seem to find her now! (Thanks Laura!) We bought the frame at Ikea and took the whole thing to Michael’s to get a custom matte made for $20.

We came to the conclusion that since we were on a budget, giving out favors was simply not necessary. We thought about making homemade cookies to package up for people to take with them, but decided against it as it would have had to been done in the few days before the wedding, and I really didn’t want to have to do anything on those days!  So what we decided on doing was to give away the flowers from the centerpieces.

I posted about making these bags here.

We also made little tags asking people to take the flowers but leave the jars, since they were part of our personal collection.

Going this route for the favors saved us a lot of time and money, and no one seemed to care. (Not that they would come up asking for their favor… but still!)

Images from Studio 7 Photography.

Flowers. They were the one thing that I had no desire to DIY.

I wanted to have all of my projects (and there were a lot of them) done a week prior to the big day. Flowers… well they have to be done the day or two before. And then there was the question of where would we put them all? And did I even trust my arranging capabilities? And then who would set them all up (remember our morning was packed full to the brim already)?

However, I also knew that spending upwards of $2,000 was not an option. Bryan’s parents were gracious enough to pay for the flowers, but I didn’t want to make them pay a ton of money just because that was the one thing I didn’t want to do. Luckily for me, I found Christa. Well actually, Christa’s grandma found me. Christa is the grand daughter of our churches wedding coordinator, Eloise. So one night on the phone I was being told by Eloise that there were no flowers allowed on the pews and no throwing flower petals and oh by the way my grand daughter is a florist and here is her number. Well I called, and thank God I did because it was one of the best decisions we made. We met for the first time at Starbucks, talked over things and she got to it. Of course, we met waaay before the wedding, because I am a planner like that, so we had lots of time to shoot ideas back and forth… which worked out because one day I decided I wanted to add pinks and one day she asked if I knew what a Billy Ball was and the end result was perfect!

For the boys (look familiar?!):

For the flower girls:

For my bridesmaids:

For the tables:

And for me:

Like I said, gorgeous! And isn’t that blue cameo amazing? It was my grandmas, she passed away last year and it meant so much to me to be able to carry a little piece of her down the aisle with me as my something blue.

Tips/Details: If you are like me and have a budget but just can’t bring yourself to DIY your flowers, I recommend finding someone who does flowers on the side, or someone who is fresh out of college, or Christa, if you are in the LA/OC/SD areas. We got all of those flowers (which included like 30 centerpeices) for about $900. That was a steal! Yes, it was much more than if I would have gone to the farmers market the morning of or day before, but again, it was worth my sanity to pay this money.

We provided the antique mason jars, most of which were from my moms collection, and then we supplemented that with some off ebay and from local antique shops. We may sell some of them since we don’t need 30+ mason jars, but I love having a few around the house!

The flowers also doubled as favors (which really made that $900 count), but that is for another post!

Another money/time/sanity saving thing was we had Christa be our set up person. I knew I needed someone to set the reception site up (kids table, cake table, hanging balls…) but wasn’t sure who I could get to do it. I asked Christa if she knew of anyone and she offered to do it for me for a small fee of $200. Maybe $100… I can’t remember. Whatever it was, it was worth it! She was a rock star and I can’t say enough good things about her! If you are in need of a florist and are getting married in Southern California, contact Christa, you won’t regret it!

All images by Studio 7 Photographers.

Our favors serve two purposes. One: for people to take flowers home and Two: for people to not take our mason jars home.

I bought cello baggies at Target.

Designed and printed out labels using labels from Stuck.

The finished project We will put a few under each centerpiece for people to take flowers home after the reception, and to discourage them from walking out with our collection of mason jars (which started waaaay before any wedding talks )

This bouquet has just enough pop of color.

(saw it here)

So…  I am SUPER excited about how our wedding is turning out. 

However. I am in love with this one, and it is super similar, but a little more chic. But then again, chic is not what we are going for. We are going for simple, fun, clean, bright and happy. But if we wanted chic, this entire wedding would be in my inspiration folder!  

I saw it first here, and then saw the rest of it here

get your head out of the gutter!  I am talking about flowers here ladies. sheesh.

The other day I ran into my florist at Bagel Shack and she said she had a certain flower she wanted to add to our hydrangeas and dahlias.  The next day I got an email with this attached.

See those flower balls (craspedia, or Billy Balls) in the back? We will be adding those to our arrangements and I am pretty darn excited. Bryan says he thinks they look weird but that if I like them, he likes them (gotta love him) so they are in  Here are some more pictures I found using these flowers beautifully:

(first here second and third here)