Playing with Flowers

I'd say a good 85% of my job consists of me sitting at my computer with my cats walking across my keyboard, music playing (right now it's the Best of Motown), and my fingers furiously typing as I plan weddings for my wonderful clients. If I don't stop myself, I'll work around the clock, so to stay inspired on the days that I don't have meetings, I plan "playdates" with some of my friends that work in the wedding industry. Last Thursday I went and helped Alison, the talented florist and artist of Le Petit Gardenia prep for a huge wedding she had on Saturday. It was great--I got to play with flowers and do something with my hands, she got an extra bit of help, and we got to catch up and bounce business ideas off of each other. I showed up at her studio to find buckets and buckets of flowers waiting to be stripped and prepped. If you have never worked with flowers, you can't imagine just how much time goes in to getting the flowers ready for arranging! The flowers have to be taken out of one bucket, unpackaged, all leaves and greenery stripped off by hand, the ends trimmed, then the flowers put into a new bucket with fresh water. And that's just the regular flowers. Roses are an entirely different story. They are monsters--along with the process I just mentioned: every single thorn has to be shaved off with a knife. The thorns that have not already embedded themselves into your hands, that is....

In the two hours I worked with Alison I only got through 20 bunches of tulips and 3 bunches of evil roses. I'm sure she and her staff worked late into the night and spent all day on Friday arranging.

I should have taken pictures of those countless buckets of flowers, because they turned into THIS:


WOW! Alison said that the bride was so happy with everything that she almost cried. The wedding and reception was held at the Valley Hunt Club in Pasadena.