More florals - a trial for a San Diego wedding

One of my friends from Miami is getting married in his home town of San Diego. He is a great, chill, outdoorsy fellow - very San Diego. Well, I offered my floral services to him and his lovely fiancee and they were so excited to have something off their plates.

The wedding, which will be in a month, will be held on the beach followed by a reception at a nearby home.

For the ceremony, they will have manzanita and/or driftwood branches lining the aisle,

as well as vases hanging on shepherds hooks. Here is a trial go at the ceremony vases

They are a white hydrangea bloom and two marigolds with green amaranthus hanging down.



The bride requested that her bouquet include alot of texture and a variety of different blooms. She also had a preference for yellow and white. Here is what I dreamed up with some excess ribbon leftover from my wedding (I personally dislike this ribbon).










I used white spider mums, yellow button mums, white carnations, and yellow marigolds. This is about half the size I will make for her actual bouquet. I will also add in yellow cockscomb and probably switch out the marigolds with yellow carnations (the marigold stems just don't hold up well).



As for the groom, I suggested rosemary and they loved the idea of it. Here is what I came up with, and I hope they love it as much as I do. It is just two sprigs of rosemary from my garden and three tiny yellow button mums. It smells lovely and I think it will accompany her bouquet very well.





















For the reception, they have beautiful metal rectangular containers, that they plan to fill with succulents like the ones shown and rocks.



























To give it a little more zing and color, I think we are going to add a sweeping small manzanita branch covered with some smaller orchids. Here is my inspiration, using my very own succulent plant garden, a branch from one of my juniper trees, and some dollar store fake orchids - yes it is a ghetto-fied trial

On the tables, they will also have some smaller vases with succulents for their guests to take home


All in all, I think this is going to be a fabulous looking wedding, which will be minimizing the amount of cut flowers, but adding in lots of texture with living plants and branches (manzanita grows like wild in Cali).

More soon on their Pièce de résistance !

Putting people to work for me

While visiting us out in CA, I put my mom to work, since I am sort of running out of time. First, she finished painting those escort card frames, and then she went to work on the Gocco. She used it to print all our return addresses on our invitation envelopes. Sorry... no pictures to post of that... but rest assured they were drying everywhere.

Then, she helped me out in Miami. Shockingly, she painted more even more frames. We bought wood frames from Ikea for super cheap.


After a coat of 50 cent craft paint and some edited photos off the internet that Ralph was kind enough to cut for me, you get the names for our tables....



So here is a little bit of what I have been working on and what will be on each table...

I am super grateful for everyone's help - J, you are next!

Having fun being crafty!

Following an extended trip to JoAnn's Fabrics (we had to stop at Mervyns), Emily and I came to my place and started some wedding fun-ness. She made a gorgeous veil for her cousin, complete with silver satin trim.


All is needs is a little pressing on the trim. She made it really quickly too.

As for me, not so much. I goccoed our favor bags - all 125 of them. They are all over our place!

What they will somewhat look like (when I get the correct color riboon):

Checks!!!!

My last post was on my slight compulsiveness to stay on track of those checklists. But we have done so much already, 3 months into planning, that I thought I would share:

1) We have got a venue and wedding date that we like (we did get scooped for ideal date), but that is ok.

2) We have a caterer and cake baker (ok they were included in the venue, but it still counts as 2 checks).

3) I have a dress that I am so in love with (ok not as much as my fiance or cat).

4) We have colors! Yep, we are going for pool blue, lime green, and ivory. No, we aren't having a pool blue-lime green-ivory wedding , but those colors will be in our centerpieces and invites. And with no bridal party, I don't have to make my girlfriends and family wear those colors, although it might be fun to do that to them too (go go bridezilla).

5) We have a guest list that makes us both happy.

6) We have witnesses/"the signers"

According to theknot, I have completed 42 checks, and have 184 to go. That means I have done 18.5% of the work in 19.8% of our engagement (yes I am a nerd). Damn, I totally thought I was well ahead of the game! It is amazing what a little bit of math can do for your self-confidence. Well, I am still trying to stay on the ball at the very least, as I am off to drag the fiance to get the rest of our very simple vases at 50% off.

Since this post has no pics, I thought I would share my bridal "inspiration"