Real Weddings: Andrew and Alyssa

I have to say-I LOVED everything about this wedding! Alyssa and Andrew were such a great couple to work with. I met  Alyssa back in the winter when she was on a short break between trips. Alyssa is a professional musician for the US Army Field Band. She was super easy going, had a few ideas for colors and style for her flowers-but was happy to give us creative freedom to make something lovely.

The flowers in mid June were just beautiful. The bride’s bouquet was filled with dahlias, yarrow, gooseneck loosestrife, mountain mint, feverfew, campanula and a couple late blooming peonies.

Gertrudes and the BMA were a perfect venue for the summer, garden wedding.  Working there is always a joy.

As a vegetarian and lover of animals, I was especially excited about two special details of Andrew and Alyssa’s wedding. The first was a small card on each table that said: “In Celebration of our love of all creatures great and small, a donation in lieu of wedding favors has been made the Washington Animal Rescue League in honor of all the guests".”

The second, was the opportunity to decorate a gorgeous vegan cake from my favorite vegan bakery Sticky Fingers! Kambor from Sticky Fingers and I decorated the cake with dahlias, mini sunflowers and some pretty yellow and pink yarrow. I think it turned out great!

Big thanks to one of my fave photographers Jocelyn Mathewes of Studio Mathewes for the beautiful photos!   Jocelyn is great at what she does, she is super creative and dedicated…and she is just so nice to work with!

All the flowers for this wedding came from Belvedere Farm, Locust Point Flowers and Talmar.  In case I haven’t mentioned it, our growers ROCK!

Thanks too to Jen and Marina-locoflo’s star designers and to Tiffany-for helping to deliver for the first time! She did a great job-and said she’ll definitely help again.

And finally, congratulations to a truly wonderful couple. (I’m a little teary just thinking about them! ) Thank you for letting locoflo be part of your special day!

To see more photos from Andrew and Alyssa’s Wedding, check out our flickr page or Jocelyn’s blog.

August 15, 2010: A Sneak Peak at the Flowers

Three weddings in the last three days!  This weeks weddings were so much fun-so unique, so creative and so colorful!

Our first wedding of the weekend was Shelley and Bynum’s wedding at the Howard County Conservancy. Shelley wanted a super colorful, seasonal bouquet.  We filled Shelley’s bouquet with orange zinnias, dahlias and coxcomb, pink zinnias, dahlias and celosia, yellow zinnias, purple gomphrena and a little splash of mountain mint.

Our second wedding of the weekend was Megan and Lee’s Baltimore themed wedding in Fells Point.  I LOVED her cake and cake topper!

Our last wedding of the weekend was Annie and Josh’s wedding down in Arlington. Annie and Josh are a really wonderful couple who wanted their centerpieces to be full of local fruits and veggies that they were going to donate to the DC Food Bank at the end of the night. Over 120 pound of local fruits (from Reid Orchards) and veggies (from Breidenbaugh Farms) were used in these beautiful centerpieces.

(tomatoes…in case you were wondering)

(plums…with zinnias)

(a martini glass for the bride and groom’s sweetheart table with zebra tomatoes, gomphrena, white statice and salvia)

Thanks to all of our growers and suppliers this week including Belvedere Farm, Bridge Farm Nursery, Locust Point Flowers, Talmar, Reid’s Orchards and Breidenbaugh Farm.

Thanks to to all of the LoCoFlo designers, deliverers and helpers. LoCoFlo loves you!

August 7, 2010: A Sneak Peak at the Flowers

This was a big wedding weekend for LoCoFlo. We had two great weddings this past weekend.

Saturday morning’s wedding at the Pete Rawlings Conservatory at Druid Hill Park was such a great Baltimore Summer Wedding.  The bride was wearing a vintage Mexican  wedding dress and wanted flowers that would compliment that colorful embroidered flowers on her dress.

We filled her bouquet with red zinnias, asclepias, coxcomb and gomphrena. We also included bright yellow zinnias, purple salvia, statice and gomphrena. Finally we added fragrant green mountain mint and rose scented geranium. 

The bride provided her own vases including this beautiful purple glass vase and colorful Spanish bottle seen below.

It was just a beautiful vibrant wedding!  Saturday evening’s wedding was also vibrant and lush and unique. Anna and Matt got married at the American Visionary Arts Museum. Anna wanted unique, modern and eclectic flowers in deep purple, orange and lime green.

We made two different centerpieces for the tables. The first, a 5 inch by 5 inch cube was full of green hydrangea and green emerald tassels, orange zinnias, coxcomb, asclepias and gomphrena and deep purple buddleia and and gomphrena.

The second set up tables had a similar cube (but a little smaller), a small little cube with an orange zinnia and a tall square vases with one single, beautiful gladiola.

Thanks to everyone who helped out this weekend. All of LoCoFlo’s growers were great this week! I really did buy every orange flower within about 50 miles of Baltimore. All of this weekend’s flowers came from Belvedere Farm, Bridge Farm Nursery, Locust Point Flowers, Pahl’s Farm and Talmar. Thanks to our great LoCoFlo designers Jen and Marina and our delivery helpers Cathy (seen above working hard) and Eric!

Summer Beauty

Someone ordered a single arrangement today to send to a friend. She said she wanted summer cut flowers-bright-and unique. The card read simply: Live the Life You Have Imagined-Henry David Thoreau. I loved it. It was a great  inspiration for me today. Were you inspired today?

Way to Go California! Way to Go!

Today, a judge in California overturned Prop 8, which banned same sex marriage in California. It’s about time!  The fight for gay marriage in California has been going on for years. It hit home for me back in the winter of 2004-which was better known as the “Winter of Love”.

My dear friend Susannah called me one night from the one of the coldest places on earth in the winter…Portland Maine. She and her long time girlfriend, the fabulous Bo Walker, had been living in Maine for a year while Bo went to boat building school. Susannah and I became friends when we worked together in San Francisco at TNDC. She told me that San Francisco’s mayor Gavin Newsome was going to allow same same sex marriage in the city for the first time starting in a few weeks. Everyone was so excited and nervous…because clearly Gavin Newsom was…breaking the law…sort of. Bo and Susannah, deprived of San Francisco’s good vibes for the past year, committed to the right of all couples to be able to marry if they want to and deeply in love with each other…decided they needed to be there. And they wanted me to be there. Things were tentative for a few days, because they weren’t sure if they could get a date/time at City Hall because it was a mob scene! Celebrities were getting married, politicians were getting married…long time gay rights activists and idealistic young couples were getting married. Everyone was trying to get in before the Attorney General put the kibosh on it! 

So Bo’s lovely aunt (a san Francisco judge) got them an appointment-one week from then-to get married at San Francisco’s City Hall. In one week,  everything came together-flights, a ceremony, outfits, flowers, brunch and a fab party back at their house. On a cool March day, surrounded by a half dozen or so family and friends, my dear friends Bo and Susannah got married. I don't have pictures (Susannah would-but she’s not on Facebook!) but I can tell you that in San Francisco’s historic City Hall, on that sunny, cool winter day, amidst the history making of that month, I have never felt more love or felt more proud to witness a wedding than I did that day.

Since then, there have been set backs for sure-annulment of the 4038 winter of love marriages being one of the worst. I sent Susannah a note today and said “If I lived in San Francisco, I would meet you after work for a cocktail to celebrate. Then we we go to Civic Center to  the rally to share the love with the rest of San Francisco  and we would finish the night off with burritos at Cancun. Perfect”.

I love and miss my friends dearly. Today is definitely a day to celebrate –love, friendship and equality for all.

Last Week of July: Sneak Peak at the Flowers

This past week was a great LoCoFlo week! It was so full of wonderful people and events. The week started with delivering flowers to the University of Maryland Baltimore for our second week of flower-selling there. Wednesday, I made half a dozen arrangements for a fundraising breakfast for GEDCO (love them!) and Thursday I provide several arrangements to Jordan Faye Contemporary for a reception honoring artist Kate Mackinnon.

Kate’s work is so colorful and bold that Jordan wanted the flowers to be subtle. Inspired by this weekends weddings, we used white lilies, basil, mint, whit lisianthus and white statice. I especially loved these little 2x2 cubes for the cocktail tables.

Saturday we had two beautiful weddings. The first was a morning wedding at Naylor Vineyard in Pennsylvania. The bouquets and centerpieces were made primarily with herbs and splashes of white and purple flowers. Perfect for the vineyard.

On Saturday evening, we worked on a beautiful summer wedding at one of my favorite venues: Woodend Sanctuary. The bride wanted to have flowers in all shades of pink with a splash of green and lavender.  We used zinnias, lisianthus, dahlias crested celosia and phlox for the bouquets.

We added bells of Ireland, mountain mint and and plume celosia for the ceremony arrangements.

It was a really fun, challenging, creative week. Thanks to this weeks growers: Locust Point Flowers, Belvedere Farm, Bridge Farm Nursery and Talmar Gardens. Thanks too to Jen and Marina for such great design work-and Eric for driving all over PA and MD to help me deliver flowers. Looking forward to this coming week!

August Wedding Flowers...Before the Big Day

I went out to Bridge Farm Nursery today to pick up some flowers for this weekend and to visit with Mel (the farmer and owner of  the farm) and Eric (farm hand extraordinaire).  These guys are both awesome to work with. Bridge Farm Nursery is in Cockeysville (about a 5 minute drive from Wegmans).  It is a beautiful farm with annuals, perennials, lots of woody plants and loads of flowering trees.

In addition to picking up flowers for this week’s wedding (which will be coming soon in this week’s What’s Blooming), I wanted to check on some flowers for next week’s brides. Our brides are SO creative and eclectic and just plain cool. One bride next week, Marnie, is wearing a vintage Mexican wedding dress and wants flowers in deep and bright reds, yellows, purples and oranges. Another bride, Anna, is getting married at the American Visionary Arts Museum. Her colors are plum purple, orange and bright green.

As Mel and I walked around, I was so inspired by everything that was blooming.

Cool, green hydrangeas

Orange Asclepias (with butterfly)

Mel checks out the orange asclepias (with loads of butterflies)

Deep red asclepias

 

Velvety celosia in red, orange and pink

What a great way to spend the  morning right? More to come-when we get these flowers next week and arrange them into fab bouquets and centerpieces for our brides. Check back to see!