We love weddings that take place during week days. Usually we see a lot of Friday weddings but this time around we got something a tad unexpected with a Monday wedding. I got the “Who gets married on Mondays?” over and over again. But as I discovered ….I love Monday weddings! To answer everyone’s question… Jennifer and Jason got married at the Metropolitan Club in the Willis Tower 66th Floor (or how some of us ol’ foggies still like to call it Sears Tower).

Jennifer chose lots of bold pinks and light pinks. She loved peonies but since her wedding was taking place in the middle of July she knew those were out of the question. Little did she know I had a trick up my sleeve and was able to surprise her with peonies in the middle of July. Thanks to globalization that is possible these days.

Jennifer’s bridal bouquet consisted of light pink peonies, white cymbidium orchids, Yves Piaget Roses and white roses.

The bridesmaids bouquets consisted of pink unique roses, light pink peonies, hot lady pink roses, light pink spray roses and green cymbidiums

Jennifer and her beautiful bridesmaids

Jennifer and Jason… Congrats!

Wedding cake with small touches of light pink peonies and light pink mokara orchids

Photo Credit: A thousand thanks goes out to Albert Yau at Second Print Productions Photography.  Please visit their blog to view more of their amazing work!

Jennifer’s centerpieces were dark manzanita branches with hot pink mokara blooms, hanging votive candles and crystals.

Wished I had Second Print Productions photography skills but I don’t. This last picture was taken by me.

A few months back we had the pleasure of creating a beautiful wedding for a bride that wanted lily of the valley flowers in her bouquet and in her groom’s boutonniere. The wedding was taking place in the middle of August so getting lily of the valley locally was going to prove a challenge. Actually, it was impossible.  As a side note, lily of the valley is a spring flower  and not available locally in Chicago in the month of August. However thanks to globalization my wholesaler can find it elsewhere for a very steep price. The wedding week came, I made no promises to the bride but I did tell her that I would order it and if the one bunch I ordered made it I would add it into her bouquet.  To my luck, and the bride’s the lily of the valley was available. All I needed was that one bunch. That one bunch of ten stems in the retail market went for $250. It was important to this bride and she was happy to pay the cost to have that one important flower in her bouquet.

Morale of this story….  Talk to your florist / designer about what flowers are in season at the time you are getting married. Let them know what you like and be open to hearing “they are not in season but we can substitute it for X”.

We recently created flowers for a client whom we never got the chance to meet. The bride was way too busy with work to meet with us in person but thru emails and phone calls we were able to create flowers for her wedding this past August. It was a pink gerber daises galore with a lot of hot pink roses and small touches of billy balls (masqueraded as brunia) and dusty miller to give it a pop of gray mixed in.

After seeing some of the pictures by the talented Steve Koo I realized that the flowers my client Allison had chosen matched her to a T. Gerber Daises are for brides who like to have fun and have a cheery personality about them.

Congratulations to Allison and Jacob!

To view more pictures from this wedding and hear all the details…please visit Steve Koo’s website and blog

It’s been a while since we’ve blogged some pretty pictures of our events. I’ve been patiently waiting for professional pictures (because let’s face it I’m not a good photographer at all) and some free time to share them with you. I finally got a few snippets from some of our favorite photographers so we decided to start blogging again.

We had the opportunity to work with Amara and Dan for their mid August wedding in downtown Chicago.  Amara was an out of town bride who decided to get married in Chicago. She is one of the “last mohicans” planning group as I no longer plan weddings. Planning her wedding was an absolute pleasure. I always got a good laugh every time I talked to her. I’m certainly going to miss our late night phone calls as she lives out west and used to work the third shift as an oncology nurse (she got a better job now!). The ceremony took place at St. James Chapel and the reception at the Knickerbocker Hotel.

Although Amara lives out in Los Angeles (she’s a Cali gal) she grew up in Wisconsin and when it came to flowers she tended to go towards traditional and timeless.We created a beautiful bouquet of Red Wanted Roses, Red Mini Scarlet Spray Roses and Red Freedom Roses. The bridesmaids wore burgundy dresses and carried bouquets made of ivory roses, white majolica spray roses with white stock. For the reception florals we created a combination of tall centerpieces of white hydrangeas, white stock and burgundy asiatic lilies, pittosporum with burgundy hanging amaranthus. We also had lows centerpieces with the same flower combination and candle collections as the ballroom at the Knickerbocker Hotel is an absolute beauty and we wanted to ensure guests got a chance to enjoy it in all it’s candlelight splendor.

We also created a tall manzanita branch arrangement for the escort card table with hanging candles and hanging white kissing balls made of white orchids.

Photo Credit: Studio Starling