After: Bernie's wedding

Well I am back to show you how Bernie's wedding flowers turned out. It was such a beautiful wedding. I was lucky enough to get to stay for the ceremony and I have never been as emotional and had as much fun as I did at Bernie's wedding. It was a very personal service and there was so much love. My favourite part was when Father George got Bernie to play her piano (she plays the piano for the church band), and she sang the song "Everything' to her new adoring husband. Congratulations Bernie and Jamie! Thank you so much for letting me share your beautiful wedding day. I hope you both have a very happy, healthy and long life together.

So I suppose you want to see some flowers!

Here is Bernie's wedding bouquet: consisting of ivory roses, white lisianthus and a touch of purple lisianthus

And the bridesmaids: consisting of ivory roses, mauve roses, white lisianthus and purple lisianthus

The flower girls held cute little wands: consisting of ivory spray roses and purple lisianthus

And finally the buttonholes and corsages: consisting of ivory roses and purple lisianthus

Before: Bernie's wedding

I am looking so forward to this weekend! My dear friend Bernie is getting married!

Bernie and I met in primary school and continued on to high school together. We lost touch after school for many years but managed to bump in to each other again on the ever famous 'facebook' (as many people do). I was really excited when I met up with Bernie to discuss her wedding flowers. There was soooooooo many years of catching up to do and I found that she is still just as gorgeous as she ever was.

Bernie is having bouquets featuring roses and lisianthus. Lisianthus is a flower available most times of the year, but wouldn't you know it? All of a sudden the lisianthus have become extremely rare at market! It has been an extremely anxious week for me just praying that I could get them and when I turned up to market this morning, my supplier came up with the goods! I'm extremely happy!

So these are the flowers that I am working with:

From the top left: pink tiger lilies (for some special gift bouquets that Bernie would like to hand out at the reception), camellia leaves, vibernum leaves, ivory roses and white lisianthus for the bride, and 4 other buckets of ivory roses, white lisianthus, and mauve roses for the bridesmaids, and a seperate vase of purple lisianthus to be used throughout all of the bouquets.

I'll be back after the weekend with some pictures of how Bernie's flowers turned out. I hope she loves them!

I Do Cupcakes (& more)

I Do Cupcakes has just relocated to the Central Coast.

My sister Gerri is the owner of I Do Cupcakes and has been servicing many weddings in the Newcastle and Hunter Valley market with her delicious cakes. Now she has opened her very own cafe/bakery in Gosford so we can finally have access to all of the yumminess!

Her cafe/bakery is called I Do Cupcakes & more and is located in William Street, Gosford. It's right across the road from the new look Kibble park. She makes cupcakes, pastries, tarts, cakes, croissants, scones, pies and sausage rolls, quiches, sandwiches, and a variety of hot food. And on top of all of that, she still does wedding cakes and other events. Go and check it out.

Here is a quick tour:

How cute is Gerri, all happy making her cupcakes?!

Here is a small selection of her famous cupcakes (there are more than 20 flavours available): chocolate jaffa mud cake, white chocolate mud cake and chocolate peppermint mud cake

MMmmmmmmmm - custard tarts:

Strawberry tarts and fruit tarts:

and some profiteroles:

Oh - I just made myself very hungry!

After: Janine's wedding

What a gorgeous weekend we just had! The sun was beaming, there was a light wind, it wasn't too hot but wasn't cold at all - GORGEOUS! And absolutely perfect for a wedding.

On Saturday I had to deliver Janine's wedding flowers. Here are a few photos of what she had.

Brides Bouquet - a wired teardrop bouquet of white and yellow tulips with camellia leaves

Bridesmaids Bouquets - small natural stem posy bouquets of yellow tulips with a frame of camellia leaves

The groom had a buttonhole with a yellow tulip and a couple of white singapore orchids on camellia leaves, whilst his two groomsmen had a plain yellow tulip on camellia leaves. His mother had a dress corsage of white singapore ochids

Janine also had a buttonhole for her Dad with a single yellow tulip on camellia leaves, and her Mum had a white singapore orchid dress corsage. Janine also had some white singapore orchids wired individually to place in her hair
And lastly, the bridesmaids had some yellow vanda orchids individually wired to place in their hair, and the flower girls wore a halo of yellow vanda orchids and had some yellow petals to throw around
It would have been such a gorgeous wedding! I hope you had a wonderful day Janine!

Before: Janine's wedding

It's another fun wedding weekend! Janine is getting married on Saturday and I will be busy making all of the arrangements tomorrow. The bridal bouquet will be a teardrop shape of white and yellow tulips, and her two bridesmaids will have small posies of yellow tulips. There will also be two little flower girls who will carry baskets of yellow rose petals and have a halo of yellow vanda orchids in their hair. They're going to look so cute! And lastly we will have the buttonholes, corsages, and a few single orchids to be used as hair flowers. So this is what I am starting with: (someone seriously has to teach me how to take a clear photo)! So from the bottom left we have some camellia, above it are some white singapore orchids, then we have some white and yellow tulips (some of them are still a bit green so I will leave them out overnight to get the morning sun and some warm air and they will colour up. The other ones that are ready to use will find a home in the fridge until I need them). Lastly, at the bottom of the photo are the yellow vanda orchids that we will use for hair flowers and halo's. I'll come back next week and show you how everything looked.

Flower Of The Month

It is the first day of Spring and I absolutely adore this time of year. The sun shines again, the days are longer, there is a sweet scent in the air, and there are so many gorgeous varieties of flowers that come into season. One such flower is the sweet pea.

Not just sweet by name, they also have the sweetest perfume ever. They look pretty, delicate and dainty which gives a light fluffy texture when used in bouquets.

Flower: Sweet Pea

Botanical Name: Lathyrus

Origin: Sicily

Season: late Winter and Spring

Colour/s: white, cream, pink shades, mauve shades, purple and maroon

Meaning: delicate or blissful pleasure

Bouquet Shapes: Cascading bouquet

This is the last of our series of bouquet shapes.

OK so this is the cascade bouquet. It is also known as a multiple-trail bouquet or a shower bouquet.

This bouquet can be quite large and even though it is a wired bouquet, it has more of a loose, unstructured feel to it. It is different to the trailing and teardrop bouquets because the trail does not lead to one point. It has various trails that fall from the top of the bouquet and flow down towards the floor. The trails are in random positions and can be various different lengths which can make it look as neat or as messy as you would like.

The trails can be formed by flowers or foliages. One of the easiest flowers to use for this style of bouquet is the singapore orchid. But you can use many different flowers such as roses, tulips, gladioli, hyacinths, jasmine, stephanotis and tuberoses. And the same look can be achieved through foliages such as ivy, asparagus fern, dodda vine, berries and tropical leaves.

After: Tammy's wedding

I said I would be back with some photos of Tammy's wedding flowers and here I am.

I'll get straight into it and show you a few of the flowers we had to start with.

We had dark purple lisianthus, white roses and white tulips which were to be used in all of the bouquets, and then we also had some purple kale as a special extra to use in the brides bouquet.

This is what they ended up like.

The flower girl posy:

The bridesmaid posy:

The bride posy:

This is how we decorated all of the bouquet stems:

And lastly the buttonholes and corsages:

I'm not a good photographer so my photos never look that great. But hopefully Tammy will send me some of her professional photos after the wedding so that you can see them in all their glory!

Before: Tammy's Wedding

It's a wedding week for me and I can't wait to get into it. I have a client Tammy who is getting married this weekend. I'm pretty excited to make her wedding bouquet because she has picked something that I don't often get to use for wedding flowers. This picture from a wedding flower magazine is the inspiration we are using for Tammy's bouquet. It includes: white roses, dark purple lisianthus and kale. Kale is also known as 'ornamental cabbage' and whilst I have used it often in day to day floristry, I have never had an opportunity to use it in a wedding bouquet. We will also include some white tulips in Tammy's bouquet and different foliage so the overall look will be the same , but different - if that makes any sense at all. LOL!! Tammy's bridesmaid and flower girl will have bouquets of white roses, white tuips and just a touch of dark purple lisianthus. No kale for them as that will be a special feature in the bridal bouquet. I'll make sure to post some photos of how they turn out.

Flower Of The Month

One of the most popular wedding flowers used throughout Winter and Spring is the Tulip. Tulips are actually one of the most popular cut flower varieties to be used worldwide, coming third after roses and chrysanthemums. It's not hard to see why, they are an extremely elegant flower and it makes them very versatile in bouquets and arrangements.

Tulips can be a bit fiddly to work with. They have a thick bendy stem, and from personal experience, when I am making a natural stem bridal bouquet, sometimes it is hard to fit my hands around the whole base of the stems. The other issue you face when using tulips, is that after they are cut, they keep on growing towards the light. A tulip can grow up to 20 centimetres from the time they are picked, to the end of their life span. So when you are using them in bouquets or arrangements with other flowers, you need to place them slightly lower than where you want them to sit because they will grow.

Once you know how to handle them, tulips are fantastic to work with. They like the colder weather, so even though they are available all year round, I will only work with them in the cooler months when I know they can withstand a wedding day. When it is too warm for them the flowers will blow completely open and the stems will droop over. It's not a good look for one of the most important days in your life so I won't risk it.

Flower: Tulip

Botanical Name: Tulipa

Origin: Turkey

Season: their natural season is late winter and spring, however they are grown all year round

Colour/s: white, cream, red, orange, yellow, pink, purple and lots of variegations

Meaning: perfect love (and depending on colour, fame or declaration of love)