Before: Rebecca's wedding

I met the sweetest couple Rebecca and Kristian just before Christmas. They live in Sydney and are planning a wedding in the beautiful Hunter Valley.

I was slightly nervous when meeting this couple as they had made a special detour to the Central Coast just to see me! Rebecca had made an appointment to talk to a Hunter florist, but then she came across my website and loved my work so much that she cancelled the meeting and had to come and visit me instead. I was really hoping that I would live up to their expectations, and when they booked me on the spot - I was thrilled.

I just adore the flowers that Rebecca and Kristian have chosen:

From left to right: white david austin roses, white dahlias and white hydrangea

The wedding is on Monday... (yes you read that right - a Monday) so I won't be able to show you any 'after' photos until next week. Hope you can handle the wait ;-)

Gosford Golf Club Bridal Fair

This Sunday I will be exhibiting at the Gosford Golf Club Bridal fair. There will be plenty of exhibitors to visit, so feel free to pop in and meet us. Here are the details:

What: Gosford Golf Club Bridal Fair
Where: Gosford Golf and Function Centre, Racecourse Rd, Gosford
When: Sunday 31st January 2010
Time: 10am - 4.30pm
Price: free

There is plenty of parking on site too! See you there!

After: Amanda's wedding

When I was planning for my wedding there was one thing that everyone kept telling me - 'you can't control the weather'. And that was surely the case for Amanda's wedding this weekend.

She had an outdoor ceremony and reception planned at a beautiful property in Mirrabooka (up in Lake Macquarie). It started as a boiling hot, sticky and uncomfortable 40 degree + day, and ended in a crazy windy, rainy day. I hope everything managed to go well even if the plans had to be changed around at the last minute!

Here are the flowers..........

Bride bouquet: a heart shaped posy of white artificial calla lilies

and a side view: Amanda bought some diamante letters for me to attach to each of the bouquets and some of the corsages (so she had an 'A' for Amanda on her bouquet). They looked great!

Bridesmaid bouquet: a posy of white artificial calla lilies

Groom and Groomsmen buttonholes: white artificial calla lilies (the groom one is slightly different with an extra touch of leaves)

Then we had some VIP buttonholes: white roses

The Mother of the Groom got her own artificial calla liliy corsage, whilst the Mother of the Bride (and some other VIP's) had a corsage of white spray roses:

Amanda - it was such a pleasure to meet you and I hope you had an amzing wedding day! xxx

Before: Amanda's wedding

It is our first wedding of 2010!

Amanda is getting married this weekend and we have been planning her wedding flowers for quite a while. She always knew she wanted to have calla lilies and she had a particular image in her mind that her bouquet would be in the shape of a heart. Here is a picture of the type of thing she had in mind:

Amanda really wanted to be able to keep her bouquet after her wedding day so there was a little bit of a debate about whether to use fresh calla lilies and have them preserved, or if we would try to use the artificial type. Once I sent Amanda a sample of an artificial calla lily to look at, she was happy to go with them. And can I say that with the heat that is expected over the weekend, I am soooooo happy that she decided on the artificials.

Here is what we are using this week:

These are the artificial calla lilies - some still in their wrapping. We are using these for the bridal party bouquet and buttonholes.

And these are fresh roses, and spray roses for some other buttonholes, corsages and bracelets. And some rose petals to be used for the aisle and petal cones.

I'll be back on Monday to show you the results. Have a great weekend everyone!

It's been a while!

So we are a couple of weeks into the New Year, and I'm only just getting around to my first post of the year. You must think that I have been having an extra long and relaxing Christmas break! I wish!!! I have been absolutely flat out since Christmas with many consultations. It's been fun meeting so many new brides and hearing all about their plans.

Next week we get back to normal with our first wedding of 2010. And just for something a bit different, it is mostly artificial flowers being used! I'll be back through the week to show you more details.

Other than that, we have just joined the world of twitter. If you have a twitter account, there is a link to the right of your page >>>> (you may have to go down the page a little bit) that you can click to follow us or follow this link here http://twitter.com/TheKissingTree.



We have also been planning for the Gosford Golf Club Bridal Fair coming up in a couple of weeks, as well as some more weddings. Phew... there is alot happening at the moment.

Catch you all around soon.

After: Nina's wedding (part 2)

It's my final post of 2009!

Let me start by saying that I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! And best wishes for an amazing 2010!

To finish off the year at The Kissing Tree, I am going to post some photos from the last wedding I did. They are photos from Nina's wedding a couple of weeks ago. Nina used the same fantastic photographer that I had for my wedding so I was able to get a few professional photographs from their day.

Here are some flower photos from Nina's wedding. The wedding was held at Leaves and Fishes in the beautiful Hunter Valley and the photos were taken by the talented team at Delisser Photography:

Thank you Julie from Delisser Photography for sending me the images, and special thanks to Nina for letting me post them so that everyone could see how beautiful your wedding was! The colour of the flowers looked so great against the dresses. You chose well!

Thank you to all of my brides in 2009! I have felt so lucky to take part in such a special day of your lives, and have been so impressed with all of the great people that I have met. My brides are honestly the best and most lovely brides I could ever ask for!

Talk to you all next year! Bring on 2010!

Wedding Magazine photoshoot

Every year around easter time the wedding bible comes out. It is the Newcastle Central Coast Wedding magazine and covers everything you will need to plan your wedding anywhere in Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, The Hunter Valley or Central Coast.

Last week I needed to make a bouquet to appear in the next edition of the magazine. I decided to keep it simple and use flowers that are available at all times of year. But at the last minute, I was tempted by some gorgeous garden roses that have just come into season. Oops - there goes the 'available all year' theory out the window.

I drove my bouquet up to Redhead where a professional photographer took a photo of my bouquet. You will have to wait to see the great photo he took in next years magazine, but until then you can see the dodgy photo I took instead.

It has cream and champagne roses, cream garden roses, white lisianthus and cream lisianthus.

After: Nina's wedding

Well this is the last wedding of the year! I have a break of about a month so I will start the 'before' and 'after' wedding stories when my weddings commence again next year.

Nina was married on Saturday in the Hunter Valley and it was a perfect day. Here are how her wedding flowers looked.

Bride bouquet: small posy of ivory roses, white freesias and berzellia

Bridesmaids bouquet: small posy of ivory roses, pink roses, pink freesias and berzellia

Here is how the flowers are packed before they are delivered. There is a brides bouquet, 2 bridesmaids bouquets and a small bridal toss bouquet:

The bridal toss bouquet is a mini posy of the bride bouquet. I usually call it a throwaway and include it complimentry in each order. This is what it looked like:

Now for the buttonholes. There are no corsages to show this week as the Mum's didn't want to have one.

Groom buttonhole: an ivory rose, white freesia and berzellia on camellia leaves

Best Man buttonhole: an ivory rose, pink freesia and berzellia on camellia leaves

Dad's Buttonholes: a single ivory rose with berzellia on a camellia leaf

That is all of the flowers for this week. Hope you liked them!

And to Nina - congratulations!!! I hope you had the most perfect wedding and I look forward to hearing all about how special it was.

Before: Nina's wedding

A few months ago I got an enquiry on my email from Nina. The funny thing was that I recognised Nina's name straight away. She was a girl that I went to high school with! She had just filled out a random enquiry for a random florist and had no idea that I was on the other side.
We arranged a consultation and it was so much fun catching up. Nina is hilarious and we spent ages talking before we even got to organising her wedding flowers. She is planning a small casual wedding in the Hunter Valley and it sounds beautiful.

Here are the flowers that Nina will be having:

From the back there are ivory roses, pink roses, berzellia, camellia leaves, and at the front are white freesias and hot pink freesias.

Aren't these gorgeous roses? I love my rose grower.

I'll be back after the weekend to show you Nina's flowers.

After: Natalie's wedding

On Saturday I had the absolute honour of attending Natalie's wedding. She is such a beautiful girl and I knew she would make a stunning bride - but even I was gobsmacked when I saw how gorgeous she looked!

Here are the flowers that I made for Nat.

Bride Bouquet: posy of white peonies, ivory david austin roses, white roses, ivory roses and white lisianthus

Bridesmaids Bouquet: white peonies, ivory david austin roses, white roses, ivory roses, red roses and white lisianthus

I've just realised that I didn't take photos of the bridal party buttonholes or the Mum's corsages. The groom and groomsmen had rose buttonholes, and the Mum's had singapore orchid dress corsages so you have seen both of those before, but it probably still would have been nice if I had taken a photo of them to add here.

I did get a photo of the Dad's buttonhole which included a white rose and white lisianthus flower. And we also had some extra corsages of white spray roses for a couple of extra special guests.

Nat was so excited to see her flowers and her, her maid of honour and her Mum all greeted me at my car when I arrived. I was so happy that Nat loved her flowers. She didn't just love them, she LLLLUUURRVVEEDD them!! And so many people commented on how beautiful they were. It was a very rewarding day.

To my gorgeous Nat - I was always looking forward to your wedding and was completely stoked when I was asked to attend. Thanks for having me, it was a great night with lots of great people. I hope it was everything that you ever dreamed for it to be, and that you and Jeff live happily ever after xxx