White Peony & Garden Rose w/ Succulent Bouquets

These bouquets were for a Palm Springs wedding this past June. The wonderful Kamee June was the photographer and she sent over a few beautiful shots of the flowers that I wanted to share.The bride requested an all white, lush yet tight, design with a few succulents added in. Enjoy the photos of the bouquets along with the gorgeous Bride and Groom (and their adorable baby girl) below! If you're a flower lover looking for design tips, check the bottom for some tricks I've learned with dealing with succulents and the extreme heat issues working in Southern California can bring about.

I used white peonies, white and cream garden roses from Rose Lane Farms in North Hollywood, white lisianthus, and echevaria succulents. I wrapped the stems in a tight handle with white eyelet ribbon.

The bride and her family put together these cute little succulents as favors for their guests. They worked perfectly with the setting and climate; and they're such a great gift as they can be easily planted once guests return home. I also love the little rustic detail of wrapping them in burlap.

Aren't they a beautiful family? Just gorgeous...

I always love a shot from weddings that show such joy and elation after the ceremony is over. It's like the culmination of so much planning and work is over and now it's finally time to party. From what I heard about this wedding - there was no lack of celebration. My kind of wedding for sure!

Ok, that's it for today! I'll try and have 2 posts ready for next week. Wedding season and my cutie pie Bass have kept me so busy it's been hard to stay up to date on blogging. But... some new and exciting posts are in the works, so keep coming back!! xoxo 

Some design tips...

So... I've learned a few key tricks when dealing with first of all Palm Springs, and second of all, succulents. Having (other than the past year) all my floral design experience in the Bay, I'm still learning how to deal with the - sometimes extremely - high temperatures in Southern California. Palm Springs and flowers, especially spring blooms, are not a good pairing. I did a shoot out there a few weeks ago and after an hour out of water, the flowers looked like they were literally melting. Now I know... A few tricks I picked up are, the tighter the bouquet the better. When the flowers are designed tightly, they can support each other as they start to fade. If you want a loose, more wild, type of design, just know that your bouquets will not hold up and you should get photos of them immediately after taking them out of water. And take them out of water right before your ceremony. The second thing is, I wouldn't keep the flowers overly cold before introducing them to 100+F. That temperature shock can sometimes make them wilt faster with a smaller likelihood of reconstituting them with cutting their stems and putting them back in water. 

Now for succulents... make sure you wire them with a heavier gauge wire and still have them supported by other blooms. They can sometimes have such heavy heads that over the course of an event, the weight will pull on the wire and the bouquet will lose it's shape. If you have a secondary back-up of of the flowers supporting the succulents, your arrangement should last through the wedding just fine. But the problem with a hot climate affects this in that the flowers fade so much faster that they won't support the weight. If this is the case, just make sure you realize this will happen and keep the bouquets in water for as long as possible