Oh sigh, gorgeous photos just in from Phil Seaton of Living Photo from one of our January weddings:

Glowing Candlelight and Flowers. Photo by Phil Seaton of Living Photo.

The wedding ceremony and reception took place at the Hotel Marlowe – dramatic and funky – the perfect spot to have an beautiful and swanky dinner party wedding for 50 guests.

Full Room View. Photo by Phil Seaton of Living Photo.

The room view is lovely isn’t it? Full of beautiful ambient candlelight – just what the bride wanted. Also note how the dark colored tablecloths make the room even more dramatic. The touches of color are really only the reds and greens of the flowers. Very theatrical.

Detail of Table. Photo by Phil Seaton of Living Photo.

Fiji Mum with Candles. Photo by Phil Seaton of Living Photo.

It’s all about the small details. Above you can see one of the floating flowers we did on each table. Along with tons of candles on each table (there were around 18 candles of various shapes and sizes on each table!!) and crystals, a lot of small touches added up something supremely elegant and stylish.

The stylie wedding party. Photo by Phil Seaton of Living Photo.

Maid of Honor. Photo by Phil Seaton of Living Photo.

And above, a detail of the bouquet – very simple and small – featuring mini chartreuse mums and geranium leaf accents. For the Maid-of-Honor we also tied a grosgrain ribbon of the same green around the handle.

Bridal Bouquet. Photo by Channing Johnson.

Our photo shoot earlier that week with photographer Channing Johnson also generated some lovely up close photos of the bridal bouquet and bridesmaid bouquets:

Bridesmaid Bouquets. Photo by Channing Johnson.

Bride and Groom with Bridesmaids. Photo by Phil Seaton of Living Photo.

Thanks again to Phil Seaton for sharing his beautiful photos from the day!

Floral design by Petalena.

At the end of December Apryl and I did the wedding flowers for my friend Gretchen.  It was a fun wedding to do, Gretchen and her wife Lilly really gave us carte blanche to pick flowers that would work best to evoke a Spanish feeling. We had a great time picking out beautiful magenta-red orchids, blush white tuberose and fiddleheads!

Gardenia Posie Bouquet. Photo by Matt Hakola.

Gretchen loves gardenias but wanted something small and petite for her bouquet.
We incorporated three gardenias, a few tufts of tuberose, and a few fiddleheads for the romantic and petite bouquet seen above.

Bride and Bride at the Hotel Marlowe Lounge. Photo by Matt Hakola.

Here are the bride and bride at the very cool lounge of the Hotel Marlowe. For Lilly, we did a red pin-on corsage as she didn’t want to hold a traditional bouquet or worry about something hanging off of her wrist.

Sweet Little Homer. Photo by Matt Hakola.

Gretchen and Lilly have the sweetest dog, Homer. They rescued him from the streets in Austin, Texas. He’s half pug/half beagle. He loved posing for the camera, ah, the center of attention!

Pretty Lace-Patterned Placecards.

Gretchen did a great job incorporating little luxurious touches into the wedding. These place cards by Martha Stewart subtlety matched the lace of Gretchen’s dress and evoked an elegant feel.

And now, onto the flowers:

Table Flowers. Photo by Matt Hakola.

Detail of Table Flowers. Photo by Matt Hakola.

Apryl and I were really happy with how the flowers for the dinner tables turned out. Exotic and fun! We also wrapped some interesting vine material around each vase for additional texture; I think that added a really unique touch.

Gretchen and Lilly really went all out with their Spanish theme by getting a flamenco dancer and guitarist:

Flamenco Dancer. Photo by Matt Hakola.

All and all it was a fabulous wedding and a fabulous soiree!

Photo by Matt Hakola
Venue and Catering: Hotel Marlowe, Cambridge, MA
Floral Designs by Petalena

Apryl and I just met with one our lovely brides and her sweet fiance yesterday to do a mock-up for the table design. Mock-ups are a bit tricky, I feel like they never look as beautiful as final product since you’re not buying as much flower-wise as you do when it comes to the actual day. But at the same time, I totally understand why some brides like doing them, it’s reassuring and great to see the flowers.

We adore this bride – she’s quirky with a great design sensibility and knows exactly what she wants to boot!  The inspiration for the design is a fabulous picture from The Knot’s 2008 spring/summer issue “10 Wedding Wow Factors:”

Table design by In Any Event. Photo by Erik Ekroth Photography.

It’s all about the details, the bride and groom are having a small swanky dinner party style wedding at the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge with long ‘Roman style’ tables filled with candlelight and flowers.  If you’re thinking about a really layered beautiful look for your wedding like this bride is, you’ve got to think about a lot of small details (or work with someone who can do that for you!). This wedding is going to be gorgeous because:

~ Tons of candles – our bride went all out on the candles, hunting for them everywhere, finding a varied scale of hurricane candles, tall tapered candles and tiny votives. It’s going to be gorgeous.

~ Going with the linens you really want – a lot of folks end up going with ivory or white since it is usually included in the baseline catering costs, but to set a more dramatic tone, changing up the linens for something more unusual is the way to go. Our bride will be using gorgeous pin-tucked espresso brown linens to add drama and texture. Of course there’s always more cost but I think it is worth it.

~The perfect flowers – Well of course we’re a little biased but flowers are KEY. Especially to establishing a color or theme. For this wedding, we’re doing fully open cherry tomato red roses with brown fiddleheads (as seen in the last post), green hydrangea and/or vibernum, Fiji mums, and green berries. The coolest part about the floral design will be the addition of a lavender sweet peas for a little extra touch of  color. It’s an unusual color palette but it’s going to be gorgeous!

The Color Palette

Flowers from the Mock-Up:

Table Arrangements (mock-up)

In the photo above you can get a sense of what we’re working toward, one bigger arrangement at the center of each table flanked by smaller vases. Although not seen in these photos, we’re wrapping the vases with wide espresso brown ribbon to hide the stems in water, making for a cleaner more elegant look. We’ll also be doing floating blossoms in water on each table, some green, some red.

Smaller Vase Arrangement

So stay tuned, we’ll be doing more photos of this wedding as we’re in the studio in the coming weeks. The bouquets are going to be fun too so we’ll be sure to post more!

Floral design by Petalena.

Apryl and I just completed the flowers for my friend Gretchen’s wedding to her wife Lilly on Sunday. Both brides love Spanish food and culture so an elegant theme was set for the wedding at the elegant and funky Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge with sangria, seafood paella (my fave!), and a flamenco dancer! I attended the wedding as a guest too but foolishly left my camera in the car! But still, I wanted to share a few pics that we took before all happy festivities:

Festive Table Flowers for Spanish-Inspired Wedding

Another View of Table Flowers

About the Color Palette and Flowers:
For many of us when we think about colors associated with Spain we think of reds don’t we? From the deep purple-red of sangria to the bright red of wild poppies in fields in Spain – this range of colors and textures was our inspiration. Dramatic.

Originally we had hoped to use red amaryllis but alas the flower market had none the day we went so we refocused on magenta/burgundy-red James Storrie orchids and Mokara orchids. These gorgeous flowers were then paired with an exotic feathery brown eucalyptus and (what might become our next flower obsession) tuberose.

Detail of Tuberose and Fiddleheads

Apryl and the Table Flowers

These table arrangements were so much fun to do – exuberant and festive without feeling like Christmas flowers. And  congratulations to Gretchen and Lilly – we had a blast!

Photos and Floral Design by Petalena

Wedding Location: Hotel Marlowe, Cambridge, MA

Well, here we are. It took us almost 13 hours of traveling, but we made it. We started by leaving the house at 5:00 AM Pacific Time, flew into Chicago, left there and flew into Boston, got our rental car, and made our way, with a slight detour (we made a wrong turn), to the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge, Mass. After checking in at 9:00 PM Eastern Time, we moseyed next door to the Cheese Cake Factory, got each of us a slice, and came back to the room for some snacking and to finish watching the movie we started watching on the flight from Chicago to Boston. I was able to keep the secret of where we were going right up until we had to go to our gate in Chicago and give her the boarding pass. She had guessed where we were going, among other places, but didn’t know until we went to gate K4, when she said, “if we’re going to a K gate, I think I know where we’re going.

Right now, as I type, my sweetie is playing with the new camera I got her for her birthday (I gave it to her a bit early as I wanted her to be able to take some pictures before Monday). We initiated it by taking a couple of shots out of the window as we flew out of Portland (the mountains were lovely), and since arriving she’s taken a couple of the Boston skyline at night (our hotel is on the Charles River with a view of downtown Boston and there’s a full moon tonight… very cool).

So far I think this surprise birthday thing has gone pretty well. We are going to hit the sack here soon, we’re exhausted, and then tomorrow we’ll be off… continuing our adventure. There’s a lot to do here and we’re not sure, yet, where we want to start. One thing’s for sure… whatever we do, we’re together, alone, and we’re going to have the best time, no matter what kind of fun we’ll find.