Week 12

Balls, Balls, and more balls! In one sentence that is the best way to describe this week.

Carnations!:

Tuesday we got in 3,000 carnations and started working on the Pavillion event scheduled for Saturday. We started making small carnation balls and worked up to the larger sizes.

The small ones used about 35 each:

Medium ones used about 60:

And large ones used about 300!:

We worked on all these carnation balls for the next three days. Some of the carnations that we had gotten were so tight they didn't fill up a lot of visual space. To help get them to fluff out more Sylvia showed me that if I gently tore the calyx open a little bit I could get the carnation to fluff out to about double the size it was. (The calyx is the green part of the flower holding in all the petals).

Next thing on our to-do list for the week was making 100 boutonnieres! This meant looking at red carnations for the next few hours. Practice makes perfect! I’m getting a bit faster at making boutonnieres than when I first started.

Thursday we moved on to making arrangements for the Hower and Bauer weddings. We all had fun keeping those names straight all week. “Is this for Hower or Bauer?”

Tiffany had me start out by making simple glass cubes with a few rocks and a single rose bloom in them. They are for all the cocktail tables at the wedding.

Cocktail Cubes:

Janet and I then moved on to making all the arrangements for the feasting tables at the wedding. We chose a variety of different sizes for all the flowers we had and split them up into sections for the collections of flowers.

Feasting Table Arrangements:

My last design job for the day was making pew markers for our third wedding, the Webb wedding. To make the pew markers I used hydrangea, peach and white garden roses, and some ranunculus stems.  Making the pew markers was almost like making a bouquet. Instead of spreading all the flowers into a circular pattern I placed all the flowers towards the middle and down the sides so we could easily tie them onto the pews.

Pew Markers:

Friday I learned how to make a kissing ball out of hydrangeas. I used about 3 antique hydrangea stems to cover the little foam ball. It’s really a lot harder than it looks. The tiny little hydrangea stems have to be small enough to go though the mesh covering over the wet foam but big enough to be able to stick through the foam. Once I finally figured out how to get the entire ball covered with foam I tied a little chocolate brown ribbon onto the ball for the little flower girl to hold on to for the wedding. 

Kissing Ball:

Once I finished the kissing ball I moved onto making more boutonnieres for the Webb wedding.  Like I said before practice makes perfect.

Webb Boutonnieres:

Saturday! I came into the studio early and started packing up all of our flower arrangements for all of our weddings. I got to go with Sylvia, Tiffany, Ian and Byron to Boca. The Webb Wedding was being held in Boca. It’s about an hour and a half drive there but it’s definitely worth it every time we go out there. This wedding setup was so gorgeous! The ceremony was being held in the church first and then the guests would move on to the two outdoor tents behind the Boca Grande Hotel.

Boca Grande Wedding:

We also had an event this week called Just Merry that helped with a little bit. I didn't get to go out for the delivery but I loved the arrangements that were made for the event! So I thought I would include a few pictures that Zoe took from the event.

Just Merry:

Also, here are some pictures from Zoe at the Pavillion event. This is where all those carnation balls ended up. I thought it looked really great with all the lighting and pure white furniture. I'm sure it was a great party!

Pavillion:

Overall we had a very successful but busy week. We have three weddings coming up next week. One of them will actually be in Boca again so I’ll be heading out there again next week! 

Next week will be my last week for a while. I finished up all my internship hours, so I'm headed back to Montana for a little break. But thanks to Ian and Zoe my school (BYU- Idaho) is going to let me stay for another semester! So I'll be back in January ready for another three months of helping with amazing weddings! I am so grateful for Botanica providing me the experience to work in my dream career. I never thought I would be able to work in such an amazing work environment. I couldn't ask for a better group of instructors or a better job!