Couture et Fleurs Fundraiser

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floral hats

Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of participating in the San Francisco Garden Club’s annual fundraiser event: Couture et Fleurs.  I’ve participated in past Garden Club events, and was honored to help with their biggest event of the year.

The SF Garden Club is non-profit organization that raises money to promote and support horticulture-related projects around the city.  They donate tens of thousands of dollars each year to programs such as the San Francisco Botanical Garden, the Alice Eastwood Scholarships at City College of San Francisco, and the Awards of Excellence in Landscape Design at U.C. Berkeley.  They support San Francisco’s Friends of the Urban Forest project which promotes the city’s green infrastructure through community tree planting.  They also support the Urban Sprouts project, a garden-based educational program that teaches inner city kids about nutrition, health, and promotes ecoliteracy.  The SF Garden Club’s most famous project is support for the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, which reopened in 2003 after years of restoration.

Held at the Four Season’s Hotel, “Couture et Fleurs” featured a reception, silent auction, runway fashion show, and luncheon.  A group of us from CCSF were tasked with creating floral accessories (hats, purses, jewelry) to accompany the daytime, cocktail, and evening designs created by Robert Berry, a local San Francisco fashion designer.  It took weeks of planning, hours of coordinating, and two full days of designing in order to complete our accessories….and we were just a small portion of the entire event!  In the end, we created twelve floral hats/fascinators, six pieces of floral “jewelry”, three floral purses, a baby’s breath boa, a floral fan, and three full floral outfits.  This was a huge departure from the floral designs we do every day.

In the end we were all very pleased with the end results and it could not have been accomplished without the countless hours of hard work by student volunteers and Steven Brown, Chair of the Environmental Horticulture / Floristry program at CCSF.  Some of us volunteered as models and participated in the fashion show.  It was a great opportunity to break out of our traditional flower design mold and do something unique and different; I hope I can help out again next year!  Here are some articles on the event from SF Gate and SF Wire.

Special Celebrations

It seems we do a lot of weddings and corporate events in my line of work.  But once in a while we get to design flowers for special celebrations: recently I had the opportunity to create designs for a bat mitzvah.  We made small arrangements for the dinner tables, and one large design for the bimah (the bimah is the elevated platform/area where a person reads aloud from the Torah).  The client requested sunflowers for a “late summer” Italian vibe, which was fitting since the celebratory dinner was held at a local Italian restaurant.  The result was a warm, cozy feel….perfect for celebrating with loved ones!

New York State of Mind

October was a busy travel month for me.  After my Vancouver trip, my husband and I headed to New York to visit family and friends.  The main reason for our trip was to attend a cousin’s engagement party….and I’m always up for a party!  The  hosts were my mother-in-law and her brother (my uncle-in-law), so naturally they asked if I could put together a few flowers for the event.

The venue was our uncle’s gorgeous Manhattan loft.  It’s a very contemporary home that features fantastic artwork, so we didn’t want flowers to overpower the space and take away from the overall design aesthetic.  They requested nine arrangements: three for the restrooms, one for the master bedroom, one for the bar, one for the media room coffee table, a dining table piece, and designs for two stunning ikebana baskets.  Once we decided on the designs, it was off to buy the materials at the flower district.

The Manhattan flower district is a collection of small wholesalers along 28th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues.  The selection was pretty good, but I have to say that I am spoiled by our San Francisco Flower Mart (which is amazing and about 10 times larger with more variety) so I was a little underwhelmed.  Prices were ridiculously high, but what isn’t expensive in New York?  I managed to find what I needed and we headed back to the loft to process and design.  By Saturday afternoon the flowers were done and I was quite pleased with the designs, as were my “clients.”  The party was fun and I received compliments on the flowers……isn’t family great?

 

Brazil Room Wedding

I had a great time designing flowers for Hannah and Jason’s wedding in early October.  To honor Hannah’s Chinese heritage, the couple requested a red color palette with shades of pink and burgundy accents.  Hannah was very hands-on in the planning process and the results were a true reflection of her style.  I loved how everything turned out!  The amazing photographs are by the talented Danny Dong.