Literary / Garden themed photoshoot

This photoshoot has already been featured on 100 layer cake, but I couldn't resist sharing a few more images here.

If you're reading this blog, you already know how passionate I am about flowers. Well, I'm also a big time nerd, and I love books. Not just to read {although I'm a huge bookworm - in gradeschool the thing I got in trouble for most was reading during class}, but aesthetically too. I love books and libraries, I love bookcloth and the way that old books smell. I think they're wonderful. So naturally for the first photoshoot I put together entirely without limitations, I wanted to combine the two.

Incorporating books into wedding decor is a trend that has been pretty big this year. I wanted to expand on that trend and show more ways that books can be combined into decor - things that hadn't been seen before. And it all started with this idea, which popped into my head one day:

A bookcase archway! It makes me pretty ridiculously happy. It was one of those ideas that once I came up with it, I just had to see it come to life. These are two simple birch bookcases from Ikea that I normally use for storage in my studio. I purchased a roll of vintage wallpaper on ebay and papered the backs. Filling out the shelves is my collection of vintage books that I rent out for events and some potted plants. Including tiny potted strawberries! Gasp!

I never expected to find these when I went to the nursery, and I was so excited when I did. Strawberries were an accidental motif that ran through the shoot.

Connecting the two bookcases was a garland I made of dogwood, hydrangea, roses, daffodils, and narcissus. I wanted it to have a wild, growing feel to it.

The aisle was made up of rustic wooden chairs that I borrowed from my mom {who is an antique dealer}. Not too realistic for a real wedding, but chiavaris would be just as cute. I topped the chairs off with some simple pillows sewn from vintage fabric I had in my stash and lined the aisle with more potted plants.


I also handmade an invitation that looked just like a little book:

The outside was covered in more of the wallpaper, and the corners and binding are bookcloth that I bought at Paper Source. When you open the "book" up, the first page reads exactly like the opening to a story, but gave the details of the wedding. The pages are hand sewn together. . . it would be pretty intense for a diy project, but worth it if you want your invite to be a memorable keepsake.

I made a matching gardeny bouquet, wrapped with a floral print vintage handkerchief and tied with cheery red and white striped grosgrain ribbon:

It has ranunculus, astilbe, billy balls, daffodils, tulips, and Judy roses.

Our models for the shoot were Monica and Josh, a real life couple who are getting married in November. I can. not. WAIT for their wedding. It's one of the ones this season that I'm most excited about. Here are some more shots of them being ridiculously adorable:


Monica is wearing a sundress from Anthropologie {I'm totally a fan of the casual wedding dress, by the way} that we tied with a red sash. She's also wearing a cute necklace that I made for myself a few years ago. I made Josh's bowtie. I didn't have a pattern, so I just had to wing it... unlike a real bowtie, it fastens in the back with velcro. Oh well - it was my first! And Josh's short sleeves were intentional. I thought tattoos + nerdy bow tie and book shoot would be awesome.

For our tablescape, instead of doing a normal large dinner table, we decided to do a tiny sweetheart table set for dessert. We placed the table in an orange grove at the venue and used a beautiful and vibrant 50's printed tablecloth {that belonged to my grandmother} to cover it. I adore this type of tablecloth, and have wanted to use one for a wedding forever. I think they would be so cute for anything garden or picnic themed. They're fairly inexpensive and easy to find too!

Because our table was set for dessert, we just used tiny glass plates and topped them with beautiful cupcakes made by Erica O'Brien. We served milk from old fashioned milk bottles in 1930's floral glasses {which also belonged to my grandma}. The centerpiece was composed of a grouping of budvases each with one type of flower, including one arrangement in a tiny little half pint milk bottle.


My favorite detail from the table was the table number. I cut it out of the inside of a book with an xacto knife:

It's not too hard to do this yourself if you have a steady hand. I measured my book and then typed out my letters and number in photoshop, playing with the font size until it was the right size for the width of my book. Then I flipped it so it was mirror imaged. After that, I printed it out and used carbon paper to trace it onto the back side of the pages I was cutting from. I put a protective sheet in between the pages, and cut around the lines, leaving the bottoms uncut. Then I carefully popped them out so they were 3 dimensional. The tracing lines don't show through since they're on the back side. If you do this, please be thoughtful about what book you cut into! It would be bad to ruin a book that is rare or still has value :)

Finally, there's the dessert table.

Erica had this idea to make the table out of wood placed on yellow wooden ladders. Which proved to be the most difficult thing in the shoot {other than finding our venue!}. People just do not make wooden ladders anymore. They're all hideous aluminum. She found these two by phoning every Ace hardware she could find, and driving all over the place to get them. I think it was worth it - I love the way the table came out!

I already showed Erica's beautiful cake in my last post, but here it is again, accompanied by some small florals made by me:

There were matching cupcakes, and we liked the table number so much that we did another 3D book detail that just said "eat cake."
Appropriate since we all gorged on cupcakes once we were done shooting.

We filled in the ladder rungs with more books, some of which we wrapped in scrapbooking paper Erica bought for the shoot. I also added in one more idea we had never seen before- favors that were test tubes filled with seeds. I found this beautiful quote by John Galsworthy and put a snippet in each test tube:

. . . Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!

The tubes had the quote and wildflower seeds, so guests could take them home and plant a memento from the wedding in their own gardens. The rack was an old spice rack from Dean and Deluca that Erica had, but you could do the same thing easily... just google "test tubes" and places to get them pop up.

I know this post is overboard on pictures, but I just want to share a few more!





I had so much fun putting this together, aaaand if you're getting married soon, I still have the bookcases {hint hint...}

Who made it all happen:

Concept, styling, florals, and um... a bunch of stuff: Honey and Poppies

Styling, advice, cakes, ideas, and shoulder to cry on: Erica O'Brien

Gorgeous photography! Shot on film!!!! Jessica Claire

Perfect makeup: Stacy Bisel

My wonderful models: Monica Medina and Joshua Hernandez

And our fantastic venue: The Orange County Heritage Museum

Creative crush: Erica O'Brien of Erica O'Brien cake design

A few months ago, I collaborated for the first time with Erica O'Brien, who is an incredibly talented cake designer and a fellow member of the LBWC. I first met Erica in 2007, when she wandered into my shop wanting to talk about her own wedding flowers. I liked her instantly. I still remember some of the things she asked for, because I had never heard those requests before. For instance, Erica wanted for the flowers in her bouquet to be all of similar size. If she told me that now, I would tease her for being a pain in the butt, but truth be told, I love hearing things like that. I always find it intriguing working for other creative people because they have such distinct and different ways of seeing things, and that in turn inspires me to see my work in new ways.

I was also blown away by Erica's passion for cake design, and how excited she was to share her own designs. And she should be excited, because they are GORGEOUS. When Erica talks about her work, she is always quick to jump in and say how she wishes you could taste her cakes, because the flavor is just as important as the design and she uses only the best ingredients. But honestly, when cakes look this good, I wouldn't care WHAT they taste like. Even though hers are delicious too.

Some of my favorites:

{top 3 photos by Jessica Claire, bottom 3 by Erica O'Brien}

When I arrived on Erica's wedding day to give her her bouquet, she was such an awesome bride - happy, tipsy, barefoot, and totally adorable. And the cake was, of course, incredible.

We reconnected earlier this year and have worked on three photoshoots together since. I'm thinking of having it in my contract that Erica has to make the cakes for all of my weddings. Any takers, Brides?

I want to share the first shoot this week - that top beauty was from it. It was already on 100 layer cake {woo hoo!}, but I have some extra pretty images to share. And we have another coming out in the next issue of Utterly Engaged. And a third we just wrapped. I can't wait for the next one!*

*My husband, however, insists that I wait until after wedding season is over.

inspiration boards

One of the services I provide for all of my clients is a custom inspiration board. They're pretty time consuming to make, but I find them invaluable.

When I meet with a prospective client for the first time, I like to just let them talk. Instead of having a rigid form for them to fill out, I start by asking them all about their wedding - not just the location and color scheme, but what sort of feel they want their wedding to have, what matters most to them, and what they love {and for that matter hate!} about wedding flowers and decor.

This in turn is what becomes the inspiration board. A collage of images that aren't an exact catalog of what I'm proposing to the client but rather a sort of snapshot of the mood I want to create. Once I have a clear vision of what the decor should look like, I can then write up my proposal.

The inspiration board is such a useful tool not just for my clients but for my own reference. I do about 30 weddings a year, so I can't always immediately remember the details of each wedding without rereading the proposal. But all I have to do is take one look at the inspiration board and instantly I can recall everything I need to know. I even print them out to take with me to the flower market to help with product selection.

I have never posted any of my inspiration boards before because I usually don't have all of the image credits, and that makes me a bit uncomfortable. Often times the images are my own work, or stock photos of flower varieties, or simple catalog shots of containers I may be using. But just as often they're photos that I save and keep in a file when I come across things online that inspire me. I would never copy anyone else's work {actually, I usually refuse to replicate even my OWN work - I like each bouquet to be unique}, but these found images are useful in helping to visualize possibilities for each event.

Here are two inspiration boards I made today for two different prospective clients getting married about a week apart. The couples have some commonalities in what they like {a loose, flowing feel to the florals; centerpieces of eclectic grouped containers}, and on paper they might sound similar. But once you see the inspiration boards, you can immediately see how different these two couples are:

Plus, they're just fun to look at. These two together are my desktop background right now!

amazing, astounding, and absolutely adorable.

A few months ago, Utterly Engaged threw themselves a party. And as part of the celebration, they issued a challenge: design a tablescape of your choice, to be voted on at the party. We got to pick our own teams and themes, but our designs must meet the following criteria:

-they must be modern {left open to our interpretation}

-they must use either paper, fabric, or an industrial material as the main focus of the design, and finally

-the entire tablescape {excluding dinnerware} must cost under $150.

Oh, and I should mention that the contest was announced about a week and a half before the party. I loved the limitations - it reminded me of Project Runway for wedding designers. . . so up my alley.

I contacted some friends from the Long Beach Wedding Collective - Candice Bradley of DeLovely Events and KrisD Mauga of Krashing Motions, and we had our team. We powwowed and and settled on a vintage circus themed table. Vintage circus - for a modern tablescape? YES! My interpretation of modern is any design that is styled to look like it was made today. I love love love vintage inspiration, but I never want to create anything that looks like it's stuck in the past. I'm all about updating these older looks in new and inspiring ways.

We wanted our table to be vibrant, fun, and whimsical. . . we knew that at the party, there would be a ton of knockout sophisticated tables. We wanted ours to be different - a table that you wanted to touch and play at, one that once you looked at it, you realllly wanted to go to THAT wedding.

And here's what we came up with:

Our paper details included:
-centerpieces of tiered paper boxes wrapped in crepe paper stripes, with cut paper grass detailing and miniature bunting flags made of tiny paper flags attached to bakers twine
-grass-filled paper boxes of lollipops and junior cotton candy sticks
-old fashioned paper popcorn boxes
-crepe paper prize ribbons adorning the vases {these were a take off of my ghost academy award ribbons, but the centers had vintage circus animal illustrations}
-miniature circus posters affixed to candle holders
-sheet music pinwheels {with red velvet cupcakes - we made tiny flags that said "joy" for the cupcakes themselves}
-and finally, a paper runner.

Over the top? Oh, definitely. I'd even say over the big top if puns that bad didn't personally offend me. Even though I just said it anyway.

MORE DETAIL SHOTS!!!


We didn't win, but.... uh.... my mom said it was cool, and that counts for something, right?

{all photos by KrisD Mauga}