If you’re looking to plan a wedding in the beautiful Savannah, Georgia area, then don’t miss the Southern Wedding Experience: B…The Event in Savannah, GA and Tybee Island, March 1st – 3rd. It’s the perfect opportunity to really experience all that a southern wedding can be, and to get your planning started off right!
Unlike most wedding shows, the Southern Wedding Experience isn’t anything like an afternoon of walking a trade-show floor, this is a fun and luxurious weekend away where you and a guest will experience Savannah in style, as if you’re attending a destination wedding yourself.
On Friday you’ll arrive for your stay at one of the area’s top hotels – the Ocean Front Cottages Tybee Island, the Mansion on Forsyth Park or the Savannah Hyatt and then head off to a fabulous Welcome Party. Saturday brings tours of incredible venues on Tybee Island and in downtown Savannah, and even a historic trolley tour! Saturday night you and your guest will attend a glamorous gala for dinner, cake tastings, one-on-one time with top wedding professionals, a Boho-chic bridal fashion show, and education from celebrity wedding planner Shawn Rabideau as well as other experts throughout the weekend. Sunday wraps things up with a farewell brunch before you head home with your souvenir bag and all the new wedding planning experience and inspiration you’ve gained.
It’s a five-star weekend of pampering, planning and inspiration for the Southern Bride!
If you can’t make it to Savannah, here are some future Southern Wedding Experience events in the works:
Asheville, North Carolina: August 2-4, 2013
Nashville, Tennessee: November 15-17, 2013
Atlanta, Georgia: February 28 – March 2, 2014
And for all you wedding professionals out there, looking for some great professional education, there is a sister event happening on March 3rd and 4th that Blair and I will be speaking at! The Southern Wedding Experience is partnering with Inspire Smart Success for the ISS Experience Savannah – a 2 day event for the wedding industry. Other speakers include the amazing Jacqueline Nwobu (Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Munaluchi Bride Magazine), Shawn Rabideau (founder and President of Shawn Rabideau Events & Design) and Stacie Francombe (the founder of Inspire Smart Success). We hope to see you there!
This post was sponsored by Southern Wedding Experience – B… The Event, and chosen for What Junebug Loves because we think it’s a fantastic wedding planning event, and we’re excited to be involved!
I’m just giddy working on this post…not only do I get to spend some time on my very favorite topic (I’m the flower girl here at Junebug amongst a die-hard group of loyal photography junkies!), but I get to share one of my favorite designers with you too! Junebug member Nancy Liu Chin is brilliantly talented, and as an expert in the industry she has a lot of great ideas for couples as they are planning and working with a floral designer. Today she is sharing some of her beautiful designs AND tips on what you can do to ensure a successful meeting with your florist!
From Nancy Liu Chin: Perhaps it is naive of me to think that all people who are newly engaged should know how to work with a floral designer. After all, there are endless wedding planning books, articles on how to plan the perfect wedding, and plenty of blogs…yet, today, a bride asked me if it was necessary to meet with me in order to get a floral proposal. Of course, meeting a floral designer is a must unless you are planning a destination wedding and even at that, I recommend a phone interview.
So to help newly engaged couples, I’m writing this post on how to prepare for your meeting with your floral designer. I truly hope this is not only helpful for engaged couples but for all event planners, floral designers, wedding enthusiasts…and many more. I will be using the term Floral Designer in this post for simplicity. Keep in mind that I am using both these terms – florist and floral designer – to mean someone who will be creating wedding flowers. It’s interchangeable!
So, the question is, what should you prepare for when meeting with your floral designer? Follow these steps, and your floral desgn
1. Flower Knowledge – Do you need to know the names of all the flowers?
My God, I hope not! If all clients knew the name of all cut flowers, then most of the floral designers around might be out of a job. To me, it’s like asking if a patient needs to know all the medical terms before they see their doctor. It would be unproductive and a waste of one’s time. If gardening is a hobby, I can imagine that you might want to know more about how flowers are produced, cultivated, and cared for. However, for someone who is planning a wedding, there are more productive things to spend your time on.
Keep in mind, a good, knowledgeable, informed floral designer should have a portfolio with plenty of flowers for a couple to look through. I keep a “deck” of colorful cards which are coordinated by color and alphabetized so that I can “flip” through it during meetings and show clients what flower I am describing.
Here are some good examples of the type of phrases that would be helpful for you to use:
Romantic, fluffy, large head flowers like roses and peonies that evoke a garden feel.
Modern, architecturally interesting blooms that have beautiful, shapely stems. French Tulips in a single vase are very elegant to me.
Something unusual with lots of spiky tips, fussy, different. Something that wouldn’t be fun to touch but would look very different from the standard fluffy flowers.
Simple, happy flowers that make me smile, like sunflowers, daisies, mums.
Bold, dramatic flowers that work for a grand ballroom.
Bottom line: Describe characteristics of what you want the flowers to look like!
It is very helpful to create a check list of things you need. Emailing a copy to your floral designer ahead of time is wonderful. You can also bring a copy with you to the meeting. Of course, since you may not know all the flower pieces that you might need, here is my check list.
Personal Flowers:
Bridal Bouquet
Bridesmaid Bouquets
Groom’s Boutonniere
Groomsmen’s Boutonnieres
Usher(s) Flowers
Reader(s)
Officiant
Mothers and Fathers
Grandparents
Sponsors
Ring bearer, Coin bearer, other little boys who need flowers
Flower girls, Junior Bridesmaids, other little girls who need flowers
Of course many couples go to meetings thinking that they will see something in a floral designer’s portfolio and instantly love it. I wish this were the case. But it is so NOT.
I think many couples come for inspiration. That’s wonderful! However, to make your wedding flowers truly unique, come with as many ideas and examples of things you love as you can. There are so many resources filled with ideas! Some things to bring:
Tear-sheets from magazines
Tagged images you love in wedding and floral design books
Images from wedding blogs, and individual blogs from wedding professionals
Pinterest boards
Swatch samples of fabrics you are using – your dress and bridesmaid dresses
Color swatches – you can go into Home Depot and pick out some “paint” chips so that you can clearly communicate your wedding colors. I guarantee you, when a bride walks into my office and tells me her wedding color is green, I ask her, “is it moss, forest, sea, celery, pea, chartreuse, apple, lime, sage, vivid, Kate Spade, Kelly, spinach, or pepper green?”
Your wedding invitation
Photos of your venue
Bring all the things that you think are useful for someone who is creating your weddings flowers. And it doesn’t have to be a whole novel – a few printouts, consolidated into something concise is perfect.
Bottom line: Go to be informed, and be prepare to show and tell.
In advance of your meeting, be sure to have a list of questions that you need answered. During the meeting, many will be addressed. However if you don’t have a prepared list, you might forget a few important questions. Jot down at least a few key questions. Some things you might want to ask:
Can you suggest a few cost saving tips?
What flowers hold up the best during the month of my wedding? (This question will show if the floral designer is truly knowledge about flowers and thinks off the cuff.)
Have you worked at my venue before? If not, would you mind going to do a site visit. (This question shows that a floral designer is attentive to the details and wants to be prepared. It also reflects their experience level.)
Do you drop off the flowers or does your staff or crew do the complete setup? (This question will answer what type of day of service you will get. And if the price for such service is warranted.)
What was your favorite wedding? Do you have an example in your portfolio? What made it so special? (This question will show you what the floral designer deems tasteful, interesting to them. I love this question because only a couple brides have ever asked me this and I think this one is by far the most interesting. It shows me that a couple wants to get to know me as a designer. )
How many events do you do a week? Will my wedding be the only one that day? (This question might be important to some of you if you feel that you need your team to focus on just you for that week.)
Have you ever gotten so ill that you couldn’t complete a job? If so, what would happen to my wedding? (It’s important to know if a floral designer has contingency plans. I know that we do, so I think others should be prepared as well)
Bottom line: Whatever quality is important to you, make sure you leave that meeting feeling that you get a good sense of a floral designer’s values, creativity, knowledge, and depth.
Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and knowledge with us, Nancy! Readers, for more great advice and ideas from Nancy, be sure to visit her blog “Nancy’s Brown Bag” and follow her on Pinterest!
Today’s real wedding is an absolute stunner from not one, but two Junebug members! We adore weddings from the talented team at La Fete – they are always the most elegant events, but magically, they are also charming, warm, and whimsical. Add in the romantic images captured by Melissa Musgrove, and you have Melissa and Jonathan’s beautiful Santa Barbara wedding, which we’re completely crazy for.
The Goals: Our main goal was to create a very intimate, personal event centered around our closest friends and family, to be able to spend time with each guest, and for everyone to have tons of fun all weekend long. We chose the venue, a private villa near the ocean, because it could accommodate our entire immediate family for the whole weekend, and because we could envision our guests swimming in the pool, hitting balls on the driving range, lounging around the fire pit and generally having a great time there. From that vision, our absolutely incredible team of planners and vendors began to help us realize our dream of an elegant Santa Barbara-inspired wedding full of personal details.
The Vision: We wanted to incorporate a little bit of everything Santa Barbara had to offer, so after our traditional ceremony in a beautiful Spanish-style church, our guests were transported to the villa where they were offered cocktails and passed hors doeuvres in the villa gardens, enjoying the California sunshine and views of the Pacific ocean. Because we were inviting our guests into a private home, we envisioned the reception as an elegant dinner party with a mix of traditional and personal touches and without the rigid structure and timeline wed experienced at so many larger weddings. We wanted the main focus of the reception to be conversation, food and wine, and for our guests to feel as if we were inviting them into our own home.
Camilla, our florist, created centerpieces using various flowers, fruits, figs and artichokes that could have come fresh from the villa garden, accented with many small candles to add a romantic glow. Our planner, Colette of La Fete Weddings, suggested decorating the two long feasting tables in warm shades of plum and burgundy to add color to the white walls of the dining room. Duo Catering created an amazing seven course tasting menu complete with pairings of local wines with each course. The glass in which each different wine was served was left on the table after each course so that by the end of the dinner, the wine glasses also became part of the table decor, a striking sight that had many of our guests snapping pictures by the end of the evening of the beautiful table full of flowers and sparkling crystal wine glasses. The dining room was lined with glass doors, which we opened to the patios on either side to give the dinner an airy feel as the fabulous music of the Dwight Kennedy band floated in from outside. After dinner we invited guests out to one of the patios for cake, coffee and a dessert station. The evening ended on the lower level of the villa where guests danced, played pool and mingled at the bar and on the outdoor lawn. As guests boarded a shuttle back to their hotels at the end of the evening, they exited the villa via a path lined by an intricate scroll design of glowing candles.
The Look: Before shopping for a dress, I had pictured myself in a simple, modern gown but the dress I ended up falling in love with was incredibly soft, airy and romantic. I loved the many delicate details of the gown, particularly the french lace overlay that cascaded into layers upon layers of soft, shimmering tulle in the flared skirt and train. To show off the beauty of the dress, I kept my accessories minimal. I wore no necklace, crystal teardrop earrings, and a lattice beaded headband. I wore an equally simple veil with a blusher which, when it was pulled over my face, gave the veil the illusion of floating over my head and caught the sunlight beautifully. In order to not distract too much from the dress, I asked the florist to use shades of white, cream, ivory and very pale pink in the bouquet, which was also quite romantic to match the dress.
My sisters served as informal bridesmaids. I asked them to choose their own long, black gown and gifted them necklaces and earrings custom made by K. Amato with raspberry accents to match the color scheme of the wedding. Rather than bouquets, I gave them sequined black clutches to carry down the aisle.
Jon wore a traditional custom-made tuxedo. Our brothers served as informal groomsmen, wearing black suits with black and white polka dot ties and white pocket squares.
The Moments: The ceremony was without a doubt the most special part of the day. While we lit the unity candle, an organist played Jons grandmothers favorite hymn, and we took a moment to take a breath and talk to each other. Jon told me how beautiful I looked and we laughed quietly about an inside joke before returning to the solemnity and reverence of the ceremony. Those little, private moments we had to ourselves throughout the day really made it ours. I also loved getting ready for the day with my sisters, my mom and mother-in-law and my best friends. We clowned around, laughed and generally fed the excitement of the morning. Seeing my mom and mother-in-law getting their makeup and hair done and being pampered in a way they rarely have was so special. They both looked and felt beautiful, which made me beyond happy. There were so many funny, touching moments like when my dad came into the bridal suite where all the girls were getting taking pictures or when Jon came up to get a shirt hed put into the dryer and sent us all running to hide in the bathroom or all the overheard comments from guests about the details they loved or memories they had of time spent with Jon and me.
The biggest success was just seeing everyone so happy and having so much fun. Im so glad we made the efforts to incorporate our family into every detail of the day and to take the time to let each and every one of our guests know how much they meant to us. Colette had the fantastic idea of writing a personal note to each guest that they would open when they sat down at their seat for dinner. We spent two days writing the notes and reflecting on what each person meant to us and it really hit home how many people were there to love and support us and how much we shared with so many special people. It was the most amazing way to start our life together and it couldnt have been more perfect!
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