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May 27, 2008

Flowers for celebrations: A wedding

As the wedding season is approaching, I look back at my only daughter’s two weddings with nostalgia. Leila met Chaka at Brown, back in 1989 -1990. When they decided to get married on the beach in Marina Del Rey, Calif. in 2003 they wanted a very small and informal wedding, with just her two brothers and very few friends in Los Angeles, without the bride’s and groom’s parents. ( We had a relatively more formal wedding in R.I. planned for the summer of 2004 ). I said, “Just don’t think of me as a parent. I’m going as your friend.”

I said, “You’ve got to have some flowers – at least, a bridal bouquet. ” I picked pansies from her yard, using just the purple (her favorite color) and yellow (Chaka’s) and simply tied them together. It looked fabulous! I also made a garland of white flowers, picked from her yard as well and that too looked “just right ” – with no expense.

Centerpiece: Yellow roses, purple Lisianthus, the closed buds are white Lisianthus; the tiny flowers on the stem are Sea Lavender and the green, shiny leaves are fatsia japonica - a fairly common house plant.

For the wedding in 2004, at the Alton Jones Campus, URI, which was a whole weekend event, the late renowned R.I. florist, Gale Potter, whom I had known for over 30 years, took care of the all the details. We worked together on the colors, the size of the centerpieces and flowers for each guest room. I have been to weddings where the centerpieces were just ‘outrageous.’ I have seen much too large arrangements, with too many colors and all kinds of flowers in one piece. Some took up a lot of space on the tables and guests could not see some people across from them. I have also witnessed people starting to sneeze and the centerpieces having to be removed.

The yellow and purple colors were carried out for the whole event. I thought it was a lovely touch for the overnight guests to have flowers in their rooms. We chose to do small centerpieces and decorated the reception area with a larger show piece, below.

Ligularia (the rocket) and Agapanthus plus Giant Allium.; the little yellow flowers are Solidago (goldenrod).

Yes, yes, yes. Flowers play a big part of celebrations, especially at weddings!

Posted by Pat Feinstein  at 8:43 AM | Permalink

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