The holidays flew by and Mary and I are gearing up for our busiest winter ever. We are so excited about the weddings we have booked so far for 2013 and are looking forward to meeting with many new brides as the year progresses. We have been terribly behind on blogging…too busy creating all these beautiful designs for weddings!  It is a new year though, so time to get back into the swing of things and back into our weekly blogging.  Today’s blog features a gorgeous wedding at The Flanders in Ocean City, NJ. Lindsay and Jim were the sweetest couple.  They were high school sweethearts and you could really see just how in love these two are.  All photos courtesy of Meyer Photography.

Lindsay carried a bouquet of dark purple and magenta flowers including baronesse garden roses, magenta stock, purple glad blossoms, dark purple lisianthus, and magenta gomphrena. The garden roses were accented with diamond pins. Don’t they have the best smiles!?!?!

Such a creative picture!

Lindsay loved bling so we incorporated it as much as possible; even doing Jim’s bout in a rhinestone encrusted bout holder.

I thought these flowers girls were just adorable.  Check out their dresses!

Another amazing shot.  The sky in this picture is breathtaking.

I loved how the place card table came out. Lindsay had these silver manzanita trees, so we accented one by placing it in a decorate silver mercury vase.  We added a fuchsia sash and hung our crystal votives holders filled with flowers from the branches.  I loved the cards radiating out from the center.  This is a perfect design for a round table like this.

The room looking gorgeous.  The linens really helped pull it all together and, along with the flowers, set the tone of the event.

Half of the tables were done with our silver mercury glass filled with purple stock, purple hydrangea, and magenta garden roses. Crystal votive holders added another touch of bling to the tables.

The other half of the tables were done with bleached beach grasses and purple and magenta stock in our tall silver vases.  Magenta rose petals and the crystal votive holders completed the look.

I love little touches like this.  A gladiola blossom was placed on each napkin for all of the guests.  Gorgeous!

The sweetheart table was draped with crystals and silver mercury candle holders.  Love!

This has nothing to do with flowers but I am obessed with boardwalk pizza….especially at a wedding!

The wedding cake was stunning!  I love when brides choose to do fresh flowers on the top, instead of a cake topper.  So pretty!

Just a reminder to all of our upcoming brides, we are excited to be participating in Running Deer Golf Club’s Bridal Show.   The show is a free event, taking place on January 13th from 3-6pm.  We hope to see lots of brides there!  We are also running a sample sale.  You can see anything on your wedding order at 50% off.  Check out all the details here, and contact us if you are interested, dawn@agardenpartyllc.com.

I can not believe it is December 11th….and that we haven’t blogged in over a month, fail on our part.  However, while we may not have been blogging, we have been busy creating wedding after wedding of GORGEOUS wedding flowers. Sometimes, when I look back at pictures, I am blown away by how lucky I really am.  Being able to spend (most) of my time working with flowers, and having the chance to truly create something beautiful for our couples is really the best.  I remember I loved this wedding when it was going together and then, when I saw the photos, I fell in love all over again!  I always love setting up a wedding at Running Deer, their staff and attention to detail makes them one of the best venues around. Heather DiPiazza did an amazing job with the photos, check them out for yourself!

Laura’s bouquet was stunning.  She carried purple and fuchsia stock, purple pacu calla lilies, purple veronica, fuchsia plume celosia, and vanda orchids.

These bright purple and pink bouquets stood out great against the bridesmaids charcoal gowns.

I love fresh flowers as an accent in the hair.  These orchids look so pretty!  We provide them already wired, so the hairdresser can easily pin them in place with bobby pins.

September 15th was a gorgeous, sunny day this year.  Check out this pretty bridal party.

I love doing something a little different and unique with the stem wrap.  Here, to tie in the purple, we accented with purple lace.  Pretty!

We hung these pretty cups of fuchsia roses from the pergola at Running Deer.

The aisle was line with fuchsia rose petals, and silver mint julep cups hanging from our black shepherds hooks, filled with purple and fuchsia stock.

Beautiful shot of the ceremony.

These hanging votive cups with roses are the perfect accent and look great in all of the photos of the couple saying their vows.

I LOVED these centerpieces.  Done in our Diana pedestal vase, they featured purple hydrangea, fuchsia and purple stock, purple haze roses, plume celosia, and dark purple iris. A band of charcoal ribbon and purple crystals accented the vase.

On the place card table we used one of our many silver mercury vases.  Pretty!

Another shot of the centerpiece.

The silver julep cups from down the aisle were reused as decor in the chocolate room.

Loved the cake.  The flowers were the perfect pop of color.

Thanks Laura and Ray!  We loved your wedding flowers, and hope you did too, xoxo!

I have lots of blogs started….now just to get back into the business of finishing them and posting them!  As an FYI to all of our fans – we will be closed next week, 12/17-12/25.  Mary and I needed some time to get ourselves together for Christmas!  Tomorrow night we are hosting a Pinterest Party here at the shop….stay tuned for a blog post about the fun times that I am sure will be had, haha!

Mary and I spent last week down at the shore with our family (yes, we even vacation together!) and while the break was amazing, I am glad to be back!  It is always nice to have that time to relax….we both came into the office this morning completely refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the wedding season.  I am excited to blog about this wedding….not only because Melissa was one of my favorite brides, but also because the flowers are so pretty!  Melissa, and her adorable husband, participated in our Rock the Dress photo shoot that we did last summer and lately I have been stalking her facebook checking out the pictures of their gorgeous new baby girl. We always love working at Running Deer and will actually be headed there this Saturday for Julianne’s pretty pink wedding.

Melissa’s favorite flowers are daisies so we, of course, made sure we incorporated them into her bouquet. We also used yellow dahlias, lavender stock, and silver brunia berries.  A vintage lavender hanky that belonged to her grandmother was tied around the stems.

I love this shot of the flowers in the center of the ballroom floor!

How cute are these bridesmaids!  I loved the varying shades of purple dresses and the one floral printed dress is so cute!  They carried bouquets of lavender stock, lavender dahlias, yellow mums, and silver brunia berries.

We added lavender rhinestone pins to the daisies in Melissa’s bouquet for that perfect touch of shimmer.

I loved this yellow bout against the grey tux.

Interesting story about their ceremony.  Everything was set up outside and ready to go…the sun was shining and the weather was gorgeous.  Suddenly a thunderstorm blew in and the amazing staff at Running Deer quickly moved everything inside.  Here are the shepherds hooks with hanging vases of purple hydrangea lining the aisle – outside.

And here they are moved inside!  Just goes to show that either way, inside or out, your wedding ceremony will be beautiful!

I am in love with these cute little lavender votive cups.  We lined these along the front of the head table…with a few daisies to accent.  These votives are available for rent (we have lots of colored votive options).

A single daisy was tucked into each napkin.

The centerpieces were a trio of square vases accented with lavender ribbon and a yellow daisy.  The vases held lavender stock, dahlias, and hydrangea.

Check out these cute purple bud vases!  Also available for rent.

The Sweet Life Bakery did an amazing job with the cake.  I love the pop of yellow against the white!

Thanks Melissa for sharing all of these amazing pictures with us.  You were a gorgeous bride and we loved working with you!  Congrats on your new baby girl!

There is nothing more I love to see in my inbox than this, “I just wanted to say thank you for an amazing job that you did at Tiffany’s wedding. Everything was beautiful and we are so thankful that we used you to decorate for the wedding!” Well you are welcome Mrs. Samuel! Now we all know MOB’s tell the truth, so that makes me feel pretty awesome.

Tiffany sent us these photos from her wedding day last summer at the Golden Inn in Avalon NJ. Her groom, Dan, is a chef so they wanted to incorporate some culinary details into the centerpieces, but also nod to the beach theme. I think we did a pretty good job melding them both!

The bridal party flowers….

We accented the bridesmaid bouquets with rope and starfish.

Tiffany’s bouquet was wrapped with ivory satin and I made this little garland of starfish.

She loves bright colors, so we just ran with it! Fuchsia phals, purple sweet pea, green bupleurum, green cymbidium orchids, scabiosa stellata and orange spray roses did the trick.

Her adorable flower girl carried this pomander of orange babe spray roses with a twine ribbon.

Her bridal party included a man of honor! And lots of pretty ladies in periwinkle gowns!

The ceremony was held on the beach, just outside the Golden Inn in Avalon. We lined the aisle with carnation pomanders composed of orange, purple and green carns, hung with some beachy rope.

The back row of chairs was accented with our orange sashes and larger starfish tied on with rope, I loved this!

Now, here is the cool stuff. Being a farm girl, I love incorporating veggie into our floral designs. Chef Dan (the groom) encouraged us to use green, orange and purple vegetables with coordinating flowers as the centerpieces. This is what we came up with! See the lettuce in the background? The ceremony pomanders were reused on the long head table as well. A few scattered crystals add glam.

Orange bell peppers + orange roses.

Green zucchini + green celosia.

Purple leaf lettuce + purple carnations.

Accented with kale + crystals.

= LOVE how unique this is!

The up-lighting really added to the room too, totally transformed the look. We hope all the foodies out there loved it too! We are heading back to the Golden Inn in a few weeks, we have a lot of weddings booked there this year and we are thrilled about it. Today is our last day in the office, the rest of the week we will be working in the flower shop and on the road delivering our weddings. Hope you have a great week!

If you are interested in our floral design services in South Jersey, the greater Philadelphia area or Northern Delaware please contact us by filling out the form below:

Well Mary and I enjoyed a week of sunshine last week in Strathmere and now we are back and more then ready to jump back into all these weddings!  Wedding season is upon us and we are excited about all of our upcoming weddings.  While at the beach, one of our favorite photographers, Art+Life Photography sent us these amazing pictures of Gina and Jared’s June wedding.  Gina and Jared were married at St. Mary’s Church in Williamstown and had their reception at Adelphia’s in Deptford, NJ. For all you brides out there that love the picasso calla lily, this one is for you

Gina was a stunning bride…check out her gorgeous smile!  She carried a bouquet of white roses and picasso calla lilies.  We blinged it up by adding rhinestone pins scattered in the flower…we love that shimmer!

To compliment their plum gowns, the bridesmaids carried bouquets of picasso calla lilies, lavender roses, and purple stock.

We have tried many different lavender roses and have finally found out favorite.  This Purple Haze rose opens up so pretty and is the perfect shade of lavender.

To accent the pews we tied 3 of the roses to each pew with pewter satin ribbon.  A simple touch like this really can add so much impact in your church.

For the Blessed Mother we did a presentation bouquet using white roses and statice.

Each of the moms carried small nosegays of picasso calla lilies wrapped with ribbon to coordinate with their gowns.

This flower girl is too cute for words!  She sure looks like she had a good time tossing those petals:)

I LOVE when flower girls wear little floral halos like this one.  We made her a simple halo of purple statice with long pewter ribbon tails and it looked adorable on her.

Congratulations Gina and Jared, your day was gorgeous!  Thank you for letting us be a part of it!

If you are interested in our floral design services in South Jersey, the greater Philadelphia area or Northern Delaware please contact us by filling out the form below:

Courtesy of Life&Style

The June 13^th issue of Life&Style has exclusive photos from Niecy Nash’s gorgeous wedding. (Nash married fiancé Jay Tucker in Malibu on May 28^th.) I may be bias because my wedding colors were purple and black, but I LOVED Nash’s purple and silver color scheme. Her wedding was beautiful, elegant, and feminine; the perfect adjectives for a wedding.

In case you are curious, here is a picture from my black and purple wedding.

During Nash’s ceremony, purple and lavender flowers lined the aisle. Nash carried a gorgeous white bouquet, consisting of roses and peonies. The stems were wrapped in white ribbon and pearls to match Nash’s “vanilla-color strapless Ines DiSanto gown,” according to Life&Style. The bridesmaids carried gorgeous bouquets of lavender roses and crystals, and they wore tiny purple flowers in their hair. Even the six-tier wedding cake had crystals and purple flowers.

Nash’s centerpieces were my favorite part of the wedding. On top of lavender tablecloths stood gorgeous crystal chandelier vases with roses, hydrangeas, and orchids. They were a beautiful combination of purples and white.

Nash and I aren’t the only brides who like purple. Dawn and Mary have done gorgeous work for other “purple” weddings. Check out these previous posts by A Garden Party:

Kerry & Garrett at Running Deer

Ben & April at Riverview Inn

Michelle & Matt at Tera Nova

I hope you enjoyed all the gorgeous purple in this blog! In the upcoming weeks we want to do more blogs geared towards wedding ideas and style.  What do you want to hear about???  What are you struggling with during your wedding planning???