A Garden Party » South Jersey Wedding Florist

South Jersey Florist: Molly and Rich at Running Deer

admin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:10:16 +0000

Mary and I have been busy little bees this fall. Every weekend was booked with weddings and every weekend we would say “I love this wedding!”. It cracks me up how every week we fall in love with a wedding, think it is the best one, and then repeat the whole scenario over again the following week! We just can’t get enough of our brides, their creative ideas, and playing with all these flowers. Sometimes a wedding comes along that is just perfection. Molly and Rich were lucky enough to have one of those weddings. Sweet Little Molly used to work with Mary at Butler Gardens, a local flower shop, so their friendship goes back to their high school days! It has taken me so long to get this blog up because there are about a million amazing pictures. Finally, I just decided I am going to share all the ones I love so get ready for an amazingly long blog, ha! Tina Jay was the photographer (she also raved about Molly!), and as usual her pictures didn’t disappoint!

Molly and Rich were married at Running Deer on a gorgeous day in July. All the succulents that you see in the bouquets came from Molly’s mom’s garden…we went there and handpicked them ourselves!

Molly’s bouquet featured purple haze roses, green hydrangea, purple vanda orchids, dusty miller, freesia, and the succulents. We accented the bouquet with pearl garland and tied family hankies around the stems. This is how smart Molly is – she did a bridal portrait shoot with Tina a few months prior to the wedding and we made up her bouquet sample for her to use during the shoot. Great idea! More brides should do that!

Um – could these girls be any more gorgeous!?!?

The bridesmaids carried bouquets of purple stock, green hydrangea, vanda orchids, bupleurum, dusty miller, and succulents. The stems were wrapped with green ribbon and accented with a burlap detail.

I had to share this picture. I am obsessed with this vintage chandelier. Mary and I rescued this (from Mom’s attic – she rescued it from a casino in AC many years ago!) and now offer it as a rental item. It is perfect for hanging from the pergola at Running Deer. We dressed it up with hanging crystals, springeri fern, and hydrangea.

Rich wore a bout of freesia, dusty miller, and a tiny little succulent.

For the ring bearer we made this adorable little pillow out of moss, twine, and a green button mum.

Amazing photo Tina!

Molly and Rich’s wedding was full of soooo many cute details. Instead of a Unity Candle, they did a tree planting ceremony. Molly and Rich each spread some soil on the gardenia, then their parents watered it (showing their support for the new couple). Love this idea!

Ok – now I thought this was the CUTEST idea I have seen in a long time. They had their guests shower them with herbs which guests were able to mix themselves according to their wedding wishes. I love original ideas like this one!

We lined the aisle with shepherds hooks (rental) holding a mason jar of purple hydrangea.

The cocktail tables were topped with our burlap table toppers (rental) and a mason jar full of flowers.

Molly used this antique window pane to hold her guests seating cards (which were labeled polaroids of their dog!), which we accented with hanging moss ball garlands and vanda orchids.

We designed this ‘A’ monogram to hang on their sweetheart table. This is such a cute way to dress up the sweetheart table!

We have been doing napkin treatments more and more recently. A flat napkin fold with one flower added is such a nice touch that your guests will really appreciate.

I have been dying to show these items off…we had these items custom made for us by Cobb’s Mill in Alloway, and used them to decorate a long table in the entry way. All of these items are now offered as rental items and are perfect for the bride looking for rustic wedding details.

This wooden pedestal was another one of our handmade, custom, designs that is now offered as a rental item. We topped it with the trio of cylinders that Running Deer has for each table, and merely added floating candles, hydrangea, and succulents. Each of the tables was covered with our burlap table toppers and a moss square, both are rental items. We really pride ourselves on our extensive rental collection…stop by our studio sometime and check it out!

The Sweet Life Bakery outdid themselves with this gorgeous cake! It is sitting on our wooden cake stand, also available for rent.

Thank you so much Molly and Rich for being such an amazing couple and working with us, xoxo!

Keep an eye on our website…big changes are coming soon! Mary and I will be sure to make a big announcement when everything is up and running, but we are gearing up for a whole new website!

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:

A Garden Party: More Than Just Flowers

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:43:28 +0000

As you may know, planning a wedding is all about the details. Sure, the centerpieces, bouquets and cake are the big items that people will notice, but it is the little things that will make your wedding memorable and will pull together your vision. Check out these great extras available at A Garden Party.

Table Runners

Your venue probably offers basic linens, but A Garden Party has fun table runners to place on top of your linens. Check out these gorgeous blue table runners we used at a recent aquarium wedding (more pictures coming later, we promise).

We also love these burlap table runners; they are perfect for rustic weddings. (To see more adorable ideas from Rachael and Connery’s wedding, click here.)

Lanterns

A Garden Party’s lanterns are a great way to decorate your ceremony or reception space, and they add a beautiful romantic glow. Here are just two ideas for using the lanterns. (They also look amazing with a floral ring as your centerpiece.)

This is a beautiful way to dress up a dance floor or highlight a sweet heart table.

This is perfect for a fall wedding. In addition to lanterns, we can incorporate seasonal items such as pumpkins or fresh produce.

Votives

Votives are a great way to add extra light to your ceremony or reception. A Garden Party has several styles to choose from, and we can use them to decorate a variety of areas such as your cocktail tables, bar, head-table, ceremony area, etc. Here are just two styles available at A Garden Party. For more ideas, please check out our other blog posts as well as our Facebook page.

These pink mercury votives are so pretty. We also have other glassware that matches these votives.

If you want a slightly bigger candle, we have a variety of glassware that holds floating candles. We can even add ribbon and accents to the containers to coordinate with your colors and theme.

A few other “extras” you should ask A Garden Party about include:

chair sashes
cake stands
napkin treatments
and anything else your little heart desires.

We’d love to know, what extra details do you plan on adding to your wedding?

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:

How to Create a Memorable Cocktail Hour

admin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:23:53 +0000

I got married about six months ago. After the wedding, I loved hearing the guests’ thoughts and memories from the wedding. I was shocked by how many compliments we’ve received on the cocktail hour. I always considered the reception the highlight of weddings, but my guests made me re-evaluate my opinions. I now realize that the cocktail hour sets the tone for the rest of the evening. It is the first impression of the reception. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up from my guests and other brides to make your cocktail hour memorable.

Consider hosting your cocktail hour in a separate room.
Choose a room or area with high tables and bar stools. This allows guests to mingle rather than sitting for an hour.
Serve delicious food. Most likely, your guests are hungry and craving something yummy.
Consider foods that match your theme.
Serve fun drinks that coordinate with your theme. For instance, a beach theme might serve a signature drink such sex on the beach or Malibu bay breeze.
Decorate! The cocktail area is just as important as the reception, so utilize candles and flower arrangements to bring life to the cocktail area.

Below are a few designs by A Garden Party that would be perfect as cocktail hour décor.

This is perfect for a place card table!

Mary and Dawn designed this cocktail table centerpiece for a bridal show at Running Deer. I love the martini glass vase!

Floating candles and orchids are simple but beautiful.

I love the different heights of these candles.

Rose petals and votives are an easy way to dress up the cocktail area.

These cube vases are the perfect size for cocktail tables! Plus, I love the bright colors.

I am obsessed with these spider mums.

This is perfect for a fall wedding.

So I’d love to know, where do you plan on hosting your cocktail hour? How do you plan on decorating the area?

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

Scotland Run Wedding Florist: Brynn and Drew

admin — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:27:30 +0000

Lots of fun things have been going on over here at the flower shop recently. We have had some new helpers recently, which has made our lives so much easier. Our sister, Sara, is now working for us two days a week and good friend (and blogger!), April, is here one day a week. Then my sister in law (and amazing florist!), Torey, and another friend, Kim, have been helping us deliver and set up weddings on the weekends as needed. It has been amazing working with friends and family, and we really are so lucky. We have been able to be that much more dedicated to our brides and making their wedding days special and unique, because of all the extra help these girls have been to us. I even had time to blog twice in one week!!! Brynn and Drew were married June 24th at Scotland Run in Williamstown, NJ. The outside ceremony area and landscaping there is just breath taking, definitely a venue to check out if you are looking for an outside ceremony. I loved their cherry pink and green color scheme, and it photographed amazing. Thanks to their photographer, Pittelli Photography, we have some gorgeous photos to share with you.

I love this picture! Love that the photographer used this little bike, which is so cute, with Brynn’s bouquet…the contrast between the two is amazing. For her bouquet we used cherry-o pink roses, pink hydrangea, pink mini gerber daisies, pink calycinia, and pink gladiolus florets.

The bridesmaids carried bouquets of green hydrangea, green spider mums, lady’s mantle, and green glad blossoms. We wrapped the stems with bright pink ribbon and used green pearl pins to accent.

The flowers really popped against their gowns! I love when a bride carries a colorful bouquet!

Gorgeous bridal party!

To line the aisle we used these vintage bottles (that we found in a barn at our grandparents!) with a single hot pink gerber daisy and a sprig of calcynia.

These bottles are the perfect size to line an aisle.

The place cards were placed on a bed of wheat grass and accented with pink asters.

We brought in more of the wheat grass in the centerpieces. Half of the tables had these square dishes of the grass topped with a square vase holding manzanita branches with pink gerbers and hanging votives.

The other half of the tables had the wheat grass with a vase of limes floating in the water, and topped with a floating candle. Two gerber daisies accented the grass, one of each side.

We had some extra wheat grass so we used some on the sweetheart table too, with a vase all ready for her bouquet to go in when she arrived.

This cake was so pretty. I loved all the pink and green. All we did was accent with more of the pink gerbers and it looked perfect.

Thanks Brynn and Drew for sharing your photos with us and for letting us be a part of your day. Best wishes on your future together! xoxo!!!

If you are interested in our floral design services in South Jersey, the greater Philadelphia area or Northern Delaware please contact Mary by filling out the form below:
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Williamstown Wedding Florist: Gina and Jared

admin — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:35:50 +0000

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!

Lucien’s Wedding Florist: Lindsey and Rich

admin — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:35:43 +0000

So it is officially summer! I am so excited…nice weather, tons of weddings, and a week at the beach coming up soon It really doesn’t get much better than that. The nice weather means we have access to some really great locally grown flowers too…which we have been taking huge advantage of. It is so much more fun when we get to go pick out exactly what flowers we are going to use for an event! We also recently purchased a birch arbor / Chuppah that is to die for. One of our brides had her fiance and family make it by hand for her ceremony and once we saw it we fell in love with it. We are so excited that we can now offer it as a rental item to our brides, contact us if you are interested! Now on to the fun stuff We have had the pleasure of working with Marc Anthony a few times already this wedding season, and as usual his photos did not disappoint. You can check out his blog about Lindsey and Rich’s wedding HERE. Lindsey and Rich were married this past March at Lucien’s Manor in Berlin, NJ. Lindsey was seriously one of the most gorgeous brides I have ever seen…simply stunning, and super sweet to work with to boot! Jessica (another one of our gorgeous brides) was in this wedding, and did hair and makeup for all the bridesmaids and Lindsey. She has her own business, Your Day Your Way, and any bride looking for hair and makeup for the day of their wedding should def check her out, she does beautiful work! Now check out these photos….

This may be one of the cutest first look pictures I have ever seen….you can tell these two adore each other <3

Lindsey carried a cascading bouquet of white peonies, katerina pink roses, pink esperance roses, white and pink ranunculus, red amaranthus, and erica dendrobium orchids.

The bridesmaids carried bouquets of sarah bernhardt peonies, pink roses, pink ranunculus, and fiddlehead ferns.

Aren’t these two adorable?!?! The flower girl wore a halo of baby’s breath with pink ribbon streamers and the ringbearer wore a cute little bout made of a fiddlehead fern and a spray rose bud.

Check out the movement on Lindsey’s bouquet…awesome! Her dress was gorgeous…I think she even said she was on an episode of Say Yes to the Dress!

The room at Lucien’s was beautiful. I loved her linens…they were gorgeous and really added to the overall look of the room.

We did two styles of centerpieces. The first was done in our chic vase, filled with crystals light with an LED and pink tinted water. On top we used our crystal chandeliers and designed an arrangement of dendrobium orchids. We used our crystal candle holders around the centerpiece…they look so pretty with the candlelight!

The other centerpieces were done in the same vase, but with our natural bark manzanita branches in the top. We hung our crystal globes and orchids strands from the branches…so pretty!

This wedding was picture perfect and we love working with Lindsey to come up with everything…this bride has definite style! Thanks Lindsey and Rich for letting us be a part of your special day!!!

Lucien's Wedding Florist: Lindsey and Rich