Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Mad Hatter Madness

Meet Eva. Eva is a friend of mine from High School who I recently tortured. Why and How you're are probably asking yourself. Well... Back in October I was laying in bed one night unable to sleep because I had this idea for a photo shoot. How awesome would it be to set up an elaborate table in the middle of no where and take a bunch of pictures of it?!?! So as I continued to brainstorm that night the theme of the shoot was born. "Mad Hatter"

With the new Allison in Wonderland movie coming out, it was perfect. The first person to know about this grand scheme was my dear friend Karli, who people in the Las Vegas Wedding Industry know as the Perfect Wedding Guide Rep. She is one of my favorite people to talk to about projects because she gets excited with me. It's fun.

One thing we knew was that great people had to be involved.

After few phone calls and lots of planning, the date was set for November 5th, the vendors were in place and it was time to enlist a model. That's where Eva comes in. We knew we needed someone who was beautiful, edgy, lots of fun and willing to take the day of from work to roll around in dirt. So we bribed Eva and her fiance Mike with a free engagement shoot by Imagine Photography to come out to the dry lake bed with us for this concept shoot.

You wouldn't know it from some of the pictures but this day was awful. When we arrived on site it was dead still, no wind, a perfect day. Literally as we were unloading and setting up the worst wind storm since 1792 hit! Allyson and Monet from the Las Vegas Style sirens arrived shortly after the wind started and attempted to do what was quickly becoming the impossible, makeover Eva in a dust storm. We had false eyelashes flying everywhere, makeup turning into mud and hair becoming gray with fine dirt.

The Girls from Gimme Some Sugar put together a beautiful dummy cake for the shoot which didn't take us long to end up breaking (sorry guys!). As we are all huddled behind cars seeking a little shelter from the wind, I'm hot gluing back together the cake, Allyson and Monet are working on Eva and the guys are kicking back enjoying a muddy beer. Good Times...

The bridal bouquet I designed consisted on black callas, dark purple ranunculus, freedom roses, and lavender tulips. We accented with a bit of bling on the handle treatment to really make it pop.

We were out at the dry lake beds in 1000 mile winds all day long. Poor Eva was freezing in the strapless dress and completely covered in dirt. She looked so amazing and I can't imagine having anyone besides her and Mike out there all day with us.

Thank you Eva.

And Thank You to all of the vendors who helped make my vision come to life. It was such a great learning experience and such a fun project.

Photography - Imagine Photography

Hair and Makeup - The Las Vegas Style Sirens

Cake - Gimme Some Sugar

This shoot has been featured on RocknRollBride.com and recently seen in the Spectacular Wedding Planner by Bridal Spectacular.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Would Your Child Self Be Happy?

When you were a kid what did you want to do?

Are you the person who you thought you would grow up to be?

What would your child self say about the person you've become?

During this last week I had a conversation with my mom about growing up, about the direction I am heading with in life, about where Weeds is going. One question I had is if I could ask myself as a child what she thought about me now what would she say? My mom's answer, "She would be so thrilled. You were always wanting to create something and be making things". My mom likes to tell everyone about how I was so girly growing up and strong willed. At the age of 3 if my mom put pants on me I would go in my room, crawl in the dresser to find a skirt and panties with ruffles on the butt and change myself. By 4 I was insisting that I did my own hair and that I needed to get my ears pierced right away. All growing up I loved crafts, coloring and making things pretty.

Everyday I get to come to work and create, I get to help make brides dreams come true. I have the ultimate girly job that I truly love doing, I am passionate about it and wouldn't change it for the world. There are those days when the flower order didn't come in just right or nothing wants to come together as planned but those are few and far between. We are fortunate to get to witness monumental events in others lives and share in their joys, excitement and emotions.

When booking your wedding with Weeds, you're not just hiring someone to show up with flowers on the day of your wedding and leave to never see them again. I like to say we are more like your "Floral Concierges", fancy sounding right? From the time of the first consultation through the event you are welcome to call us anytime. Even if it isn't floral related we are more than happy to try to help in the best way possible. It's your big day, you deserve to be treated special and not just another stop on the delivery route for the day. The trick to our design techniques isn't a secret, we listen to what people want, we put our heart into everything we produce and we genuinely care about the people who will be receiving our flowers.

I have big dreams for this company and I am willing to put to work in to get to that point. One day we will be sought after, celebrities will be asking if they can fly us to exotic locations to adorn their weddings with florals. Colin Cowie, Preston Bailey, Mindy Weiss, they all had to start some where. Welcome to our beginning, will you be part of our journey?