I love a nice muted palette for weddings on the coast. Stacey and Duane were married in the fireplace living room of a small inn in Mendocino on a rainy day. Can’t get much more romantic than that. We used soft champagne and rose tones with dove grays and silvery greens. Have a look. The first three photos have been generously shared with us by Kate Harrison; the others I took myself.

Almost eight years ago, Saul and I got married in the ruins of an old winery near Kenwood. I passed the spot a few weeks back, driving up to Sonja and Chris’s wedding with my truck full of dahlias. As usual on the day of a wedding, I’d been driving with white knuckles, pumping the A/C to the point of absurdity, worrying about the flowers and the traffic and the time. But then, just a few miles away from my delivery, I realized I was passing the place where we had our best party ever, our most magical night. Such clichés, but I really do feel those things about our wedding. Feeling them again on highway 12 made me remember why I like this job. There’s so much pressure in doing weddings, so much stress, but it’s all because of how meaningful the celebration is. It makes sense to me that we want to surround ourselves with natural beauty when we get married. I hope I’m helping to make this happen for the couples I work with.

Anyway, here are some shots of Chris and Sonja’s flowers. These made me so happy. I liked working with Sonja because she just loves flowers so much. Dinner-plate dahlias from our favorite little grower in Half Moon Bay; eucalyptus pods and blooms; some ferns and liquidambar; abelia; some locally grown orchids. Garden roses, antique hydrangea. Succulents and tillandsias. We used passiflora and Boston ivy for the large altarpiece bouquets. There’s even a little bit of coleus and begonia in there, cut from our nursery stock.

First a few angles on Sonja’s bouquet, then some shots from their mountaintop ceremony. The reception was deep underground in a candlelit wine cave… my meager photography skills couldn’t capture the loveliness in there, but I did get a couple of shots of the centerpieces outside among the grapevines.

Springtime always feels far away when the first chill of fall comes around… but the photos from Estee and Judd’s wedding bring me right back to May. These two were so fun to work with. I loved their plan to pair rich, bright colors with soft shades of gray. They got married in the Santa Cruz mountains at Nestldown, so dewy and green at that time of year. Our team: Julie Benjamin, of course (most of our corsages and boutonnieres are her handiwork), and the lovely and talented Alysia Marie Floral. Photos by Julie Bullock / www.katewebber.com. Thanks for sharing, Julie!

There are no words for those peonies. Right? No words. Also found some very early dahlias, peak ranunculus, spray roses, lady’s mantle, dusty miller, craspedia. Succulents and tillandsias for touches of gray and crazy texture.

If you can see past the flower girl’s adorable orange dress, you’ll spot that she is carrying a sempervivum-studded kissing ball about as big as her head. We intended for it to be slightly more petite, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger! So sweet.

Congratulations, Estee and Judd! I hope married life is treating you both very well!

Here are a few lovely centerpieces and bouquets from Selene and Jason’s June wedding in Los Gatos. Purple has been a popular color this year. My New York florist friend Liza Lubell reports the trend is happening all the way over on her end of the nation as well. What gives? I guess it feels luxurious and romantic… and it sure does look purty with the muted grays and greens of the succulent palette. I’ll take it.

Oh my, these are some dreamy photos… you might remember Sarah and Alex’s Headlands wedding from an earlier post with my own (inferior) pics. Here are their professional shots, taken by Lydia Chen of Lydia Chen Fotography. Thanks to Lydia, Sarah, and Alex for sharing these!

For each of Sarah’s lovely bridesmaids, we drew a single color from the overall palette and went for a monochrome-ish look to contrast with their creamy neutral dresses. Here are close-ups of three of them:

And a few great shots of flowers from their reception below… We collected vintage brass bowls and vessels for the centerpieces. I stacked three of them here for a tiered wedding “cake” arrangement for their guestbook table:

The place card table is below, with apothecary bottles collected by the couple. That crazy big gold flower is a dried cardoon!

One of my favorite weddings ever. Delicious.

Just received this lovely shot from Monica and Ryan, whose wedding I posted yesterday. Don’t they look so happy? Just when I get a little burnt out on weddings, a shot like this comes in and I get excited about them all over again. Photo is by Kate Harrison. Thanks for sharing, Kate!

We’re doing a couple of lovely weddings at the Headlands Center for the Arts this season. Here is the first of them!

The bouquets awaiting the arrival of the bride and maid of honor. We made a little bonus hairpiece for Monica, using one of the bearded irises from our palette. Iris is my daughter’s name, so the flower holds a special place in my heart. There were some amazing locally grown bearded irises at the flower market this spring. We combined them with lilacs, geranium leaves, ferns, succulent rosettes, tillandsias, and mosses for lush and lacy texture. There are also deep purple scabiosa in there, and some silvery dusty miller.

We created a few vibrant green bouquets to decorate the benches along the ceremony aisle, and also a freestanding mossy branch for the front of the room. Close-ups:

For the dining tables, Monica and Ryan wanted simple and unexpected centerpieces. We combined large xerographica tillandsias with silvery-purple begonia leaves and some feathery moss. It was somehow a lovely pairing with the old-fashioned mix-and-match table décor.

I was lucky enough to have the fabulous Alysia of Alysia Marie Floral on hand for this one, and also my beloved Julie Benjamin. Thanks, ladies!

Rachel and Kyle got married at the Cliff House — another great historic San Francisco spot! — on an improbably gorgeous day last November. They live in the Outer Sunset and were so happy to celebrate their wedding right in their own neighborhood. I have never seen the view there look so dazzling. I remember on my way home after the set-up, I saw Rachel and Kyle coming up to the wedding on the Great Highway in an old Rolls Royce. All I saw through the window was her little vintage headpiece and the bouquet, which she was holding up near her face. So romantic! Here are some lovely photos from the talented Gary Sexton.

The Sunnyside Conservatory is hidden away in a weird spot near the Glen Park Bart, and for decades it looked like nobody cared about it. I grew up just up the street, and I always thought there must be ghosts (or, at the very least, giant raccoons) lurking in its overgrown depths. A few years ago it was renovated, with spectacular results. The conservatory building is immaculate, with rich wood paneling all throughout the inside, and the plantings around it are interesting and very well-maintained. (My husband, who is a bit of a palm tree nerd, wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t mention the rare Chilean wine palm that’s part of their collection.) Anyway, this is all to say that we did a lovely wedding at Sunnyside a few weeks ago, on a rainy Saturday in March. It was so cozy and intimate inside the conservatory, with the rain battering on the glass. The light that day was beautiful but kind of tough to work with for a (very very) amateur photographer like me, so the photos below do not do the flowers justice. I hope to share some professional shots when they come in!

We made a couple of tall mossy branch arrangements for the ceremony. Together they suggested a kind of archway as a backdrop for the couple’s wedding; I didn’t get a good shot of both together, but I’m hoping to pass on some professional photos when they come in. Here’s a bit of a close-up, with some mosses on the windowsill…

And Leila’s bouquet:

I was so excited when she told me she wanted a lush cascade, down to her knees. We used ranunculus, some leucadendron, and berzelia, and for the vines there is passiflora, jasmine, and asparagus plumosa, with Spanish moss and “old man’s beard” lichen. Julie models here, but I can’t wait to see the bridal portraits with lovely Leila in her gown.

More sprawling vines for the centerpieces! In the antique shop, surrounded by chandeliers and oversized armoires, they had a kind of “Alice in Wonderland” feel, perfect for early springtime.

The military buildings in the Presidio and Fort Mason make such fantastic wedding venues… you get that elegant “old San Francisco” feeling along with a playful kitsch factor. Amirah and Dave got married at the General’s Residence at Fort Mason, where there is a parquet floor to die for and some stern old generals smirking down at you from their oil portraits on the walls. For their flowers, too, the couple wanted elegance with a sense of play.

I used lush, deep purple spring flowers in Amirah’s bouquet — anemones, lisianthus, sweet peas, boronia (so fragrant!) — with succulent rosettes and a few tillandsias and ferns.

The guinea hen feathers gave these dramatic corsages a sense of whimsy too. Julie Benjamin (of Little Lane Studios) never ceases to amaze me with her work on our “small flowers.” Thanks also goes out to the lovely Alysia Hook, who joined our team for this wedding.

We’ve been playing with “container-less” arrangements, using mosses to create the look of a little garden growing right out of the table.

More fun with mosses and succulents!

Bi-Rite created this pretty (and no doubt delicious) cake and decorated it with some plants I pulled from our palette of purples and greens. Amirah and Dave are putting together a “wedding garden” with all of their succulents; they asked guests to sign river rocks to place in the garden in lieu of a guestbook. So lovely and fun!