This dreamy wedding happened in Guerneville last fall. Amanda and Sean and their family and friends took over the magical little riverside cabins at Dawn Ranch. For the centerpieces, Amanda collected old copper kettles and pots, with some amber and green glass bottles for accents. Her stunning veil was a family heirloom. Sigh! I loved this one. Enjoy the photos, generously shared with us by photographer Lyndsay Undseth.

Julie Benjamin made the adorable aeonium boutonnieres.

A bridesmaid’s bouquet, enjoying the cocktail hour.

I love working with vintage copper with a tarnished patina. The finish is so versatile, and it looks stunning on white (or with greenery, like the feathery live moss we used here).

Michele and Tony got married in our very own garden at Flora Grubb back in October. Couples who get married here at the nursery don’t need a whole lot of other décor, what with the plants everywhere and all, but Julie and I did their personal flowers: Michele’s bridal bouquet, the boutonnieres, and a few amazing hairpieces. Their photographer, Marla Aufmuth, got some insanely beautiful shots and was generous enough to share them. Please check out more of Marla’s lovely work on her site.

This photo of Michele’s bouquet appeared in the SF Chronicle in a piece about the wedding. The ingredients: sempervivum rosettes and sedum ‘nussbaumerianum’ (that’s the orange-ish succulent); senecio ’string of pearls’; some pittosporum foliage; echinacea; various tillandsias; a fragrant, lemony geranium; orange cockscomb and chocolate cosmos.

What a dress! Later on in the evening, the lovely white layer on top was removed to reveal Michele’s gorgeous orange party dress underneath. Michele and Autumn Adamme, the owner of Dark Garden, collaborated on the design of the dress.

Here’s a nice detailed shot of Michele’s hairpiece. Julie Benjamin made it, of course, along with the stunning boutonnieres below.

Right now the Headlands Center for the Arts is my favorite place to work. Its dramatic, expansive surroundings are a perfect contrast with the elegant intimacy of the venue. Sarah and Alex drew on the aesthetic of the building and the Headlands for their wedding inspiration. We discussed working with colors that would evoke autumn but wouldn’t read as a traditional fall palette: matte (metallic) gold and amber, creamy neutrals, seafoam green, soft purple. I collected old brass bowls for their containers. My favorite piece was this bouquet in three layers for the guestbook table:

So romantic! Lots of succulents and tillandsias, along with privet berries, yarrow, lisianthus, queen anne’s lace, seeded eucalyptus, arbutus blooms, acacia, antique hydrangea, and crape myrtle leaves.

Sarah’s bouquet turned out beautifully. We added a few little gilded baby pomegranates for some subtle metallic glow.

Sarah’s bridesmaids were wearing party dresses in creamy neutral shades, so we did little monochrome bouquets for each of them, drawing four colors out of our palette: cream, gold, soft green, and deep purple.

Corsages with lace bracelets, and lovely boutonnieres with some subtle gilding (thank you, Julie Benjamin!)

Another nice shot of Sarah’s bouquet awaiting her arrival.

This fun display, with amber glass apothecary bottles collected by the bride and groom, greeted guests on their way into the building. The crazy big pouf is a dried cardoon… I wish you could see in the photograph just how sparkly it was!

Such a gorgeous way to end the wedding season. We were lucky to have Alysia Hook’s help with these bouquets as well. Congratulations, Sarah and Alex! More photos coming in soon from this summer and fall…

As we head into winter on this cozy gray day, I thought I’d bring you a little bit of springtime with some photos from Tomás and Sasha’s June wedding. The setting was Sasha’s mother’s lovely home in the hills above Bolinas, with the wild grasses blowing in the blustery weather. Sasha wanted a lot of lush greenery and vines paired with white flowers and bits of orange and electric blue. The very talented Octavia Hunter was kind enough to share these photos. You can see more of her work here.

It’s rare for me to do a bouquet without any succulents, but not by my own choosing. Brides generally gravitate to us wanting that part of the Flora Grubb Gardens aesthetic. But let me tell you, I LOVED making this bouquet without any succulents at all, just giant gorgeous white peonies and tons of vines, including the most exquisite passiflora I have ever seen.

This lovely little table sat at the front of the ceremony aisle under a huge oak tree.

I love this shot of Tomás pinning on his mother’s sweet corsage (the handiwork of Julie Benjamin, who was (as always) indispensable in putting together this wedding).

Some hawthorne branches and memorial photos at the side of a barn. Simple and perfect. We had to bolster the whole thing with some giant mossy rocks to keep it from blowing down in the wind, but they really did look like they belonged there!

On the long tables we created centerpieces with vines (Persian ivy, passiflora, asparagus fern), nasturtiums, Star of Bethlehem and vibrant, feathery live moss. In the end they looked like they’d been gathered from the surrounding hills and woods.

And now for one of my favorites from our busy September… Kristin and Jason, both marine biologists, wanted to transport the coastal beauty of their home in Bodega Bay to their lovely wedding site in Sebastopol. They also wanted lots and lots of color! Here’s Kristin’s bouquet:

And here are the centerpieces (arranged by me and the lovely and talented Alysia Hook) waiting to be placed on the dining tables in a dappled redwood grove:

We tried to evoke the feel of a coastal meadow without being too literal about it. And we used elements that reminded us of sea flora and fauna, like ornamental kale and eucalyptus flowers.

We also had some fun with mosses and lichen, which seem to link the coastal landscape with the woodsy one: elkhorn moss, old man’s beard.

Another angle on Kristin’s bouquet, with her “best lady” bouquet in the back:

We did a mossy branch encrusted with succulents and tillandsias for the guestbook table. It’s decorated mostly with living plants, so the branch probably still looks just like this six weeks later! The couple can eventually plant the succulents and bring the tillandsias inside, a nice reminder of the wedding day.

Check out the garland we installed on the rail of the little redwood deck where the couple stood for their ceremony. Those dahlias! I just can’t get over them.

Kristin and Jason brought along some crab pots from their neighbor’s yard in Bodega; we hung some mosses, plants and flowers over them to look like seaweed, barnacles, and urchins. Julie and I kind of went nuts with this one. That blooming eucalyptus makes a perfect anemone!

Lots of photos rolling in from summer and September weddings, so get ready, folks! No more radio silence — I’ll be posting a bunch in the next few weeks. This wedding happened way back in July, at the lovely Brazil Room in Tilden Park. Jessie and Jane, two lovely brides, got married in the morning, with their kids, Ruby and Xander, as flower girl and ring bearer extraordinaire. We went for wild and romantic and fresh, with succulents and tillandsias mixed with summer beauty in vintage milk glass.

I had quite the team with me for this wedding: my usual partner-in-crime, Julie Benjamin, along with the fabulously talented Liza Lubell of Pear Tree Flowers in NYC. We’ve been lucky to have Liza on board for a few events this season when she was passing through town. Check out her gorgeous work here.

Here’s Jessie’s bouquet (Jane carried one too, but I didn’t get a good shot of it). Dahlias, scabiosa, asparagus plumosa (one of my current obsessions), queen anne’s lace (obsession #2), abelia, and of course lots of tillys. We used the same elements for Jane’s bouquet, but with succulents instead of tillandsias.

For the ceremony aisle, we did bouquets of asparagus with baby xerographica tillandsias and dahlias. I love the lacy softness of that asparagus plumosa… maybe a little too much. I think I’ve used it for almost every wedding this season. Heh heh, so maybe I could stand to give it a rest. It’s just so pretty, though!

Congratulations, Jessie and Jane! And stay tuned for further posts.

Taylor and Todd got married down in Pebble Beach, right on the 17-mile Drive at the Church in the Forest. For her bouquet we did some woodsy greenery with “string of pearls” and shots of purple for rich color. So pretty with her simple dress! The amazing Julie Benjamin (of Little Lane Studios) made Todd’s gorgeous boutonniere. Photos kindly shared by Viera Photographics.

For the reception at Bernardus Lodge in Carmel Valley, we mixed some succulents and tillandsias in with a kind of romantic, French-garden-inspired palette of springtime plants and flowers. The peachy leucospermum (pincushions) were a little outside the box, but we loved the color, perfect against the terracotta walls at the lodge.

Ivette and Ben came to me about doing their flowers way back when my two babies (see pic below!) were just the proverbial twinkle(s) in my eye. A couple of weeks ago they finally got married at the stunning Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, a building whose state of elegant disrepair has been so well-preserved that you really feel transported in time. Did you see “The King’s Speech”? You know that gorgeous peeling paint and the huge skylights in the speech therapist’s office? That’s what this place is like (according to Haley, one of my lovely assistants, and she is absolutely right). So inspiring!

Originally Ivette and Ben were thinking about a “World’s Fair” theme for their celebration, but in the end they went a little less literal, and we tried to create a whimsical old-timey feel that would complement the location’s amazing vintage-ness.

Her bouquet had lots of springtime goodness, including some devastating orange ranunculus. Eventually I’ll share some pics of the couple, who were adorable. Ivette’s dress was perfect for her and for this bouquet… simple, flowy, and so elegant.

Ivette found some cute old cheese crates on ebay, so we used those for the centerpieces.

This is an underwater succulent “garden.” Go figure, right? The plants don’t last underwater terribly long, but it’s a pretty look for an event. The little favors are Ivette’s homemade Mexican wedding cookies.

I’ll pass on some more photos when they come my way. In the meantime, here’s one of our twins, Iris and Jonah. They pretty much put the flowers to shame, don’t they?

While I’ve been on maternity leave with our amazing twins, Iris and Jonah (!!), lots of photos from fall weddings have trickled down into my e-mail. This was one of my favorites, an incredibly beautiful wedding in a Woodside garden on a sweltering Indian summer day.

I was so worried about the yellow garden roses! They were about as open as open could be without completely falling apart. Katie and Karl and their amazing photographer, Gia Canali, shared these photos with us. You can also check out their wedding on Style Me Pretty.

Enjoy! And look out for some more new pics soon… I’ll try to post some while the babies snooze.

Samantha and Jeremy were married way back in August, but their color palette, with its rich berry tones, vibrant greens, and deep browns, feels just right for this time of year, doesn’t it? They are the sweetest couple; they planted the succulents from Samantha’s bridal bouquet in a little pot, which the plants have already outgrown, despite being kept indoors. Happy plants for a happy couple!

Samantha wanted to keep her bouquet modern and sculptural, so we focused on defined shapes, with smokebush foliage, chocolate cosmos, leucadendron ‘jester,’ echeveria ‘perle von nurnberg,’ and the dark aeonium ’schwarzkopf.’

A couple of tall pots for the corners of the chuppah were moved to frame the dance floor after the ceremony was done.

Generally I am not a fan of gerbera daisies, but these locally grown ones were the perfect shade of berry red for this wedding, so we went for it. I actually loved the way they turned out, with green figs and the maidenhair fern for softness.

Congratulations, Samantha and Jeremy!