What a truly lovely afternoon. An early summer day in the spectacular gardens of the beautiful English Inn and Resort was spent by myself and fantastic team of talent. This shoot was the inspiration of Adrienne from Pink Sugar Cupcakes. The theme was literature, antique paper and was coloured with a beautiful palette of soft creams, pale yellows, and golds, the tones added to the late afternoon sun light and cast a beautiful romantic glow over the whole scene.

The containers were wrapped with pages from antique books.

The stunning model and her lovely husband were prepped with the expert hands of Sharon Rai and the result was a stunning. She wore a beautiful headpieces made especially for the shoot by Tetrik Apparel and again incorporated pages from old books. The best part is that soon we will see how the magic of Karen McNeil and her beautiful eye captured the day and all the details. See Karen’s blog post here.

It is a special day when the talents of so many come together and create a fantastic wedding shoot. That is exactly what happened today. We shot this bounty of beauty at a stunning equestrian estate just outside the city. We started with what I consider to be one of the most beautiful flowers, the peony and chose the vibrant “coral charm” and ran from there. What resulted was nothing short of spectacular. These images are no where close to the magic that Richard and Amy McDowell from Red Leaf Studios, created today however. It gives you a taste.

The incredible team at Crumbsy’s Cupcake Cafe made the beautiful cake, cookies and cupcakes for our sweets table

Dan and Micayla from The London Chef, a fantastic catering and cooking school on Fort Street provided some amazing appetizers for our food display.

Tamara Radick of InHabit Designs did an incredible job of all the stationary and branding, and we used the double horseshoes everywhere.

The ceremony and reception took place at the beautifully relaxed and scenic Starling Lane Winery. The ceremony spot was marked with an antique table and some fabulous white orchid plants we stuffed into rustic looking galvanized metal buckets set on top of wine barrels.

Siobhan and Ian wanted a very relaxed atmosphere for their day, a fun celebration for close friends and family to recognize the love and joy they have brought to each others lives. Because words are a very important part of their lives,  a special part of the day was to be a couple of old typewriters set up in the old greenhouse for guests to write their thoughts and wishes for the newlyweds.

We have heard that the party was fabulous with dancing to the wee hours and kids who didn’t want to go home. Starling Lane has so much to look at; gardens, chickens and old buildings, that it is just a perfect venue for anyone looking for a laid back, country vibe.

Vanessa and our fabulous helper for the day, Marie, in front of the old water tower.

We are so happy to have been a part of the day and to help bring to fruition the vision for this couple.

We have known Anais for about 4 years, she used to work part time for us and so we knew she would appreciate us bringing our humour with us to our very first official consultation for her wedding.  We dressed up in wedding gowns and made her wear a veil.  That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the planning stages.

Anais and Andrew decided to get married on their favorite beach and have their reception at her uncle’s stunning condo in Tofino on Vancouver Island.  While all that was a great idea, the logistics for us were mind boggling, to say the least.  We had to figure out how to safely deliver hundreds of stems of white phaeleonopsis orchids, a few hundred roses, hydrangeas and more not only to Tofino, but also how we were going to traipse the orchids and vases down to the beach.  Our first order of business and one of our better decisions was to rent a cargo van to drive and house all the flowers and supplies.  I’m not sure about the pink bow, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

OK, I can’t believe I just posted that picture of myself.  Taking one for the team.

We spent the rest of Friday afternoon settling in to our VERY luxurious accommodations at Anais’s uncles condo development.  His name is Walker McKinley of McKinley Dang Burkart and he is the very charming and very talented architect of The Shores.  Friday night was spent wiring orchids, making bouquets, centrepieces, bouts and getting ready for the ceremony on Saturday.

This is the deck before we worked our magic.  Stay tuned for the transformation.  I know, it is fabulous like it is now but wait until you see it!

Another magical day for a wedding at Sea Cider that we were thrilled to be a part of. Emily and Beau were married in the evening on June 12th while looking out over the view from the deck in the ciderhouse. The couple, from New Zealand, had flown in a few days prior and the day could not have been more perfect for them. Once again we met and planned with Emily over lots of emails and a few spotty calls back and forth. We chose to go with a rustic, west coast elegant theme, using several different kinds of textural folliage and filler. Waxflower, buplereum, pittisporum and salal were the base of all the table centres and they were accented with beautiful soft apricot roses. The tables were set with the most extrordinary individual sets of antique china that the brides mother has been lovingly collecting over the years. Between the china, roses, shells and driftwood the tables looked fantastic and the tent was simply stunning. . The large arrangements flanking the ceremony site were overflowing with light green Annabelle hydrangeas, soft white lisianthus and whispy fiber optic grass. Emily’s bouquet was a perfect posy of lush white and soft pink peonies accented with the clean elegant lines of lavendar calla lilies, and white orchids. Her bridesmaids carried small posies with similar blooms including the highlights of soft apricot spray roses. Our lovely friend Margaret joined us on Thursday in our studio to lend her talented hands to the 21 centrepieces we made. How lucky we were to have our talented and beloved friend Jenna Tye follow us to capture the floral  journey from start to finish. The abundently talented Christine Smart coordinated the event and was the magic touch that made things go so smoothly for us as we arrived to set up. Thank you Christine! Truffles expertly catered and executed the dinner and drinks for the evening. We can’t wait to see photos of the beautiful Emily in her dress and more images of the entire day captured by Erica Chan, check out her blog teaser. Thank you to both Emily and Beau we wish you much love and hapiness.

Shelley and Blair were fantastic! They were keen to have a “riot” of colour and we were happy to oblige. Shelley asked for bright and bold blooms for her bouquet and handed us a challenge with the addition of strings of orchid blooms to her bouquet. They were married in the Lokier Gardens with a reception at the Uplands Glof Club to follow. We were thrilled to catch Shelley and her bridesmaids as they were getting ready to leave the Villa Marco Polo where they were having their pictures taken by the extremely talented Keri Coles. Thank you Shelley for allowing us to snap a few pictures of you for our records. Everyone looked beautiful, the cascading blooms of orchids looked perfect against the subtle beading detail of Shelleys gown and the bright pinks, oranges and greens of the bridesmaids bouquets really  ”popped” with the pewter coloured dresses that they wore. The guys looked brilliant in their celedon green vests and ties. We very much look forward to seeing the “real” thing through the lens of Keri! Check out her blog with a bit of a sneek peek  http://www.kericoles.com/blog Thank you again Shelley and Blair it was a treat for us to work with you!