Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and we want you to share the love, love stories that is.  Here’s what you do, shoot us an email with your most romantic love story.  It has to be true and something you did for your significant other or something they did for you.  We will pick the top three love stories and post them on our Facebook for people to vote on.  The Story with the most “likes” on Facebook come Valentine’s Day will be the winner.  The author of the winning story will receive a Valentine’s Day Floral arrangement of their choice worth up to $100, keep it for yourself or have it delivered to that special someone.  Please email stories to floralaffair@att.net with “Love Story” as the subject, and don’t forget to include your contact info.

Happy New Year from all of us here at A Floral Affair!  It’s been a while since we last blogged…my fault of course since I write all the blogs (wink, wink), although in my defense I did have a baby during the height of our busy season.  Sadly life just hasn’t left much time for blogging recently, but we’re back in full swing now and have so much to share with you.  First off, we’ve updated our web galleries…finally.  The wedding galleries are full of great new work to delight and inspire you, please take a peak and tell us what you think, we’d love the feedback.  We also gave all the photos on the web a unique reference number you can easily communicate to one of our designers over the phone or by email.  This year we hope to increase our daily business, so keep an eye on our Facebook page for weekly specials and “fan only” discounts.  Lastly, Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and we will be having a love story contest, start thinking of the most romantic thing your significant other has ever done, and we’ll have the contest details for you soon.

Cheers!

Here at A Floral Affair we love getting to work with new mediums, and we recently did a wedding that gave us the opportunity to do just that.  Feathers were used in the bridal bouquet and alter arrangements to give this wedding a unique new look.  The bride’s bouquet was made from dark eggplant mini calla lilies with a collar of white feathers.  In contrast the alter arrangements used colorful peacock feathers along with willow branches for texture.  The peacock feathers and willow branches wrapped up and around a tall glass candle holder that was surrounded at the bottom with white hydrangea, magenta dahlias, purple sweet pea, and various foliage.  We hope you enjoy the pictures and use them to get your own creative juices flowing.

Last weekend was CRAZY!!  We did five weddings and a rehearsal dinner between Thursday and Saturday.  The studio was in a state of organized chaos, and the designers were all working at top speed.  I’m usually chained to a desk in the office, but last week I made sure to go check on the activity in the studio, and take some candid shots of the work in progress.  We also have a number of pictures of the finished products to share with you.

Three of the weddings were at the Abernethy Center in Oregon City, where we are a preferred vendor.  We love working there not only because it is a beautiful venue staffed with amazing people, but since we’ve moved it’s only about five minutes from our studio.  In addition to their gorgeous outdoor wedding facilities the Abernethy Center will be adding a chapel for indoor ceremonies in the near future.  We’ll be sure to keep you posted on the chapel completion date and other happenings at our favorite venues.

There’s nothing we love more than a good party, and The Lan Su Chinese Garden in downtown Portland is a stunning place to have one.  The atmosphere is intimate and elegant with an endless number of unique and beautiful features.  There are bridges, waterfalls, winding paths, and enough landscaping to make your photographer’s day.  Paper lanterns add romance once the sun goes down, and the garden is conveniently located at 239 Northwest Everett Street.  Not only did we provide the flowers for last weekend’s wedding in the garden, we were guests as well.  The bride chose super fun lime green dresses for her attendants, and accented them with shades of gold and orange.  We used roses, lilies, tulips, alstromeria, freesia, and yarrow in the bouquets and centerpieces.  The colors and styles were perfectly suited to an evening in the garden, and we were thrilled to have been a part of it.

If you follow our blog, you may remember a story from last summer about a unique proposal that took place in a Portland fountain.  We just happened to be there when the would be groom got down on one knee, and being in the wedding business we couldn’t resist snapping a few pictures.  Of course we also passed them our business card, and were thrilled when they booked their wedding with us.  Earlier this year, the bride and groom took their vows at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood.  They had a beautiful wedding, and provided us with some excellent pictures taken by Krissy Allori Photography.  The bouquet was done in orange and peach with green and ivory accents, using gerbera daisies, roses, hydrangea,  and hypericum berries.  We hope you enjoy the pictures.

We wanted to spread the word about an upcoming linen showcase hosted by The Party Place.  The showcase will be held at The Hotel deLuxe on May 19th from 4pm to 7pm.  The Party Place will be featuring an exclusive viewing of their specialty linen collections.  For more information go to website at www.linenshowcasepdx.com and be sure to check out their beautiful photo album.

Here at A Floral Affair we excel in making your floral budget go the distance.  One of our favorite money saving tricks is using multi-purpose flowers.  Reusing your ceremony flowers at your reception is a simple way to stretch your dollar without skimping on flowers; it’s also a neat way to recycle.  Aisle flowers can easily be turned into table centerpieces by simply placing them into vases on your reception tables.  This trick will give you twice the flowers for half the price, allowing your ceremony aisle and reception tables to be equally beautiful.  The pictures give you an example of how this trick works; first you see the flowers hanging on shepherd’s hooks or chair backs along the aisle, then you see them placed in vases on reception tables.  Our designers ensure that the aisle flowers fit seamlessly into the reception by choosing vases that are the perfect height and shape for your reception.  When planning your wedding, remember that with a little ingenuity you can have everything you want…and still afford the honeymoon.

So far this year we’ve been keeping busy, and having loads of fun.  We have been throughly enjoying the new studio, and thought we’d share some pictures of what we’ve created in our new space.  The ivory calla lily bouquet is wrapped in deep sapphire satin and embellished with silver wire curls.  Curly willow branches were used to create the tree adorned with hanging tea lights.  We reused an old milk jug for a centerpiece it was filled with vivid pink daisies an placed on a table at Timberline Lodge a favorite local venue.  We hope you like what you see!