From Uncategorized

Wedding Floral Designer -Commonly Asked Questions

As a Wedding Flower Designer based in Kelowna, BC  we do things a bit differently than a retail flower shop as our focus is fully on designing and creating beautiful flowers for weddings.  Over the past 10 wedding seasons we’ve created & designed wedding flowers for over 300 incredible clients,  during this time we’ve been asked the same questions regularly by our clients & potential clients.   We thought a blog post might be helpful in answering some of our most commonly asked questions all in one place!

 

MHP-GENDIVE-488

http://www.meghanhemstra.com

How far out from my wedding should I be booking a floral designer?

– Booking your wedding florist far enough in advance, ensures that you get your chosen designer for your wedding day.  Currently we are booking 9-12 months in advance for our full wedding clients, and 3-6 months for bridal party flower only clients. As our busy wedding season in the Okanagan is from May-September, the weekend dates during these months do tend to book up faster. If you are planning a wedding between October-April, or during a weekday in the peak months less time is required for booking.

Do you have set packages and pricing?

– Everything we create and design is custom for each and every one of our clients, so we do not have set pricing or packages. As every wedding & every couple we work with is unique – we tailor the design concept & overall floral experience to suit you and your wedding.   Set packages and pricing doesn’t feel right for us and the service we prefer to provide.

Do you have a minimum order requirement on wedding flower orders?

– We have a suggested $3000.00 minimum on full wedding designs, and $1000.00 minimum on bridal party flowers during our peak season between May-September. However, as not every client and their wedding requirements fit those suggested budgets, if we are the right style & fit for your wedding we are happy to make the exception.

Do you offer free consultations to discuss wedding flower requirements?

–We offer free in person consultations in our Kelowna studio to discuss your wedding flower wants, needs and requirements.  After our meeting we will provide you with a price estimate, at which point you can choose to book with us & dive deeper into a concept, design and detailed quote.

We are planning our wedding from out of town and aren’t able to meet in person – how can we get a quote?

-This is not a problem! The majority of our clients are planning their wedding from afar, and so we are very used to doing the consultation process over email and by phone.

How many weddings do you take on per weekend?

– After a few very busy wedding seasons, we now try to limit to one full wedding design per weekend, and occasionally we will do 2-3 smaller wedding designs or bridal party flowers if it works within our schedule. With 10 wedding seasons under our belt, it is most important for us to provide the highest quality product and best service for our clients, and limiting the work we take on per weekend allows this.

Do you sell buckets of greenery & flowers for us to make our own arrangements & designs?

– Unfortunately, as we are not a retail flower shop, we are not able to sell loose flowers and greenery for designing your own arrangements. We want to make sure that everything we provide for your wedding day is perfect, and as stress free as possible and achieve this by providing our full wedding floral services.

What flowers are in season at the the time of my wedding?

-Most varieties of flowers & greenery that we use in our weddings are greenhouse grown in the Lower mainland or world-wide and are available year round, but there are some varieties of flowers that are very seasonal and available only certain times of the year.  One such flower would be the Peony with a local growing season in the Spring between May & June.   Unless you are booking your wedding date around your favourite flower availability, we are happy to suggest flower substitutes for what is in season at the time of your wedding.

Do you have any rentals available for weddings?

-We have a wide selection of high-quality vases & containers in our own inventory that can be used to design your wedding flowers within.    We also have a selection of votive & tea light holders that compliment our vase collections, and clear cylinder vases that are perfect for pillar candles or floating candles.   If you are looking for a specific style vase for your wedding, we can also help source that out for you.

Do you provide Delivery, Setup & Take-down services?

-As we are a full service floral design company we provide delivery & setup for all of our full wedding design clients with optional takedown service at the end of the night – which is particularly helpful when using our rental vases & containers.   We want to limit your stress on your wedding day, so we ensure that every detail of our services are done perfectly & professionally.   For our clients choosing just to order Bridal Party Flowers from us, we offer delivery or they can be picked up from our studio on the morning of the wedding.

What can be done with our flowers after our wedding day?

– There are many charities and non-profit groups within the Okanagan that will happily accept your wedding flowers to be able to keep the flower love going after your wedding day.   Normally our flowers will last up to a week after your wedding with proper care, water & being kept away from direct sunlight.  If you aren’t able to keep or share your flowers with friends and loved ones , donating your flowers after is a great option.

 

 

 

Vintage Elegance

This past weekend we participated in a Bridal Expo in Kelowna. I met so many wonderful brides, and loved hearing all about their wedding plans, details and ideas. Thanks to all of you who stopped by the Classic Creations booth and said hi! There was an overwhelming number of entries into the draw for $100.00 off of a floral package, so we have decided to draw three lucky names instead of one. I will be doing the draw in the next few days, and will be in contact with the winners soon. Goodluck to you all!

After months of narrowing down ideas, creating sketches, measuring out the space, re-designing the booth (a few times might I add) and finding the perfect pieces to put into the space, my booth came together exactly how I had envisioned it. It really was a labour of love, and am so happy with the final result. I wanted to create something that was soft, romantic and fresh – keeping with a vintage elegant theme. I ordered flowers in different shades of peaches, pinks, greens and whites. Beautiful peach Juliet garden roses and a few select pink peonies (Yes, Peonies! Totally worth the price tag for this event out of season) were the highlight of the arrangements. The bright green of the mini green hydrangea & hanging amaranthus were beautiful in contrast to the pink, while the white hydrangea gave the beautiful ruffly base to all of the arrangements.

The AMAZING white fireplace became the perfect backdrop to our little wedding vignette and a perfect base to display our arrangements. We chose to cover it with some beautiful Apothecary jars and Classic Creations beautiful new Hobnail Jar Collection which are available for rental – they are a pretty twist on plain mason jars. The apothecary jars are often used to display colourful candy, but I’ve always wanted to use them as the container for a floral arrangement – a terrarium of sorts. I filled each with different arrangements consisting of garden roses, lisianthus, spray roses, ornithogalum, succulents, and nestled these arrangments in a bed of Spanish moss and bright green reindeer moss. Loved how pretty they turned out. I also created simple arrangements for each hobnail vase, the perfect size for a simple wedding table arrangement. The mantle was illuminated by Classic Creations cute new hobnail votive holders which are also available for rental.

 

One of my favorite pieces is the Rustic Wooden Boxes that were custom made by my wonderful husband Jon, based on a simple sketch I made last spring. They have been such amazing and versatile pieces in Classic Creations rental inventory, and have already been used in multiple weddings and events in 2012. I have plans in the very near future to create similar rustic boxes for table centerpiece purposes (rather get Jon to build me some, so helpful having such a handy husband!). I filled these arrangements with beautiful large white hydrangea, mini green hydrangea, La Perla roses & of course the beautiful Juliet garden roses. White painted twigs were added for movement & height and I love the contrast between the soft pretty flowers and the rustic grey wood.

I also created a perfect table centerpiece, complete with two beautiful little arrangments in the small and medium sized hobnail glass jars. The beautiful vintage chairs and the incredibly gorgeous tablecloth set these arrangements off beautifully.

What is a wedding show without bridal bouquets? I created three different options keeping within the booth’s overall theme and colour scheme.

In case you are wondering what the “white stuff” is in the last bouquet. It’s actually cotton pods! Love all of the texture in this bouquet.

HUGE thank you goes out to my husband Jon for all of his help with setup, Yuriko (and her husband Erik) of Vintage Origami Wedding Rentals for all of the beautiful decor pieces, helping with set up & all of the positive support in the planning process, Lauren Krausher of Perspective Event Design for the beautiful white draping, Kevin Trowbridge Photography for our gorgeous canvases and lastly, thanks to Melanie Feeny of Shimmer + Gloss for the beautiful vintage inspired makeup that completed my look.

I hope you enjoyed looking at the photos as much as I enjoyed creating all the beautiful flowers & putting together Classic Creations booth display. It was such a wonderful day and I hope these images have given you some inspiration for your own wedding or special event!

Christina

Here is a full gallery of all the images from our booth!

 

Happy New Year!

We just wanted to wish all of our clients, family and friends a happy and healthy New Year!

We had such a wonderful 2012 season at Classic Creations. We moved into our first studio downtown Kelowna, a shared space with Freestone Spirit Photography Gallery & Studio with Owner Mark Coffey. If you are looking for a photographer to capture the natural beauty of your wedding day, look no further! It has been so wonderful sharing the space with Mark, as I get to see all the beautiful images he captures on a daily basis (and he even captures some of OUR work when we are too busy to do it ourselves). The space has been awesome for Classic Creations as it has allowed us to work on many more events and weddings with the larger space.

Tess and Darcy’s Summerhill Pyramid Winery Wedding was featured on Style Me Pretty and was just filled with so many gorgeous details. Tess & Darcy had chosen such a wonderful team of Okanagan Vendors such as Vintage Origami, Cupcasions, Limelight Studios and of course Rachel Peters Photography (from PEI) who captured the day perfectly.

We were also a part of a gorgeous Winter Bridal Styled Shoot which was featured in The Perfect Wedding Magazine‘s Fall/Winter 2012-2013 Edition. Thanks to Suzanne at Eyes of Le Stage Photography for creating the theme behind the shoot, capturing the gorgeous frost and getting the shoot in the magazine! To see more images from this shoot, check out the album on our facebook page or click on the picture below.

We also got to be a part of a Midsummer’s Night Dream Engagement Shoot with Kevin & Katherine of Kevin Trowbridge Photography. We were so excited to be able to create the whimsical and over-the-top headpiece for the lovely Bride-to-be. The image below is one of our favorites from the session.

We had a LOT of beautiful & gorgeous weddings and events, but have to say that the most special one was Dan & Mandy’s Vancouver Wedding. I was so excited to be a part of this one, not only because Dan is my brother but also because they asked me to be a part of their bridal party. It was such an honour to be up there with them as they said “I Do” , and was such an incredible day.

We loved creating all of the pretty flowers for this past year, and we are really looking forward to what our 2013 season will bring.

First thing in our 2013 agenda – the 2nd Annual Okanagan Bridal Expo at Prospera Place on January 6th. Looking forward to meeting all of the lovely new bride’s-to-be! Please stop by to say hi, we’d love to meet you!

All the best in the New Year!

Christina

Welcome to Classic Creations Blog!

blog1

This is my first blog post and to be honest the anticipation of my words and thoughts being out there is both nerve-racking and exciting! Nerve-racking to be venturing out and trying something new, a similar feeling to when I started my company over 3 years ago. I was nervous, optimistic and excited all at the same time. I was excited to finally be able to share my passion of floral design with others, which kept me focused and pushed me through the unknown. Fast forward 3 years; over 50 weddings & events under my belt, many new friends and contacts in the Okanagan, SO MANY amazing clients, and a 2013 season looking to be our busiest yet! I am excited to be able to use this blog to share all the details of the beautiful weddings and events that I get to create and be a part of. Looking forward to being able to share images, to give credit to the incredible Okanagan vendors we get the pleasure of working with, and most importantly to provide you with inspiration for your own wedding or event! Please feel free to ask questions & post comments. If you would like us to do a post on a specific topic that interests you, that is relevant to the floral & wedding industry we’d love to hear from you. Looking forward to sharing our adventures in floral design!

Christina