This past Wednesday our studio turned 20 years old, hurray for us!! I owe so much of our success to our fist couple Tammy and Dean who just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. On July 12th, 20 years ago I had my second child. Tammy, a wonderful and loving neighbor came to see our sweet new baby. While visiting with me she asked what I intended to do now that I was home with a baby. I very naively replied ” I think I am going to stay home with the baby and do wedding flowers.”  Without a moments hesitation Tammy said “ok great, you can do my wedding flowers.” In truth there was another florist involved and I think Tammy was trying to simply give me a chance. As I mentioned she is this very loving and encouraging woman. I was hired to do the personal flowers and the church flowers and the other florist handled the reception flowers. So just six weeks after I had baby Abby I did my very first wedding, Tammy and Deans wedding.

I adore this picture of Tammy with her soon to be daughter Jennifer and her mom Fern. Fern was a serious matriarch to all the young mothers in Lucketts. The bouquets were created out of filler flowers like asters, baby’s breath and plumosa fern. I used a whole bunch of larkspur, and delphinium, and even solidago. Honestly when I started to create the bouquet I had no idea how to begin. I had been designing for years at my fathers nursery but only at Christmas. I was awesome with Christmas greens, but making a bridal bouquet was all very new to me. Back in the day, bridal bouquets were typically cascading. I truly had no idea how to make a cascading bouquet and I certainly didn’t have an oasis bouquet holder on hand, so the bouquet started like a natural stem bouquet.  I had this sea of stems at the base of the design which was not cool or acceptable back then. To hide the stems I put a big bow in the center of the bouquet and I made another mini bouquet. The mini bouquet was wired upside down onto the bottom of the stems. Telling this story simply makes me laugh.

The ceremony took place at the little Bethel Church right up the hill from my house. I literally walked up to the church several times to install garland or decor. All while I was running back to the house to nurse baby Abby. I remember being very careful and concerned about hanging the garland. There was a huge arch at the altar of the church and Tammy wanted garland surrounding the wood work. I didn’t know how I would hang the garland without using nails. My wonderful bride Tammy said just nail it up and I will take care of fixing the wood work later. I can assure this was the only time in our history that I nailed garland to the molding of a church or any building for that matter.

Garland was hung everywhere in the church. Each garland was custom made by me, which was a big undertaking for a beginner but my work at Christmas in my dads nursery had prepared me and at the end of this wedding I was a master garland maker.  The wedding was on Sept 13th and the garland was left in the church until Christmas. The garland literally dried in place, and berries were added to the garland at Christmas. I do often wonder if anyone ever fixed the wood work.

Tammy has one seriously big Full Bouquet.

And just for fun, here is the lamest picture of me ever, just 6 weeks postpartum. That may be the ugliest dress I have ever seen!!

I cant believe I posted this!!

Happy married life Dean and Tammy!!! You were the start of something very good.