behind the screams

" Sneak Peek " "Behind the Scenes" "Collaboration"

When did everyone assume that they were so exclusive that anyone with eyes might be interested in seeing what you had for breakfast or a hint on your latest collab with your cat.
I'm sick of it!

For all the amazingness you see when you attend a fancy soiree / wedding , days, weeks and months of planning, stress and lots of cups of coffee have gone into the making of said "soiree" 
And theres one thing you can always count on.  Nothing goes to plan. 
Your confidence in making snappy decisions is reflected only by how well you know the client / bride / bridezilla. What do you do when your white tulips open up pink? What do you do when your shipment of peonies don't get cleared by quarantine? What do you do when you really really need to go to the toilet and you are stuck on the harbour bridge?
The answers to this and more you will find in my latest segment  
"Behind the screams" an appreciation aid for the work that goes into the final product.

See these roses? I got up at 4 am to go and pick this bucket up- along with about 50 billion other buckets of beautiful blooms. These ones were my favourite though. And they have my name on them.
P.S I also ordered many many peonies, and as bad luck would have it, the entire shipment coming in from Peony island was DESTROYED on arrival. They were contaminated with unidentifiables. Luckily, I had ordered two lots from different suppliers. So I was still in Peony heaven.  Clever ayyyy.

Just because its midnight, doesn't mean its home time! After hours is the best time for flower arranging. You would think I would be tired after getting up at 4 am... but I'm not. I'm drunk! Not really. Maybe a little bit.

This is Lily (appropriately named) she is finishing off the flower wall that I started making, but then I didn't want to finish it, so she did it for me! 

Here we are unloading all the flowers at the venue. We had 3 vans / cars full of flowers. These are just some of them.
The rest are stuck in the loading dock because I couldn't find my access swipe card.

While all the heavy lifting was happening, I ducked out to watch the Bride hop into one of her 6 Rolls Royce wedding cars in her  exquisite Vera Wang wedding dress. Jarnell was one of the most hilarious Brides I have ever worked with. She would call me while at the dentist asking if she should have tiffany chairs or ghost chairs at the reception. We decided on ghost chairs and then changed them to tiffany chairs just two days before the wedding. I miss talking to Jarnell every day.

This is Caitlin, here she is getting tea lights out of the packet and putting them into the votives. Ever wondered who does that? Caitlin does it! Not only does she do that, but she made those floral garlands and hung them up.

SEE! Here she is in action. My other assistant flower enthusiast Anamai was also helping, but I don't have a photo of her. But she was there. Promise. In fact, she went back to the venue at midnight and packed everything up! Have you ever wondered who does that? Amazing Anamai to the rescue in her cute red van! toot toot.

Just before 6pm and we were done! This wedding gave me the most severe case of FOMO I've had in a long while. I was so jealous of all the fun the guests were about to have. I thought about adding my name to the seating chart and ordering up a Gin & Tonic. If I stayed I probably would have had the lamb, and left some room for dessert
(cake was made by Hello Naomi) 
But I didn't.