Renegade's Holiday Craft Fair - December 18 & 19.

Not too long ago I thought I lost my camera, but it turns out my lost camera was under the seat in my car this whole time!  Pretty typical of me.  So now I have a huge back log of photos from the past few months.  The first is from the LA Renegade Craft Fair back in July.  I'll be doing the Renegade's SF Holiday Fair this year on December 18th & 19th and am super excited about it.  There's always such a good turnout, and despite the fact that I keep doubling my inventory I manage to sell out of everything in the first day (so get yours quick!).  Hopefully this year I'll get it right with 400 terrariums.  Woah that's gonna be a lot of work.  Oh, and a side note to SF'ers: This year the Fair will be at the Concourse Exhibition Center, not Fort Mason.  Here's the link if you'd like more info.

My Vendors. Part 1.

Originally I wanted to do a post on what I've been up to with other people's weddings - but, I managed to lose my camera somewhere between San Francisco and Laguna Beach along with all of the photos from the past couple month's work.  Oh well - I'll just have to wait for the professional photos.  Instead, I thought I'd share my planning process.  Being in the industry allows me to have a little more insight than most on what makes a good vendor.  Our wedding is still a little under a year away - but trust me, the good ones get booked up quick.  So if you find a vendor you absolutely love, book them.  That's what we did with Christine Chang (our photographer) and FortyOneTwenty (our videographer).  

Why am I not using one of the photographers listed on the "Friends" page of my website, you ask?  Because those ladies are all good friends (one of which is a bridesmaid) and I don't want to have my friends work a wedding where they should be guests.  I'm always looking through wedding blogs for inspiration, to see what other brides are seeing, and to stay on top of trends in the wedding industry.  I came across Christine in one of Style Me Pretty's blog entries before I was even engaged and immediately fell in love with her photography.  I stored her away in my head for when I was actually in need of a photographer, and emailed her as soon as I knew my date.  Well, technically I emailed her before we had a date just to let her know that I had a vendor crush on her.  Here are some of my favorite photos of hers:

 I love how she's not afraid to just get up in there and get a good shot.  She really seems to bring out an honest portrayal of her couples.  And she's pretty funny too.


For our videographer I turned to the trusty Little Black Book and found FortyOneTwenty.  They have their sh*t down.  They're pretty affordable too, compared to a lot of other wedding videographers offering a similar cinematic style.  Plus, the guys just seem pretty cool.  Tony went with me to this meeting and really liked Matt, one of the three shooters, who took time out of his evening to meet with us as it was the only time that worked for T.  Oh!  And they use digital SLR cameras which are the same size as the photographer's cameras.  That means no intrusive humongoid cameras in the guests' faces while they're trying to enjoy the evening.  Which, just like Christine's style, helps give a really honest, organic portrayal of the day.  Here are three of my favorite shorts the guys at FortyOneTwenty have done.  They even strapped on wet-suits on got in the water to get shots of the groom surfing in the first one.  Talk about dedicated.


Paul & Andrea // La Jolla, CA from FortyOneTwenty on Vimeo.



Drew & An from FortyOneTwenty on Vimeo.



Tyler & Jenny // Middletown, CT from FortyOneTwenty on Vimeo.


I just want to note that none of my vendors have asked me to write about them, nor are they cutting me a deal for my wedding to do so.  I just have lot of faith in them and in their work, and am so thrilled to have them play a role in our wedding day.

P.S.  One of my clients has asked me to post a picture of me and Tony.  This is for you Stephanie!

Planted in the LA Times Home & Garden Blog.

Has it really been two months since my last post?

Criminy.  A lot has happened since then.  Like the fact that I GOT ENGAGED.  Yep.  Now not only to I get to talk about the fun weddings and fairs I am working on, I also will be waxing poetic about my plans for my own big day.  I used to think I spent excessive amounts of time on wedding blogs (all in the name of business research, of course).  That was nothing.  I now realize how easy it is to get lost down the never-ending rabbit hole of the world that is Weddings.  My fiance (FIANCE!) has teasingly noted how my productivity level has steadily declined since the day he asked me to marry him - as I am devoting more and more of my days to deciding which collection for my bridesmaids' dresses (Yay Thread!), scouting out trunk shows (The White Dress is having one this weekend ladies), picking my perfect color palate (this little gem is my secret for now), and naturally, what flowers will I choose?  And as my future mother-in-law is wisely asking, will I attempt to do them myself?

Alright, enough wedding chatter.  A friend of mine (who is also engaged, but much further along in the wedding planning process) suggested I set a spending limit on how much time I spend on my own wedding each day.  A good plan.  Easier said than done, but a good plan.

Time to get down to business.  Over the past couple of months there have been three especially fun events that I've had the pleasure of working on.  The first was a HUGE event at the Monterey Bay Aquarium up in, you guessed it, Monterey.  The event posed some challenges because of the venues ocean-friendly rules.  My clients wanted something ocean themed, but no real pieces from the sea were allowed.  Finding fake sea-themed pieces was a challenge - many of the things I came across were either covered in glitter (another aquarium no-no) or looked like a Christmas ornament.  No bueno.  Ultimately we decided to do terrariums with succulents that resembled marine plants, anemones, and other sea life.  We used a moss to cover the negative space in the pieces that looked like the fluffy seaweed that sticks to your legs when you get out of the ocean, and I bought bags and bags of synthetic sand to put around the inside perimeter of the terrarium to make it look like a teeny island and its surrounding beach under glass.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera as I often do, and only had my iPhone to snap a few shots, so please forgive the shoddy photography below.  I guess it wasn't the biggest event ever (400 guests-ish), but what made it such a large one for me was the number of tables - 90ish -versus the time we had to set up - 1 hour.  That's right, the aquarium was open to public until 6 PM, and the event began at 7:00.  We managed to pull it off will the help of the staff, and from what I heard afterwards, the guests loved them.  The photo shown is of one of the buffet pieces.

I also did a couple of weddings last month.  The first was a fun new challenge for me mainly because of the couple's choice to buck the traditional wedding cake and do Sprinkles monogramed cupcakes instead.  They asked me to design and build cupcake tiers and get creative with it.  The groom loved the look of wheatgrass, so naturally I incorporated it.  We wound up building four box tiers and stacking them in the traditional wedding cake shape, but putting white satin ribbon around the rise of the boxes, and cutting wheatgrass to fit the run.  The cupcakes were then nestled into the wheatgrass and displayed for the guests to come and grab one.  Tristan Abel was the skilled craftsman behind executing the tiers.  Above's an arial shot of the tower, along with some detail shots and a look at their centerpiece.  Also I had to include this beautiful shot by Natalie Moser of the bride with her bouquet of peonies, roses, and ranunculus.

This last event was the wedding of a high school friend.  She wanted to use blues and greens in her flowers and tie in the beach theme of her day.  The bridesmaids bouquets had tiny sand dollars throughout the green hydrangea, along with white roses and blue delphinium.  Meghan's bouquet had three full sized starfish to accompany the white mini callas, cymbidiums, sweet pea, jade roses, and blue delphinium.  

                                                                                                                   

Whew.  That was a long one.  Thanks for reading!

xx
Chandra

Hayley + Steve

I had the pleasure of doing the flowers for a high school friend's wedding this Saturday.  I always enjoy what I do (even when time starts to run out and the pressure is on), but getting to do it for a friend made the job even more fun.  Hayley came to me knowing that she wanted to use bold pink as a part of her color palate, but she was torn between using lime-y green or an aqua-purple as her secondary color.  My two cents?  Use them both!  I always try to encourage brides to go with more than just two shades for their color palate.  Why?  You hardly ever see just two colors occurring in nature, and I say embrace the natural. The trend of using just two hues for a wedding color palate is coming to an end; it's time to embrace color! Hayley agreed, so we used all three.  And let me tell you, for a simple, all-hydrangea centerpiece, it was definitely the right choice.  I come from the school of thought that each flower should be appreciated and be able to stand on its own right in a piece.  The tri-color selection did exactly that; you could see the value of each stem that was added, instead of it just looking like a poofy mass.  To the right is a photo of the truck all loaded up with said centerpieces, and below a close-up to show the texture in all its glory.

Hayley of course wore white, and her maids wore the bold pink she loved.  I swapped the colors for their bouquets, giving Hayley the bright bouquet of peonies, garden roses, and ranunculus, and her girls fluffy white hydrangea (a great way to give the photos some contrast - I love an all white bridal bouquet as much as the next wedding obsessed person, but unfortunately they get lost in the wedding photography against The Dress).


Hayley before walking down the aisle and a close-up of her bouquet:

In addition to the fun of doing Hayley's flowers, I got to see a lot of faces I hadn't seen since high school which was such a treat.


Congratulations Hayley and Steve!

My favorite part of the job.

When people find out I what I do for a living, invariably one of the first things out of their mouths is "Yikes. You must deal with a lot of crazy brides." The opposite couldn't be truer. I have yet to encounter my first bridezilla. All of the couples I have worked with have been incredibly gracious and appreciative, and Megan was no exception. My interaction with her (and her mother!) when I delivered the personal flowers was the kind of moment I live for as a wedding florist. She loved everything about her bouquet, from the dark plum colored anemones and grey dusty miller, to the looped satin bow detail. She said something like, "I knew what you made would be beautiful!" Seriously, it gives me such a trill to get that kind of reaction. I think when a bride holds her bouquet for the first time, the imminence of the day sets in and emotion takes over. It's such an amazing moment to witness, not to mention the fact that something I made sparked it. Below are some photos of Megan and Nick's flowers, which I loved making just as much as I did delivering them. Photography by Kim Le.

From CHANDRA ABEL DESIGNS

From CHANDRA ABEL DESIGNS

From CHANDRA ABEL DESIGNS

From CHANDRA ABEL DESIGNS

From CHANDRA ABEL DESIGNS

From CHANDRA ABEL DESIGNS

From CHANDRA ABEL DESIGNS

A little preview from the Ojai wedding.

Here's a close up of a bridesmaids bouquet, along with a shot of the lucky lady and her girls.

From Chandra Abel Designs

Photography by Kim Le.