A Taste Of Things To Come!

It's been a mad couple of months at Euphoric. Moving to a new studio, wonderful weddings, a spot of filming and plenty of planning for up-coming jobs. Unfortunately, all this has meant that our blogging has had to take a bit of a back seat lately. So to whet your appetites, here's a little taster of the most amazing wedding we did a couple of weeks ago....let us know what you think!

We're All Going To The Zoo!

Last Saturday, which also happened to be one of the hottest days of the year, we were at London Zoo for a gorgeous summer wedding. On such a hot day, it was lovely to be working with some of our favourite summer flowers - peonies, hydrangea and delphinium in cool shades of white, cream and palest green.

The ceremony took place in the Mappin Pavillion, where a pair of simple and elegant white vase arrangements flanked the registrar's table. To emphasise the aisle, we decorated the chairs with single white peonies and delicate ivy trails.

Following the ceremony, the very elegant wedding party had drinks on the terrace, and by this time the Zoo had closed so everything was wonderfully peaceful. The evening reception took place in the Prince Albert Suite, where the white and green theme continued with stylish arrangements of roses, hydrangea and peonies on tall champagne flute vases. The look was completed with tealights in sliver, mercuried holders.

With such a hot day, there is always the danger that delicate summer flowers could wilt but, we were delighted that everything looked so beautiful. A real testament to the quality of our wonderful suppliers at Covent Garden Market. Of course the proof is always in the pudding, so we can't wait to see the images of the day captured by the wonderful Lloyd Dobbie.

More Spring Blossom

A few weeks ago, we featured the beautiful wedding of Anna and Russ at Fulham Palace. This was a gorgeous event and, we thought that we'd taken some rather good pictures. That was of course, until we saw the utterly stunning images of photographer Marianne Taylor, which completely blew us away! Marianne featured the wedding on her blog and received rave reviews for her work, and rightly so!! Now that we have the official shots, we couldn't resist sharing them with you and, as we love them so much we'll probably be turning some into postcards!

Classic White and Green - Always a Dream.

Following straight on from our previous cherry blossom extravaganza, we were soon off to The Walled Garden, in the ruins of Cowdray Park in West Sussex for the wedding of Gemma and Ben. Using a classic palette of white and green, this lovely design reflected the bride's love of elegant informality for the day. White roses, snapdragons, sweet peas and ivy dressed wrought iron candle stands, candelabra and chair backs for the ceremony and reception in the Castle Room.

Bunches of snapdragons made pretty chair decorations for the ceremony.

The rustic candelabra on the tables suited the neutral decor of the Castle Room perfectly for the intimate recpetion and reflected the wonderful garden for which this lovely venue is known.

Vintage Spring Wedding

Every year we want to do a wedding with masses of double pink cherry blossom. Some years, it's too cold or too warm and we're either too early or too late! A couple of weeks ago however, we were spot on when we supplied the flowers for the wedding of Anna and Russ at Fulham Palace in West london.

Soft pink roses, muscari, florets of guelder and stocks made very pretty buttonholes.

The theme was "Vintage Tea Party" and cherry blossom was a must have! With some of our favourite spring and early summer flowers also being used including, lily of the valley, sweet peas, muscari, freesias, foxgloves, stocks, delphiniums and guelder, the result looked good enough to eat!

For the afternoon reception we created a different look for each table, using mis-matched vases, glassware and vintage cups and saucers. Childhood memories of our grandmothers' crockery and those little pressed glass vases from dressing table sets came flooding back.

With so many flowers in the room, we thought it all looked perfect but, as you can see the front of the palace is covered with wisteria, which was the icing on the cake.....oh, and there was plenty of that too!

The Price Is Right....Or Not, Sometimes!!!

" Flowers don't cost much do they"? "I'm getting married in August and I want tulips". "I want a classic elegant look with a minimal contemporary twist"!! These are just some of the things that brides have said to us in the quest for their perfect wedding flowers. In fact over the years, we've heard so many weird and wonderful anecdotes that we could write a book! All these sayings however, have one thing in common.....expectation. Every couple that we meet has an expectation of what they want their wedding flowers to be, however vague or off the wall. So today, we thought we'd share with you an insider look at just what goes into creating those amazing arrangements and beautiful bouquets and, why we charge what we charge.

Unless you've just won the lottery or just don't care what you spend, everyone has a budget. Only once have we ever had a client who said those magic words, "I don't care what it costs". It was a dream moment but, we carried on as if it were a daily occurrence! Increasingly though, we're finding that the demand for the "wow" doesn't follow through with the budget. We've always advocated allowing around 10% of your overall spend for flowers. This is a realistic figure and will of course depend on how important flowers are to you for your wedding. Annoyingly though, some wedding magazines and websites publish wildly unrealistic figures for flowers which, is confusing for the client and makes our job as florists harder. Why should a potential bride believe us quoting £1500 for reception flowers, when a magazine says she can have them for £500?This is where it gets tricky and we have to deal with the idea of perception. What do people THINK flowers cost? Without wishing to sound sorry for ourselves, in general the public think we have a pretty easy time of it. It's not a real job is it? You play around with flowers all day, it must be lovely. It is lovely....it's also hard work! Very early morning market trips, unsociable hours, standing all day, buckets and buckets of cold water, a lot of lifting and sore backs are just some of the perks, yet we love what we do. Unfortunately, most of the above goes unseen and clients only get to see the end result on the big day, without any knowledge of what goes into producing their event. What most people also don't realise is most flowers are imported from Holland, where they are sold in euros. Not good for the weak pound and, with ever increasing fuel costs the price of transportation keeps rising too. We here at Euphoric believe we give an excellent standard of service to our clients. We price our work realistically and are very open about additional costs such as delivery, clearance and hire charges. We put together design boards, make mock-ups of our designs (once a booking is confirmed) and make extensive site visits, travelling hundreds of miles in some cases. This is all part of our service and we're delighted to do it, but time is money and has to be accounted for. Choose the florist for your wedding not just because they're offering the best price, but because you have absolute confidence in their ability to create the wedding you want, artistically, professionally and ethically. Remember, we all like a bargain but you also get what you pay for!

Euphoric's 5th Birthday Party

It's official, we are five!! So, what better to celebrate than with a party? Last week we did just that when we invited friends and colleagues who have supported us so much over the last five years, to join us for a celebration at our studio. Clients, Wedding Planners, Photographers, luminaries from the world of Hair, Make-Up and PR and those closest to us enjoyed a wonderful evening of kir royale, canapes and a lot of laughing, and all by candle light!

Our good friend Lloyd Dobbie was on hand to capture the evening with his lovely images and it was great to see our work space transformed from its usual appearance in to something magical for the evening. A chance for us to have fun and feel proud of what we've acheived over the last five years. The celebratory cup cakes went down a treat and, whilst everyone was singing Happy Birthday to us, we felt a sense of enormous pride at having lasted this long, with so much more to come. Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate what has been our pride and joy for the last five years. XX