All Day Wedding Workshop — March 21, 2017

Flower Duet Announces a New All-Day In-Depth Wedding Workshop Including Professional Photos of Your Work

Kit and Casey will be your guides to the cur­rent trends for bridal bou­quets, per­son­al flow­ers, cen­ter­piece designs AND arch­es! This will be an exclu­sive all-day work­shop with a catered lunch and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with the most ded­i­cat­ed flo­ral design instruc­tors in Los Angeles.

We are work­ing with flo­ral design­ers who explore new ideas for wed­dings near­ly every week of the year in every style from trop­i­cal green­ery to gar­den ros­es. Flower Duet is your one-stop work­shop for a fab­u­lous wed­ding flo­ral expe­ri­ence. We are delight­ed to offer this type of thor­ough wed­ding work­shop which also includes pro­fes­sion­al pho­tos of your work to keep.

What’s Included:

All-day design work­shop com­bines all our wed­ding flo­ral design class­es into one day + bonus arch and gar­land application!

Host­ed in our spa­cious flo­ral and pho­to design stu­dio in the South Bay of Los Ange­les, California.

Dig­i­tal pro­fes­sion­al pho­tos of your work with a bride mod­el hold­ing your bou­quet flowers.

We plan to run the sem­i­nar twice: March 21, 2017 and Octo­ber 4, 2017.

All-day flo­ral design work­shop begins at 9 a.m. and end­ing at 5:30 p.m.

Includes a catered lunch & all flow­ers, vas­es and tools.

Class size lim­it­ed to 12 students.

Cost is $625 per student.

Greenery is the 2017 Pantone Color of the Year

By Kit Wertz

Casey and I are delight­ed to fea­ture more green­ery designs for 2017 with Pantone’s choice suit­ably named “Green­ery!”

From Pan­tone’s press release, “A refresh­ing and revi­tal­iz­ing shade, Green­ery is sym­bol­ic of new beginnings.”

Here are some flow­ers and fea­tured designs that show­case the 2017 Col­or of the Year.

Dear Wedding Photographers: Please Handle with Care

Flower Etiquette 101

By Flower Duet

A bridal bou­quet is one of the most expen­sive line items on a wed­ding flo­ral order and like an heir­loom piece of grand­moth­er’s crys­tal, please han­dle it with care.

1. The first per­son to han­dle the bou­quet after the florist places it in the bridal room, suite, church or with the expe­ri­enced wed­ding plan­ner is the bride.
2. Ask per­mis­sion from the bride before remov­ing her bou­quet from the bridal room or suite — this is espe­cial­ly impor­tant if she has yet to see it.
3. Plac­ing a bou­quet on its side will crush the petals and after a few hours (about the time the cer­e­mo­ny begins), the crushed petals will start to turn brown. Please refrain from plac­ing bou­quets on the side until after the cer­e­mo­ny and for­mal portraits.
4. Some flow­ers like Hydrangea should not be out of water for long, so if the bridal bou­quet is made up of these water-lov­ing flow­ers, please think twice before remov­ing the bou­quet from the water-filled vase it arrived in from the florist. If a bou­quet were pre­sent­ed to the bride in a vase of water, it ought to stay in water as long as pos­si­ble (see tip 2).
5. Tune into the style of a bou­quet the bride is car­ry­ing. If she is not a pro­fes­sion­al mod­el, we know you’ll be giv­ing her tips on how to stand and smile. Be sure to pay atten­tion to the bou­quet and shoot it from the best angle. For exam­ple, a cas­cad­ing bou­quet drapes down.
6. Please share pho­tos with the oth­er hard-work­ing ven­dors if your clients allow it. We take pho­tos at drop off of our work, but we know you have the best oppor­tu­ni­ties and results.

We appre­ci­ate the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of our ven­dor part­ners and hope this mini-tip sheet helps cap­ture the bou­quet at its best.

From Handshakes to Hugs

Building Relationships Through Flowers

By Casey Schwartz

After a recent week meet­ing with new ven­dor part­ners, and clients and guid­ing a tour of the LA Flower Mart, I reflect­ed on an amaz­ing repeat­ed expe­ri­ence dur­ing the course of each interaction.

At the begin­ning of each meet­ing when intro­duc­ing myself to the new client or part­ner, we shook hands. By the end of every meet­ing, whether for twen­ty min­utes or an hour, that same per­son hugged me.

Being a hug­ger by nature, per­haps these new peo­ple in my life sensed that in me and being hug­gers, too, the hugs just hap­pened. In less than 60 min­utes we bridged the gap from a busi­ness meet­ing to a poten­tial part­ner­ship and friendship.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia.com, archae­o­log­i­cal ruins and ancient texts show that hand­shak­ing was prac­ticed in ancient Greece as far back as the 5th cen­tu­ry BC; a depic­tion of two sol­diers shak­ing hands can be found on part of a 5th-cen­tu­ry BC funer­ary stele on dis­play in the Perg­a­mon Muse­um, Berlin. The hand­shake is thought by some to have orig­i­nat­ed as a ges­ture of peace by demon­strat­ing that the hand holds no weapon.

Flo­ral shears are my choice of weapon to be reserved for flower stems in the studio.

I’d like to think it was a pos­i­tive con­nec­tion made with indi­vid­u­als over the course of shar­ing great moments talk­ing about flow­ers and our shared pas­sion for them. A study by Rut­gers in 2008 stat­ed that flow­ers make peo­ple hap­pi­er and per­haps just talk­ing about them makes peo­ple hap­pi­er, too?

When I relat­ed my won­der­ful “hand­shakes to hugs” moments to my sis­ter, she told me about an in-house cor­po­rate coach at a com­pa­ny she worked for and about every time you saw her, she gave you the biggest, most earnest hug you could imag­ine. At first, it was a bit dis­con­cert­ing, but the next time you saw her, you found your­self look­ing for­ward to her hug because you knew she real­ly meant it and it was just real­ly nice.

Per­haps 2017 will be the year of the hug!

What is your floral design style?

Are you Sticky-Outy? Or Are you Roundy-Moundy?

By Kit Wertz

If you design flow­ers with us, we will know a lit­tle more about your per­son­al­i­ty from the way you place your flow­ers. We’ll know if you are a “sticky-outy” design­er or a “roundy-moundy” designer.

“Huh?”

Okay…so these are not tech­ni­cal terms in flo­ral design. They are made up terms we use in our every­day flower ver­nac­u­lar with our design­ers, clients and students.

Roundy-moundy flo­ral designs are tight and com­pact. A few stems and blooms may poke out for some tex­ture changes, but for the most part, the design is sym­met­ri­cal and full of focal flowers.

Sticky-outy flo­ral designs tend to be more free flow­ing with lots of green­ery and move­ment in the design. It can be asym­met­ri­cal and yet bal­anced. Some flow­ers are par­tial­ly hid­den, like lit­tle trea­sures to be mined by the eye.

[box][box_header]Just for Fun! What’s Your Flower Style Personality?[/box_header][box_content][one_half]

You might be “sticky-outy” if…

• Your desk papers are strewn about, but you know where it all is.
• You spend time each day look­ing for your car keys.
• You like the open­ness of a botan­ic garden.
• Throw the duvet over the bed to pro­nounce it made.

You might be “roundy-moundy” if…

• Your papers on your desk are in neat piles.
• You put your keys in the same place when you walk in the door.
• You feel at home in a for­mal Eng­lish garden.
• You make your bed every morning.

So, how do these types of designs per­tain to per­son­al­i­ty traits? Well, we don’t real­ly know for sure but here is our take on the styles.

When Casey and I first start­ed to design flow­ers togeth­er, we real­ized we had two dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent styles. Casey was def­i­nite­ly “sticky-outy” and Kit was “roundy-moundy.” So, we won­dered, “Why were we so dif­fer­ent in our flo­ral designs?” After all, we are sis­ters, have the same par­ents and have very sim­i­lar tastes.

For 12 years, Casey lived onboard a lux­u­ry cruise ship as an offi­cer and had many adven­tures deal­ing with cus­toms and immi­gra­tion offi­cials, and Nor­we­gian cap­tains and each day pre­sent­ed a new challenge.

For the same 12 years, I fin­ished col­lege and worked most­ly in an office job as a pro­duc­tion artist and tech­ni­cal writer with steady dead­lines and workflow.

Casey was used to adjust­ing to changes in plan due to weath­er, the whims of pas­sen­gers, and chal­leng­ing port offi­cials who did not speak Eng­lish. She was real­ly good at impro­vis­ing on-the-fly.

I, on the oth­er hand, had a fair­ly pre­dictable life and liked it that way. I enjoyed mak­ing plans and stick­ing to them. In short, I liked to be in control.

So…we decid­ed that it must be the more con­trolled you liked to be in life, the more con­trolled your flow­ers turned out to be. The more adven­tur­ous you are in life and able to roll with what­ev­er comes your way, the more flow­ing your flo­ral designs will look.

The fun­ny thing is that in the 17 years we’ve had our flo­ral busi­ness togeth­er, our per­son­al­i­ties have meld­ed. Casey and I can mim­ic each oth­er’s style or any design we want to make for our clients. I now tend to be much more adven­tur­ous in my flo­ral designs and love the free­dom it offers. Since hav­ing twins 6 years ago, I real­ize that one can­not con­trol much of anything…so it is some­times best to just roll with what­ev­er happens.

Regard­less of your flower style or per­son­al­i­ty, all that mat­ters is that you are hav­ing fun with your flowers.

Flower Duet Featured in California Wedding Day

Real Weddings, Boutonnière Ideas and The Haute List: South Bay

Flower Duet con­tin­ues to receive top-notch press for its work in the wed­ding indus­try in Los Ange­les. In the cur­rent issue of Cal­i­for­nia Wed­ding Day, Flower Duet is fea­tured in three sec­tions of the magazine!

Pub­lish­er Thea Hard­grove tapped Flower Duet to cre­ate the wed­ding flow­ers for her daugh­ter’s wed­ding at Cielo Farms which was fea­tured on four pages of the Win­ter 2017 mag­a­zine. Here is a snap­shot of the fea­ture with wed­ding details designed and planned by At Your Door Events.

You can see more online at Cal­i­for­nia Wed­ding Day or pur­chase a copy at local stores in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia now.

Flower Book Recommendation

Gardenista: The Definitive Guide to Stylish Outdoor Spaces

Kit has been a big admir­er of the gar­den blog Gar­denista for many years and was hap­py to see a hard­cov­er book out in late 2016 fea­tur­ing all the great­est ideas that are cur­rent in gar­den design.

Authored by Michelle Slatal­la and the edi­tors of Gar­denista, this book is spot on for not just gar­dens in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia where the blog is based, but in Mass­a­chu­setts, Lon­don, Brook­lyn, Los Ange­les, and Austin.

Gar­denista: The Defin­i­tive Guide to Styl­ish Out­door Spaces offers a guide to col­or palettes for a gar­den, how to obtain the look of the 13 gar­dens fea­tured in the book from out­door pots, to tools to col­ored gar­den hoses, and where to pur­chase each item. There are design ideas includ­ing how to make a gar­den pen­dant light from a ter­ra­cot­ta flower pot and a wind­proof out­door tablecloth.

So, while your gar­den is under a blan­ket of snow or a mud­dy mess of rain, check out this book and make a plan for the spring.

Flower Tool: Cleaning Supplies

What to Use to Keep Vases and Tools Clean

There are a few tried and true ways to clean vas­es, con­tain­ers, sur­faces and tools in the flower business.

It is very impor­tant to keep flo­ral vas­es, cut­ters, and buck­ets clean to ensure long stem life and here are tra­di­tion­al options and “green” options for you to try out in your own flo­ral design studio.

Here are a few of the types of clean­ing tools we use in our stu­dio that you might find useful.

Traditional Cleaners

Clorox Clean­ing Wipes: Great for wip­ing up work tables and clean­ing off flo­ral shears.

Flo­ral­ife DCD Clean­er: We use this for our flo­ral buck­ets and vas­es. It doesn’t quick­ly break down or evap­o­rate like bleach. Cre­ates a pro­tec­tive coat­ing that keeps on work­ing over many days.

Eco-Friendly Cleaners

White Dis­tilled Vine­gar: It’s impor­tant not to use soap when clean­ing vas­es as it can leave a residue. If you are a fan of vine­gar for clean­ing your house, it works just as well in vases.

Hydro­gen Per­ox­ide: It’s non-tox­ic but will bleach cloth, so be care­ful with it. Hydro­gen per­ox­ide is a safe clean­er to use around kids, or any­one with res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems because it’s not a lung irri­tant. Fill an opaque spray bot­tle with hydro­gen per­ox­ide and spray any­thing you need to clean! (Hydro­gen Per­ox­ide is sold in a dark bottle…just put your own spray pump on the exist­ing bot­tle. It will lose its poten­cy if you put it in a clear bottle.)