Design n Bloom

I've been seeing a lot of red, lately - and in places it doesn't really belong. If you happen to like red roses, red lilies, red cannas and red callas, I am perfectly fine with that. In fact, red is one of the most popular colors in bridal bouquets and floral arrangements. Where I am seeing red and it doesn't belong is as a color of mulch. Colored mulches have become popular, for whatever reason (marketing, I imagine). Appearance is certainly one aspect using mulch in your landscape offers, but that is not the only reason, nor is it the most important reason.

A lot of the images I've posted lately are rather brown - spring landscapes tend to be monochromatic until things warm up a bit. It's like looking at a sepia print of the landscape. But, despite the seeming lack of color, brown can be a very striking color. In many recent weddings, brown is coming to the forefront of the color selections. When the picture at the left was taken, wedding cakes were still quite traditionally white, but we elected to have ours made with a chocolate buttercream (man was that good cake!). Brown doesn't have to mean drab - used boldly, it is quite stunning.

Start your wedding planning checklist!

There are many details you need to consider and keep track of when planning your wedding - guest lists, seating charts, caterers and bakery selections, appointments with vendors, budgets, to-do lists, photographers and musicians.

Wedding sites abound with free tools to plan your wedding - there's TheKnot, MyWedding, WeddingWire, Perfect Wedding Guide, GetMarried and OurWeddingDay. Now, there is even Google Docs!

This is the time of year a lot of couples get engaged, so it follows that a lot of wedding fairs and bridal shows are coming up. For most newly engaged couples, this is the first time they've gone through this and they have no clue about what to do next. They do what thousands of other couples are doing - they attend bridal shows (at least the bride-to-be does, along with mom and possibly the bridesmaids). We've done a wedding, or two, and have a few suggestions for surviving what can be more confusing than helpful, if you're not prepared - the wedding fair.

About 15% of all engagements happen in December and somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of all proposals happen between Thanksgiving and New Year's. And that's just the ones that said "Yes". For most of you, this will be the first time you'll go through this and you're not quite sure of all that goes into planning a wedding. Most of the decisions you make are only made as part of this planning and there is nothing else like it. Ordering flowers for your mother/wife-to-be/girlfriend for Valentine's Day or Mother's Day is a simple affair compared to coordinating flowers for a once-in-a-lifetime event.