The Boston Seaport Hotel Wedding and the Value of "and Company"

Of course, I want to share the photos and experiences of doing my first wedding in Boston with you but, I also want to tell you about the amazing people who make up my support system for these weddings and for life in general.  I am so lucky to have them.  When I started my company a few years ago, I thought long and hard about the name.  I ended up with Mitchell & Company Designs and Events.  Mitchell, of course, is my name.  Designs and Events was my attempt at letting people know what my company offered in a few short words.   The "and Company" was wishful thinking on my part at the time because, in reality, I was really only a one-man show...or at least that is what I thought.
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The photo below is how all my weddings start---with a trip into Boston to the flower market to pick up flowers I have pre-ordered for the event.  Many times I find other flower "treasures" while looking around the market and add them to the mix, just for fun and a little more drama!  My sister-in-law and friend, Judy, usually accompanies me on these trips to help and give me moral support.  (I get a little nervous driving into Boston but, time and experience has helped on that front but, Judy's support is invaluable to me.)

After the flowers have been carefully packed into my SUV, we drive back to Groton with the A/C blaring to keep the flowers cool.  We usually need to bring an extra sweater for the ride :).  As soon as we get home we  start cutting the stems of the flowers and then putting them in water, which has been treated with flower food.  It's pretty labor intensive and Judy is a great sport to help me.

What I haven't mentioned is that when we arrived to pick up my flower order that day for the Boston wedding, I was informed by my vendor that not all of the flowers had made their way to Boston from their origination point of Holland.  The plane was too heavy and some of the flowers had to be left behind. What?!  I've never heard of such a thing!  Unfortunately for me, some of the most important flowers for the  wedding were left at the Holland airport!  Peach ranunculus and sweet peas were to be  center points of the wedding and they were left behind. I was told the flowers would arrive the next day, which sounds great, but I needed to start working on the floral arrangements the next day and didn't have time to make the trek back into Boston.  Judy, graciously, offered to make the trip with her husband, Bob, to get the flowers for me.  Soooo wonderful of her!

 However, the bad news didn't end there.  Not all of my flowers arrived the next day and there were serious doubts as to whether the remaining flowers would be in usable condition when they finally arrived.  More stress!!  This meant sending Bob and Judy to yet another supplier to find flower substitutes in case the flowers  arriving the next day on the plane were no good.  There were no sweet peas anywhere to be found so, I needed to find a back-up flower, just in case.  I sent Bob and Judy out again to pick up some lisianthus as an insurance flower.  More driving for them.  More stress for me! 

With Bob and Judy diligently searching for flowers, I was able to start working on the centerpieces and other arrangements.  I had 20 centerpieces to make for the wedding, 14 low centerpieces and 6 tall ones.  I also had two other very large arrangements to create, as well as, bouquets, corsages and boutonnieres. This photo below is of the tall centerpieces.  These were to sit on the top of 36" glass vases.  Quite elegant.  (You will see those photos in my next post.)

 

I loved the flowers used in these arrangements.  They included anemones, dahlias, Juliet garden roses, spray roses (I love spray roses), astilbe and lisianthus, to name a few.



 

 

On the first day of production I was also able to make "Grammie's" corsage.  I'm sorry I don't have a better picture to show you. It's always crunch time and I don't always have the luxury of taking time to take great pictures. This is a photo of the corsage while I was working on the it.  It would later be placed in a clear plastic box and stored in the refrigerator.

 

 

This is one of the bridesmaid's bouquets.  They were to be petite and have the colors of peach, light pink, white and a touch of blue and gray.  The bridesmaids dresses were blue, close to the color of the blue cornflower shown in the bouquet.  Very pretty!

 

 

 

 

Here is another bridesmaid bouquet.  In the background you can see part of the delivery system my husband, Tom, created to hold the vases securely in place while being transported to the hotel. He spent many nights designing and making these necessary devices for me.  Such a great guy!  I wish I had photos of his whole process.  It was quite impressive.

Are you beginning to see that my "and Company" had truly become a reality?  Judy, Bob, Tom and more to come were all supporting me.  I was so thankful for them!

More bridesmaid bouquets

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Here is the Mother-of-the-Bride nosegay bouquet.  The pink flower you see is supposed to be a "peach" peony!  I thought the colors looked pretty together so I used it anyway but, it was not peach!  Several days later the "peach" peonies did, in fact, turn peach in color but to be honest, they only lasted, perhaps, a day to a day and a half before they were not viable anymore.  It was a lesson in peach peonies for me.  They are beautiful if you can put up with their finicky behavior!

Here are some of the boutonnieres.  This was really the only photo I got of them.  As I have said, everything is so time sensitive that there are not always extra moments to shoot photos.  The boutonnieres would later be placed in clear bags and two black corsage pins would be added.  The boutonnieres consisted of one peach ranunculus, one pink astilbe stem and one leaf of dusty miller.  The boutonnieres were then tied with a peach ribbon.

 

 

My daughter, Brittany and her friend, Nicole, would arrive the next afternoon to help me with the bouquets and low centerpieces.  Judy was also there to help me all along the way.  My "and Company" continued to expand.  They were all terrific! 

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This was the brides bouquet.  She wanted it mostly white with touches of peach and pink.  She also wanted a cascading bouquet with lots of flowing greens.  I really thought it was beautiful.

 

 

These were  the low centerpieces after they had been loaded into Tom's traveling apparatus ready to be delivered to the Seaport Hotel in Boston.  We were finally about to make the journey into Boston, to deliver the bouquets to the bridal party and to set up the floral arrangements in the Grand Ballroom of the hotel. 

Please stay tuned for my next post for the rest of the wedding adventure.



However, before I end this post, I want to tell you about the others who have helped me along the way; people whom I consider to be my "and Company", as well.  My son, Sam, helped me create my website in the early stages of my business.  Since I am a techno-phobe, this was invaluable to me.  My daughter, Amanda, is a wiz with Microsoft Excel and she created a spreadsheet to help me with the ordering of the flowers for my weddings.  She also helped me set up my business Facebook page.  All things I never could have done on my own.  And my friend, Carolyn, was the person who really got this whole wedding thing going for me by putting her faith in me to do the flowers for her daughter, Keri's, wedding.  She encouraged me to take this on when I didn't think I could do it and,  now, here I am with several weddings to my credit.  She continues to be one of my biggest fans.  I could never thank her enough and I am so lucky to have her and all the others in my life. 

So, I have learned first hand that "no man is an island" and I am so glad and thankful for that!

Oh, and by the way, the peach ranunculus and the sweet peas did arrive and, miraculously, they were beautiful and in terrific shape!  Hallelujah!

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