Thursday, April 29, 2010

Ecofficiency.org and GRN Events Presents: Something Green Eco Event for the Bride

We recently had the opportunity to showcase some more eco-sustainable floral designs at Mon Amie Bridal Salon in Costa Mesa during an intimate Something Green Eco-Bridal Faire. Admittedly, it is more challenging to create eco-friendly designs because we have to push beyond the norm and innovate. But we are so excited to show you some of the design components we incorporated.
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Before we begin, I just want to state that all the flowers used are Veri-flora certified meaning they were sustainably grown with the exception of the hydrangeas and ti leaves. (Here's the post that discusses Veri-flora.) Where and how the flowers are grown is a key component to Green design.

Let's start with this large arrangement.
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Because it is so tall, this can be used as a ceremony altar piece or aisle decor. You can even opt to have these as centerpieces for the guest tables at the reception. Better yet, use them in the ceremony and have then transferred to the reception - a great way to recycle an arrangement. There are two main components to this design that make it Green (aside from how they were grown).
The first component is inside the glassware. You're probably thinking that we threw in some type of crystal or broken glass (which is what everyone at the bridal faire guessed). But its just crushed cellophane that we recycled from various packaging.
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Second, although you can't see it, the designing mechanic is not floral foam but watermelon. Yep, we used the watermelon. And you know what? It worked very well!

Moving on to our sample centerpiece:
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We just can't get enough of the deconstructed ti-leaves so we decided to showcase this idea from Grandiflora again. Except this time, we used a square vase and arranged the accordian'd leaves into four squares with crushed cellophane and broken glass underneath. And as you can see, no floral foam was necessary.
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We also re-used the center stem of the ti leaf for added design flair.

Our Head Table spread consisted of food safe containers so that they can be reused much more purposefully.
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But if you're gonna go with food-safe, go with elegant pieces like champagne flutes and cognac glasses. Another element to keep in mind are organic candles made from products like beeswax or soy.

Here are some beautiful eco-chic bouquets from our vintage collection:
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At a quick glance, the stems look like they are wrapped in ribbon. Rather, we used leaves to mimic ribbon by creating loops and wrapping the stems.

The boutonniere display is one of my favorite touches in eco-design detail.
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Instead of using those plastic corsage boxes, we used a reusable wooden container and broken glass. The stems were also wrapped in leaves just like the bouquets were.

If you have any other ideas in ways we can incorporate more green practices into our design, we would love to hear about them. Just leave a comment below to further the discussion!

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