Eastwell Manor Wedding Fair

The end of last week was filled with beautiful flowers as we created all our arrangements for the prestigious Eastwell Manor Wedding Fair. We decided on a vibrant theme of red and lime green, which we love in the shop. We thoroughly enjoyed creating all the bouquets and tablecentres and looking back, made far too many pieces to take with us.....we do tend to get excited at times and don't know when to stop! If you'd like to see all the pieces, we've got photos of them all online.

We had a good day at Eastwell and met some lovely interesting couples. We were a little surprised to meet so many who were planning weddings for this year, and have had to say no to several couples this week as we are fully booked, but have also met some lovely couples for next year, and look forward to meeting up with them soon at the shop.

Our next wedding fair will be The Wedding Experience at the Kent County Showground, Detling on 19th April, so we have some more time to start planning our theme. We think it will be quite colourful but are open to suggestions. In the meantime, the Mothers Day collection has just been designed and will be on the website at the beginning of next week, with orders already coming in, so watch his space as they say......

Valentines Flowers

Well Valentines Day has been and gone. We've sighed with relief that everything went according to plan, and that we haven't been left with any roses to try to sell this week. Its always difficult trying to work out how many roses to order, and we always order ours in early January to guarantee the best prices we can get.

However, thanks to all the pre-orders in the weeks ahead, we actually sold out of red roses on Friday morning. We decided not to buy any more as the price was too high, and kept our fingers crossed our customers would be happy to take away other bouquets and arrangements. We were really chuffed that our customers on Friday and Saturday completely understood. We've ended up with very few flowers for this week!


All our florists went home tired and happy on Saturday, with everyone of us staying at home rather than venturing out that night. Maybe we're a sad bunch, but given the queues in the supermarkets and the video shop on the way home, we weren't the only ones buying wine and nibbles for a night in with a good film!


Hope you all had a good Valentines...watch this space for our next special events!

Wedding Flowers at Elvey Farm, Pluckley

Yesterday, we provided the flowers for Nicola and Robin at the lovely Elvey Farm in Pluckley. What a beautiful day they had in what has been such an awful week weatherwise. Nicola is obviously blessed!

Nicola's flowers were very seasonal and simple, and yet as you can see were bright, cheerful and fitted the location perfectly. Nicola was very relaxed throughout the process of planning her flowers, and was still relaxed yesterday morning when having her hair and make-up done. She was excited about getting married and had planned the perfect "laid-back" day to match her style and personality. Her style was simply to leave it to us to make the decisions about where to place all the vases of flowers, wherever we felt they best fitted. We therefore decided to frame the ceremony space and the celebrant table to draw the guests' eyes forward to Nicola and Robin.

No detail was left to chance at Elvey Farm, and as we were in and out a few times, we felt sorry for the poor lady mopping the wood floors in the ceremony room, as she kept going back over our footsteps to ensure everything was perfect. However, with the sun streaming through the windows, I think you'll agree the attention to detail was well worthwhile. What a great start to married life.

Hop Farm Wedding Fair 1st February

Yesterday we exhibited at the Hop Farm Wedding Fair. It is one of two fair venues that we do every year, the other being the Detling Fair at the County Showground. This year we're also exhibiting at the Eastwell Manor wedding fair for the first time, and are looking forward to it.  We always enjoy the fairs and have built up some great contacts and friends amongst the exhibitors over the last couple of years. 

Despite the cold snowy weather, there was another good turnout and in keeping with all previous fairs at the Hop Farm, we were rushed off our feet with enquiries, plus a number of bookings on the day.

As we tend to get booked up a while in advance of weddings, and have a pretty busy diary again this year, we were pleased to meet a large number of couples at the fair who are getting married in 2010.  We're always surprised when we see that wedding magazines advise engaging your florist just six months in advance of the wedding.  We're pleased that couples seem to be looking a little further ahead...it saves us having to disappoint them if we are already booked. 

In terms of bridal style, we're seeing a lot of brides opting for more detailed dresses, often incorporating lace, and are designing bouquets which mirror some of this detailing.  Textured and softer bouquets are coming into their own, and we love working with specific designs to ensure that bouquets complement and not hide dresses.  We'll talk about how important it is to have a good view of your dress style before you finalise your bridal bouquet design in future postings.

If you'd like to see all the designs from the fair, just go to the website and follow the link from the main page. If you have any thoughts/questions about the designs, please post a message.

Amanda

Welcome to the Distinctly Floral Blog & the new Website

Welcome to our blog! 

This is a very exciting time for Distinctly Floral, with both the launch of our new website and the incorporation of a Blog into the new site. 

Firstly, the site... we've been working on the new format for some time now but a manic run into Christmas meant that we had to put its release on hold for a while. However, it's all finished now and I'm delighted to finally see it go live. We have structured the site so that you can get everywhere in just a click or two, and (as with the old site) it's been packed with lots of images of the work we have done. Please have a good look round and feel free to email us if you spot anything that isn't quite right yet (we've tested it heavily but something may have slipped through the net). Also, if you have any ideas for things  you would like to see on the site, then please post a message on the blog.... If you've come to this page from somewhere other than the main site.. you can get to us at www.distinctlyfloral.co.uk

... and onto the Blog. Basically, it's a chance for me to share, with you, some of the things going on in the shop and the business... or simply to reflect on things that happen on a day to day basis. If you have any questions on your mind.. maybe you need some advice about the flowers for your wedding (or you're simply curious about the current debates on eco-friendly flowers), then post a message and we'll be happy to discuss. Of course we have to ask that all postings stay on the subject of flowers / floristry and respect the views of all other posters. 

All that remains is to say, enjoy the new site and please say hello to us via the Blog.