Looking Back

It's New Year's Eve, and I just had so much fun looking back at all my blog posts from the past year. Wow! A new website, a Knot magazine feature, 2 precious little grandsons, an exciting engagement- and lots of wonderful weddings to remember. What a fantastic year- better than I could have ever dreamed! Just for fun I'm going to post some of my favorite images from this year's happenings & weddings. Thanks so much staff and clients for a great year.

First, our feature in The Knot. Thanks KMPhotographyweddings for submitting this wedding to the magazine.

So much fun working with these happy bright colors. This is one of Rene's fun cakes.

Just had to add a couple pictures of my sweet babies. Hudson and Kole.

Winter Wedding Ideas

Erika, like one of our family....we love her....she's Jessie's maid of honor. She'll soon be a lawyer!
My favorite wedding image of the year!!

Winter Wedding #2

Transforming Shady Maple Banquet room into a winter wonderland was no small task with less than 1 hr. to get the job done. With a wonderful crew on hand, the job was done in the short amount of time we had. Using beautiful platinum/silver linens from Special Occasions, White Birch branches in tall vases, lots of 'crushed ice' with LED lights, snowflakes and crystal garland- the head bridal table looked icy and elegant.

Crushed ice in the vases and votives. Silver bead table numbers hang from the vases with sparkly snowflakes. Favors were clear rock candy swizzle sticks that looked just like ice crystals.
Bride and Groom's chairs.

Snowflakes attached to the gift card box..................



Snowflakes added to the wedding cake, surrounded by glass bead garland, and tinsel -filled cake stands complete the icy theme.

The flower girl dropped snowflakes rather than petals from her basket as she walked down the aisle.

Thanks to Amy, Lindsay, Jessie, Joyce and Moa for a wonderful job well done! Especially for Christmas week! And Congratulations to Katie and Jeremy.

Winter Wedding #3 is January 24 at Casa di Fiori.
Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

All of us at ATB wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and the happiest, healthiest, and most prosperous New Year.

Thank you to all of our past clients for allowing us to be a part of your most important day. We are truly grateful to you for the confidence you have placed in us, and for the wonderful relationships and friendships we've developed.

Huge holiday hugs to all of our colleagues in this business- for your friendships, encouragements and referrals. It's so awesome to be working with so many great professionals with the hightest standards of intergrity and professionalism.

I hope you find much happiness in all the wonderful big and little things that Christmas means.
Best and warmest thoughts to all.
Merry Christmas!
~Kelly and Staff of ATB

Engagement Photo

Thanks to the wonderful Kris McElligott for capturing the feelings of love and happiness of Jessie and Doug. The camera in her hands creates such amazing images. We just love every one of them.

Kris is already committed on their wedding day but was so sweet to do the engagement session for them. Can't thank her enough for such great pictures. Visit her website at: http://www.kmphotographyweddings.com/

Winter Wedding #1

This is the Winter Wedding season for us, and we begin with Amy and Matt's wedding which was held at Santee Chapel. The reception was at the Eden Resort's Grand Ballroom. Amy's bouquet was wrapped with her Grandfather's necktie. Such a sweet way to remember a loved one. The tie matched the Swartwalder Mini Callas perfectly. The bridesmaids wore a platinum colored dress and carried spheres of burgundy Mini-Carnations and white Hypericum, studded with crystal accents-(we forgot to take a picture of them!). I love adding fluffy white feathers to winter bouquets. It looks like a warm furry muff.

Toss Bouquet made with white Lisianthus and white Hypericum.

Some centerpieces were a standard Calla Lily in a pilsner vase with crushed ice and a submersible light down inside and surrounded by blue, silver and white Christmas balls. Snowflakes hung from the vases. The table number cards stood in beautiful snowflake stands.

The other centerpieces were glass balls inside of sphere -shaped bowls with Hydrangea, Spider Mums and frosty-pearl berries. I'm not a big fan of mirrors, but this is when a mirror is really worth using!

Another winter wedding to do this week before Christmas.....then a little break.

Try to slow down a little bit to savor this wonderful time of the year. (Yep, I need to take my own advice!) Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa!

Color It Yellow and Add Something Sentimental

It seems the new popular upcoming wedding color is 'yellow' including my own daughter's. A combination of yellow, pale orange, peach, light green and coral is what we will use for Jessie's color palette. That's all I'm telling. You'll have to wait till after June 13 to see everything else..... The above picture was shot by The Weibners, www.theweibners.com

and sent to me by the bride. Aren't they the prettiest pale yellow dresses? We used soft orange and cream roses for the bridesmaids.

The bride was given a tiny photo frame charm with a picture of their late mother to attach to her bouquet.

This bride added a pair of earrings and a necklace from the Groom's late grandmother's jewely collection.

This week I have a grandfather's necktie to wrap around the bride's bouquet stems. It doesn't match the color scheme but she doesn't care one bit, she wants to take a part of her grandfather down the aisle with her. I'll post that picture next week.

This Bride's bouquet has her childhood rosary attached.

One Bride's Grandmother cut her own wedding dress apart and made Wedding- Day hankies for each one of her grandaughters to add to their bouquets. She even added the lace and buttons.

So many thoughtful ways to bring some sentimental elements into your wedding.

Though the Christmas holidays approach, we are still in the wedding season. We have several 'winter' weddings ahead. Elements of snow and ice and Christmas.....so fun!! We love winter weddings! Having a winter wedding next year? Check the Dec. Jan. Feb. posts for lots of 'cool' inspiration.

Giving Thanks

For my husband Jerry,

our precious little grandsons, Hudson and Kole,

and an infinite list that would take a lifetime and beyond to write.

Truly this is a blessed life!

A Lily Wedding

Rachel and Brett's wedding was all black, white and silver with a touch of dark Red. She looked so beautiful when I dropped off her flowers, even though she wasn't even in her dress yet.

Her bridesmaids wore black with a white sash and carried bouquets of mini callas.

Rachel carried all Red Majestic Mini Callas with lily grass and silver wire accents.

They had a beautiful handmade personalized aisle runner for the ceremony that was folded up and taken to place on the sweetheart table for the reception.

The reception (sorry, no pictures).

Please check :

http://plannedperfectionpa.com as well as

http://jeremyhessphotographers.com blogs.

Rachel used beautiful, tall black vases with large white Casa Blanca Lilies for centerpieces. With napkin ring flower vases, menu cards, even the table numbers were done so beautifully using a

numbered photograph of the couple by Jeremy Hess in several downtown Lancaster locations.

Every detail of this wedding was so carefully planned and executed.

Coming up are 2 Christmas weddings.
Stay warm..........................

Engagement Party at Prince St. Cafe

Due to some crazy technical difficulties I am unable to post pictures of Doug and Jessie's engagement party details. Once I get this problem solved there will be pictures.#$*&*)*!!!!!

Grrrrrrrr! Computers!!

Another Nice Vacation

Ahh, vacation was nice, but it's always good to be home again. We're rested up and ready to plow into the holiday season. Not only holidays with the family, but holiday weddings and some winter weddings. We LOVE winter weddings! There is so much you can do with winter as the theme....snowflakes, icicles, lots of little white lights -all things white are sooo beautiful!

I was looking thru my files of well over 1000 pictures that we took of what we have done over the last 2 yrs. and I thought I'd post some of the really fun things we got to do with flowers.



Heather and Colby's wedding featured a theme of Old Hollywood Movies. So we hung little popcorn boxes on the chairs in the aisle with white Hydrangea. It really looked like popcorn!
( I can't seem to find that picture), then for the favor table; which was movie DVDs, we filled a huge popcorn bowl with more Hydrangeas.

Then we had the 'Architect" bride who was so much fun -and wanted to be creative with limes and 'anything out of the ordinary'. When I saw the mini pineapples on the flowers available list I thought "hmm....I can do something fun and different". Wouldn't be every bride's favorite, but Erin was delighted!

I honestly can't take credit for this one. Lynne and I went to the NE Florist's Convention and saw a display of high school Floriculture students design competition that really impressed me.

I had to take a picture so I remember to do this sometime for a fun centerpiece. This is Blue Vanda Orchids suspended in a narrow vase with purple aluminum wire. How cool is that?

This wedding took place inside the Rotunda at Lauxmont. Sheri, the bride, wanted to do something to create a unique backdrop for the ceremony without renting the common wedding

arch; so we suggested creating one on the wall with ribbons, clear beads, and tiny white Mini Carnations. Two pillars from the Groom's mothers' home with a piece of glass on top created the table for the unity candles and 3 Remembrance roses.

Marion Court was the site for this outside wedding and reception. Hot pink and orange were the colors of the day. First time for us to make goldfish centerpieces!

Floating on top of the water was a bright pink Gerbera daisy. Colorful bride/colorful wedding!

And one last picture of a puppy dog made of white cushion mums for Amy's baby shower tables.

I posted this in my very first blog, but it turned out so cute I thought I'd put it on again.

Our next wedding is on Thanksgiving weekend at a local church with an Eden Courtyard reception. But check next week's blog for some new pictures of another important event!

It's Wedding Central

My newly designed, post card-sized business cards have arrived and feature white Hydrangea, yellow Freesia, white Hypericum and Million Star Gyp. Yellow is the upcoming popular color for the new season. Thank you to Kristin Kauffman Leaman for coming to my shop to photograph one of my 'yellow' weddings. She's a great free-lance photographer who is a brand new-ly wed.

What a productive week! Now I know what all of you girls go thru to plan a beautiful wedding. Scores of emails, phone calls, website searches, caterer appointments, dress shopping,

searching for the right tent, jewelry, bridesmaid dresses, photographers, musicians, flowers. The list seems to go on and on. Jonnaysa of Planned Perfection has been working her little tail off this week for us, so that I can stay on top of all the other weddings in our schedule. They are all very important to us, and I promise not to miss a beat. Great job, J- we just about have all of the most urgent bookings done-amazing!!

In the midst of all of our excitement, Amy and I are keeping pace with all the brides that scheduled meetings with us to design their weddings, as well as participate in a Bridal Show in Harrisburg today. Whew! All of that in one week!

Here a few shots from our display at today's Bridal Engagement, sponsored by Commonwealth Caterers and the Event Planning Network.


Our booth display plan was to set a complete square bridal table with an elaborate tablescape down the center with place settings for 10, but had to be squished together, and scaled down to the table that was provided. This stacked Bubble Bowl centerpiece drew alot of attention and several cell- phone photographers. The bottom bowl had a garland of suspended pearls with a white Spider Mum floating on the surface, and the top bowl featured a sphere of white Cushion Poms inside the bowl. This could be used for a buffet display, place card table or a Large Bridal Table Centerpiece. We are always trying to come up with new ways to use the popular Bubble Bowl.

We provided a few bouquets for the models to carry as they walked through the show. This funky bouquet using only 3 Black Bacarra roses and black Ostrich feathers was the big attention- getter according to the model.

How unusual to find light orange tulips with lavender stripes. I loved them when I saw them and just had to use them somewhere. So I added a little bit of lavender/white Lisianthus, some large pearls on wire and it made an interesting fall colored bouquet for this model bride.

Million Star Gyp bouquet with little white Vyking poms that have a black eye. Tied with black and white polka-dot ribbon. Below is pink South American Hydrangea and Million Star Gyp.

So Amy and I are packing up baby Hudson and heading for a week's worth of Florida sunshine to rest- up after a wonderful spring, summer and fall wedding season. That's when I spend hours in my favorite bookstore's flowers and wedding section and by the pool with the piles of books on my lap- getting fresh inspiration for next year. So to all my faithful blog -watchers, please check back in 2 weeks to see what's new. We have several holiday weddings coming up, so it's not over for the year yet, just a little break for some much needed R&R.

In the meantime, if you haven't caught on yet to http://stylemepretty.com/ then check it everyday so you don't miss a single wonderful wedding idea!!

This Week's Wedding and Exciting Family News

First the wedding.......................

Fall is such a beautiful season to be married. The colors of the trees and the beautiful flowers that are in season now make for such gorgeous photography. Unfortunately it was raining buckets again and this outdoor wedding became an indoor wedding at Lancaster County Winery.

Jennifer, the bride chose Mini Sunflowers, Red Roses, Orange Dahlias and Orange Gerbera for her bridesmaids. She was so happy today, it didn't matter to her if it was raining.

Her bouquet used a combination of Roses, Dahlias, Purple Lisianthus, Gerberas, Yellow Kangaroo Paws, and little bits of Curly Willow tips. Kangaroo paws are a flower from Australia that actually look like mini, mini, mini fuzzy kangaroo's paws. They look great alone too as boutts., which the Groom wore. I love the purple addition to the fall color palette. What a difference it makes!

And now for the big Steadman family news......................

~ The future Mr. and Mrs. Doug Smoker~

What a happy time for our family. Doug is the nicest guy-can't you tell by his adorable smile?

So what kind of wedding will the florist's daughter have? Hmmmm, wait and see...

Not wanting a long engagement they have chosen June 2009 to tie the knot. So much planning/so little time... Jonnaysa, where are you? Your services are desperately needed!!!