Safari Theme Dol (Korean First Birthday)

Safari fun for our son's first birthday!

Winter White Wedding

A rainy cold day in Southern California set the perfect atmosphere for this wintery white wedding.  At the lovely Cerritos Center of Performing Arts lots and lots of hydrangea and mitsumata branches to created a dramatic and romantic setting for this special day.

 Vendela Roses and double white tulips accented with lovely dusty miller to fit in with the rest of the theme. 

 Draping with none other than white twinkling lights framed the perfect ceremony alter.

One guest described the orchids in this arrangements as clouds floating.  These orchids are the ultimate in romantic weddings.

an aisle flanked by puffs of hydrangea and dramatic branched with the warm glow of candles... oh so romantic.

Her bouquet with coveted white peonies, hydrangea, vendela roses and tulips.

Vivian's 1st Birthday

Dol or doljanchi is a Korean tradition that celebrates the birthday of a one-year-old baby. This ceremony blesses the child with a prosperous future and has taken on great significance in Korea. The birthday babies wear a hanbok and a traditional hat: a jobawi or gullefor baby girls and a bokgeon or hogeon (호건) for baby boys.


Traditional Korean food was served at the party with a modern twist on decoration.  The theme of the party was "Alice in Wonderland", so we used a lot of vibrant colors, oversized flowers and lots of butterflies!

My son's 100 day celebration

In Korean culture it is important to celebrate your child's 100th day.  This is considered their first birthday (9 months in the womb+100 days).  For my son's baek-il, we had an intimate dinner with just family in Koreatown. The color theme was easy - blue, silver and white.  I bought a variety of scrapbook paper and made fans.  I cut them into different sizes so that I had a variety of sizes for my collage.  I even made some large ones with poster board to kind of anchor the whole thing.  I laid them out and then started to glue them to four large foamcore boards.  Since we couldn't take or nail anything to the wall at the restaurant, I had to pre make my wall decor.  When we arrived at the restaurant, we taped the 4 poster boards together.  The awesome cake was from Kings Hawaiian Bakery.  Just to make it more festive, we got tons of star balloons!  It was a great celebration, with the exception of his melt down.  Poor baby, all of the people and photos overwhelmed him!

Melody and Mike's wedding photo by Susan Sabo

Melody and Michael's Wedding at Condor's Nest Ranch

What a weekend! The venue was amazing and the bride and groom were stunning!  The bride challenged us to come up with modern decor for a very rustic venue.  No limits were set which allowed us to push the limits when it comes to wedding decor.  Unusual colors, materials and flowers made this event truly a memorable one.
With inspiration from artist Bart Hawe at Aquamare Design, we created sculptures made out of rings for the long end to end tables.  These gray sculptures against the lovely deep purple table linens were stunning.

A design inspired a European floral designer, we created these wire and wool arrangements.  Definitely something different.  We used cymbidium orchids, roses, vanda orchids and spider mums on the tables.

To bring some more of the wedding colors to liven up the rustic venue, we brought in huge arrangements of purple gladious flowers, orchids, purple artichokes, purple kale, allium bullets, amnesia roses and dusty miller.

See the full gallery on Posterous

For the ceremony, we decorated a custom built arch with pomader balls in different colors.  Our favorite were the stunning dark purple carnations.  We took 25 lbs of dried lavender buds which were scattered down the aisle.  Even with the hot sun beating down, you were calm and at ease with the amazing lavender scent that surrounded the guests and the bridal party.

The bridesmaids wore different shades of purple and carried bouquets of amnesia roses, brunia and dusty miller.

Our favorite part of the wedding... the bride's bouquet.  Not your usual bouquet of calla lilies.  We added some extra texture with scabiosa blooms, black ti leaves and silver ostrich feathers. Stunning!

The proposal

Her favorite color is yellow and this husband-to-be did an amazing job setting up for the perfect proposal.

She said yes!