It’s been one year since we moved into our new location on Country Road 210 and we want to thank all of our clients for helping us to make this the best year yet!
We can’t thank enough all the brides who have continued to leave awesome feedback on sites like Wedding Wire and The Knot and voting for us in Jacksonville Magazine’s Bride.
This year we are making some more changes. We recently released our new logo!
And we have a new website in the works.
If you are getting married, please give us a call to come by and see our studio and design space on County Road 210 in St. Augustine. It’s right in between Jacksonville and the World Golf Village, so not far at all! (And YES! We still do weddings and events in Jacksonville as well!)
It’s been one year since Nancy & Mike got married. They were married at the Saint Georges Antiochian Orthodox Church and their gorgeous reception was held at the Ramallah Club.
J Mosley photography shot their wedding and Christy Whitehead Photography did beforehand photos of the reception hall for us.
Since it’s been a year, we figured we’d ask the beautiful and pregnant (with a girl named Rose, after Nancy’s middle name) Nancy about her wedding.
What do you remember most about your wedding day?
My first dance with my husband. Having 300 people watch us on the dance floor, it was surreal.
What was your favorite part?
All the dancing was really fun, the band really made it fun!
Why did you choose A Fantasy in Flowers?
I was reluctant after having a series of strike-outs with several other “recommended” florists but ultimately I went with them because Susan was professional and confident in her work. I trusted she could handle such a big event.
What would you say to brides who are thinking about doing their own flowers?
Why would you want to torture yourself? Leave that to the professionals, you will have 100 other things to take care of. Flowers are beautiful and need to be done by a professional. Till this day, I still get compliments on the flowers and décor all done by A Fantasy in Flowers. I would NEVER recommend doing that, even if you are crafty, not for your own wedding!!!
What was it like working with A Fantasy in Flowers?
They were hands down my favorite wedding vendor. And I loved all my vendors, but they were the easiest to work with. Susan and her team understood what I wanted and didn’t try to impose their vision on me like so many others did. Susan set up a meeting with me at the venue and then her creative team really shined and put together a magical, romantic event for me. All with very little color which is what I wanted. She captured my own vision and her team executed it beautifully. The venue I had it at even features pictures from only my wedding on their website, guess they liked it too ☺ They have several weddings there and only my pictures are featured. I’d say that is a great compliment for A Fantasy in Flowers!
(A Fantasy in Flowers did all of the drapery for Nancy’s wedding.)
Anything else you would like to add?
Do not waste your time with other florists. I probably met with 10 and knew when I met Susan that my search was over. My bouquets, centerpieces, linens, room décor, all were beautiful. Really they deliver, with no headache and can do it within your budget and all the while being 100% professional. That’s a hard thing to say in the wedding industry.
Congrats on your anniversary Nancy and Mike and on the impending birth of your little girl Rose!
We love hydrangeas at A Fantasy in Flowers. Not only do they come in an assortment of colors but their big flowery heads mean that you need less of them to fill a bouquet or centerpiece, making them an extremely affordable option for many brides.
Hydrangeas are thought to stand for friendship, understanding and devotion—perfect for two people starting a long life together. Another definition of what the flower stands for, says that it stands for “heartfelt emotions” and is used to “express gratitude for being understood.”
Martha Stewart’s website has a nice group of photos showing different ways to use Hydrangeas in centerpieces. We particularly love the green apple ribbon table—gorgeous!
One of the other ideas on Martha Stewart’s site was to put them in little white buckets with the buckets showing a table number. This is cute idea and our friends over at Ten 23 Designs can help you do the vinyl numbers.
Some of our brides are scared to use Hydrangeas because they’ve seen them in other weddings and they are wilted and sad looking. This is why we HIGHLY recommend you use a professional florist, we know how much water to give them to keep them looking beautiful all day long.
If you would like to dry your flowers and preserve them after your wedding, here are some tips on how to do it and also how to use them in wreaths and things:
http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/dryingnat.html
Thank you to Christy Whitehead at Christy Whitehead Photography for supplying photos from our past weddings and events of flowers we created.
Thank you to all the brides who came out to see us at the UNF bridal show on Sept. 11th. Put on by Premier Bride Magazine.
It was another great show and we enjoyed meeting all of you.
Our floral designers created a ton of fun stuff from bouquets to shoes! I know I mentioned this in the last blog about the Sawgrass bridal show, but Amy outdid herself again and our Florida Gators shoes were stopping traffic!
If you didn’t hear, our talented floral designer Amy Dwarika is getting ready to open an online shop where you can buy hand painted items including custom shoes!
Not a Florida Gators fan? No big deal, she’ll make any team you like or make them to match your flower bouquet or wedding day style.
Give us a call to set up your floral consultation today, we’d love to see you and become your wedding day florist!904-268-7022
There has been a lot of talk amongst vendors and brides recently about the importance of hiring a wedding planner/coordinator, not just a site planner, and this blog post is just one more reason why we feel EVERY bride should have a wedding planner! (Check out our colleague Christy Whitehead’s blog about the subject.)
Tanya Hendricks, of Southern Charm Events, recently approached us about teaching her and her staff the basics of floral designing and what to do in a floral emergency on the wedding day.
We are so proud of our new design space and loved the opportunity to show it off. And we appreciated the opportunity to show her staff tips and tricks of the trade.
While A Fantasy in Flowers does everything in its power to make sure the wedding day flowers arrive safely and are beautiful, accidents can happen after we leave. For example, when transporting large arrangements from ceremony to reception site, something may fall or break off. Groomsman may lose their boutonnieres and photos may still need to be taken, etc.
The ladies over at Southern Charm quickly learned that our floral artists deal with a lot more tools and such then they ever expected and our job entails a lot more details then just picking flowers and tying them together.
It was sooo cute, Tanya brought in her “floral toolbox,” which was the size of a small tackle box and our floral designer Julia about died with laughter as ours is so much larger. Tanya is def. going to be getting a MUCH larger toolbox after the list of “must have” items we gave her to buy.
Tanya’s group brought food and wine and our designer Julia showed the girls how to wrap a bouquet, how to make a boutonniere, how to carry the large floral pieces and how to repair many common problems. They also learned how to make a corsage, clean flower stains from outfits and practiced pinning on the bouttoniers among other skills.
Hopefully, one of the important things they learned in the process is why a bride should hire a professional florist and how our expertise comes into play to make the bouquets and centerpieces not only beautiful but lasting.
We had a great time with Southern Charm Events! Thank you ladies for thinking of us.
We recently set up at the Sawgrass Mariott Bridal Show. It was so nice to see so many of our current brides as well as to meet so many potential brides!
I do have to say that probably the biggest hit in our booth had to be our designer Amy Dwarika’s hand painted work, including these marvelous bridal shoes!
She received soooo many nice compliments from brides and vendors about them. She’s already started taking orders from brides. She can hand paint them in a fun and funky styling like this to match your wedding day decor, flowers or just something different to reflect your personality! We can’t wait to see her shoes popping up in our clients’ wedding day photos!
If you didn’t get a chance to stop by and see them, no worries, come by UNF this Sunday from 1-4pm for their bridal show, we’ll be there!
Thank you Christy Whitehead for the photos!
The summer of 2011 has brought both a new location and a new look to A Fantasy in Flowers.
Since our last post, we have officially moved from our San Jose location to our new design studio on County Road 210 at 110 Cumberland Park Drive in suite 108. And we couldn’t be happier with the move.
We have a new workspace in the back of the shop that is much better for our talented designers to work and for our delivery staff to pick up event orders.
The staff loves it and we feel much more organized to do every day work as well as our many weddings and events.
We even have a back door to our design studio, unlike our past location, so no more hauling flowers through the lobby.
And speaking of our lobby, we are especially proud of our new showroom area. We have designed it in rich and bold orange tones with sage, chrome and glass incorporated throughout.
It is much more comfortable for consults as well as visually stimulating, all in an effort to allow our brides and event planners the chance to relax, feel welcome and be creative with their floral needs. We provide a complimentary consultation to all our new brides where a floral design artist sits with the bride to assist in creating a floral vision for the bride’s big day.
The bride can also tour the work space area, and take a look in the cooler to see and handle flowers getting a very hands on experience.
Getting married or have an event? Give us a call and come see our new studio: 904-268-7022
A Fantasy in Flowers is North Florida’s premier florist, well known and well loved by brides. We have been voted the best florist in town by Jacksonville Magazine, Wedding Wire and The Knot. Let us show you why we are different.
If you hadn’t gotten one of our postcards or heard– we’re moving!
But don’t worry, we aren’t going far, and our service area is remaining the same.
We have moved off County Road 210 in St. John’s County: 110 Cumberland Park, #108
We are excited about the new space which is a blank canvas for us to design from the ground up with a new meeting area to meet with brides and corporate clients.
New photos coming soon!
If you live in Jacksonville and are in the San Marco area, pick up a copy of the Spring issue of San Marco Magazine. One of our bouquets is featured on the cover!
And look for our new ad in that issue!
Brides voted and we won! THANK YOU to all the brides who went onto the Knot’s website and put in your reviews and made us one of the best wedding florists in North Florida!
