Facebook

For anyone on Facebook, who isn't on Facebook? We have a fan page. Be sure to search for Bella Fiori and click on "Be a fan" to join. A few brides from last year have joined and posted photos from their weddings - which I think is awesome!


We'd love it if you joined us!

Favorite Websites :: BizBash

My friend Kaye, of Epicurean Catering, loves the website BizBash. Quite often she'll send me links if she finds a great flower article. BizBash follows the event market in the big cities - New York, LA, Chicago and Miami. It's a fun resource for anyone into event planning. I find it really interesting how each market has such different styles.

Check it out at:
BizBash

Vendor Profile :: Peggy Porschen

I'm on a cake trip this week... Did I write in my London blogs about meeting Peggy Porschen? Even if I did, I still feel like she deserves a blog entry of her own. Peggy Porschen is one the top/hottest wedding cake designers in London. I had the pleasure of meeting Peggy and visiting her adorable boutique bakery. How did I meet Peggy? Luckily for me she is the sister-in-law of my friend Emma. After we visited her bakery we all went out to dinner and had a good time talking about weddings.
You can check out her awesome website here: Peggy Porschen

Flower Inspiration :: Wedding Cakes

On this amazingly, freezing cold day I decided I see no reason to hurry outside. Instead, wouldn't it be much better to sit in my cozy home office and post pictures of wedding cakes?!

Enjoy!


Here is a cake that I did back in my San Francisco days, when I had my original company: Alicia Chestine Designs. This cake was inspired by a Martha Stewart design for a Chinese wedding. It's four tiers high and each tier was decorated with dahlias of various sizes and textures - all with red, orange and yellow. To this day it remains one of my favorite cakes.






This cake is from a wedding that took place on top of Keystone mountain. There are more photos of it on our website under the weddings page. The cake is 4 tiers tall and lightly decorated with green cymbidium orchids and purple dendrobrium orchids.





Here's a cake designed by Kakes by Kelley; it's 4 tiers and square. We decorated it with three tones of red roses and surrounded the base with red rose petals.





This cake was created by the Ritz Carlton Denver. Three square tiers with flowers flush between the tiers. The flowers included freesia, spray roses and vendela roses.





This was a cake that we did for one of our employee's sister. Michelle decorated it with clusters of roses, gerbers, freesia and touches of greenery. The wedding took place in the cabin at Hudson Gardens.





This was a cake delicately decorated with pink cymbidium orchids on the top tier and pink petals scattered around the base. This wedding was at Arrowhead Golf Course.





This cake is at Green Gables Country Club and designed by Elegant Bakery. We did a black magic red rose cluster on top and red petals around the base.





Looks like the next four cakes are all from weddings designed by Classic Creations. What I really like about weddings with Julie is how different and distinct each wedding is, as you can see in these cakes.






Here we have a cake where Sarah wired and taped all the flowers to create an amazing floral topper.





This is a up-close photo of peonies and cymbidium orchids on the top tier.





Here's a cake we recently did at Lakewood Country Club. Intricate Icings was the cake baker. We thought she did an amazing job with this 4 tier cake, she also placed all the flowers.





This is Michelle's cake from her wedding in November '06, which took place at the Greenbriar in Boulder. Shamane's Bake Shop created this cake, not only was it beautiful it tasted great, too.





This is another Classic Creation wedding - what I love is how Julie placed the cake on an elevated piece of glass and all the petals were placed under the glass.





Gateaux created this cake, we lined the tiers with blue and green hydrangea for an April wedding.





Isn't this a cute fall cake? I love the circus roses.





This cake is from a wedding that Sapphire Celebrations designed at The Pines of Genesee. I like how Angie placed the "I DO" in front of the cake.

Favorite Websites :: The Bridal Collection

I came across a new blog I thought many brides would be interested in, it's by The Bridal Collection in Denver. I'm sure many of you have heard of this dress shop as they are a wonderful boutique. I became familiar with it when out dress shopping with my BFF. Needless to say, she selected her wedding dress from The Bridal Collection.

Here's a link to their blog, it's full of all kinds of ideas for weddings:
The Bridal Collection

My personal favorite part of the blog are all the inspiration boards they post!

Flower Design Classes Announced

Announcing the launch of our Flower Design Classes!

December Schedule:
December 10, 2008 [6:00PM-9:00PM] - The Basics (Class is Full)
December 21, 2008 [1:00PM-4:00PM) – Holiday Centerpieces

January Schedule:
January 10, 2008 (10:00AM-1:00PM) – The Basics
January 24, 2008 (10:00AM-1:00PM) – Hand-tied Bouquets


Classes are held at our design studio:
7711 West 6th Avenue, #D
Lakewood, CO 80214

Tuition fee is $150.00 per person, per class. Tuition includes tax, all materials & light refreshments.

These hands-on classes will be taught by Alicia Schwede, Bella Fiori’s owner and lead designer. Sarah Day will be assisting.
Alicia has 10+ years in the floral design industry and has owned Bella Fiori for over 5 years. Bella Fiori has been featured in numerous magazines and on websites. Both Alicia and Sarah have trained with some of the top floral design professionals in the USA and abroad.

Book now to save your spot, classes are limited to 6 students. Contact us if you’d like to purchase a gift certificate for a friend for one of our classes. 10% discount if you book by December 5, 2008.

Call now to book your class: 303-233-5566 or email alicia@bellafiori-events.com

Favorite Websites :: Style Me Pretty

We are pleased to share with you that we've been invited to join Style Me Pretty. Style Me Pretty is a resource for brides, very hip and full of creative & fun ideas for weddings.

Our Open House

On October 28 we hosted an open house at our new studio. The girls and I had a blast planning the event. Although, I think we all learned to appreciate event planners even more than before!



Above is an upclose photo of my corsage. Sarah made each of us a corsage of phaleonopsis, fern frond, wire treatment and a bit of glitzy gems.



These 6 tall vases were filled with water with floating rose petals and topped with floating candles. These vases were placed at the entrance to the studio. The candles looked great and were an inviting entrance after sunset.






Our guests were greated to our consultation room being decorated with lots of flowers. The window area was lined with burgundy, hot pink and lime green flowers. At the base of the vases was a thick layer of moss. In the background you can see one of our fountains on display. The base of the fountain was filled with floating candles and rose petals.






This is the view looking from the office into the consultation area. The front table is getting prepped for the dessert table. Flour provided us with an incredible selection of treats. Connie blew people away! She made the most adorable favor for our guests to take home. The favor was a flower shaped cookie and each cookie had frosting in a different color. In the center of the cookie flower she wrote "Bella Fiori", each of these were placed in a bag and tied with a lovely bow. We placed a little note on each cookie to thank those who helped us with our open house. Our neighbor, Lifestyles Catering provided a ton of my favorite treats - Chocolate dipped strawberries. They are "dressed" in tuxedos. I think our dessert bar was quite the hit with our guests.








Our sign-in table was decorated with a manzanita branch in a tall rectangular vase. The base of the vase is filled with red gems. Throughout the tree are strands of crystals, large round crystals and strands of red mokara orchids.

After mingling in the front office spaces our guests were brought into the backroom where on a daily basis our designing takes place. For the open house the girls and I decided that we'd like our floral designs to be showcased above everyone ... we draped the entire ceiling in white muslin fabric. Then made numerous pomanders of dahlias, hydrangea, carnations and roses. We also hung two of our different glass containers. The bubble bowl vase that holds gerbers or orchids and our teardrop vase that holds orchids. We also hung orchid strands and rose strands with pomanders on the end.

The highlight of the backroom decor was a flower chandelier. We designed it with antique green hydrangea, sumatra lilies, roses and burgundy snapdragons in the top part. Then strung rose petals and at the end of the rose petals strands we attached a red gem.

Underneath the chandelier was the food display, a HUGE hit at the open house. Footers Catering did an AMAZING job with the food and received tons of compliments. We added in garlands of flowers and martini glasses filled with California Crystals a LED light and a green cymbidium orchid. We also had 3 high-top tables with the martini glass centerpiece. Footers set-up a lovely bar where we served wine from my home region - Mendocino County, California.

Not seen in any of the photos but definitely appreciated by our guests was Jeff Donovan of DJ on Demand. Jeff set-up his equipment in the back corner of the design room. Jeff presented us with the coolest present! All the music he played at the open house had either "rose" or "flower" in the song title. Then at the end of the night he presented us with a CD of all the songs he played.

Thank you for making our Open House special:
Autumn Burke ~ Fabulous photos
Colorado Party Rental ~ chairs & tables
DJ on Demand ~ music
Flour ~ cookies & dessert bars
Footers Catering ~ hors d’oeuvres
Lifestyles Catering ~ tuxedo strawberries

Green Gables Country Club

I apologize for the not so great quality of photos here, I took these with my IPhone... Hopefully you can get some idea of how the room looked. We filled Green Gables with red roses and tons of petals!

Here's the ceremony in front of the fireplace:


Upclose shot of the chair decorations:


Lots and lots of rose petals:


Altar arrangements in our iron candelabras, filled with black magic roses:


Foyer arrangement:


Cake by Elegant Bakery:


7' Live ficus trees with uplighting:


Centerpieces of black magic roses surrounded by more rose petals:

JW Marriott Cherry Creek

It's not a typo, I'm posting two JW Marriott Cherry Creek weddings. I love how JW Marriott has two such different looks.

Both of the weddings were with Julie Gambrell of Classic Creations.

For this wedding Jessica, the bride, had her reception in the upstairs ballroom. Her colors were striking - a rich green and a hot pink.

Upclose photo of groom's boutonniere:


Here's a photo from their ceremony:


The JW Marriott Cherry Creek ballroom:
Jessica selected all elevated centerpieces for her tables. The flowers include dendrobrium orchids, roses, stock, hydrangea and dahlias. We framed the room with lighted ficus trees to add to the ambiance. Jessica loves the *Bling* and where ever possible we tucked in gems and crystals. All the centerpieces had crystals hanging from the branches.