Featured: Claire & Peter, a marquee wedding in the Southern Highlands - Real Weddings magazine

There are so many people who worked together with heart, a sense of humour, a desire to rise to any challenge (tree in the wrong place anyone?), to create magic on the last weekend in October last year, but I want to take the time to make tribute to a few, without whom we could not have been allowed to shine.

Firstly to Claire & Peter and their families: for believing in us, trusting us, welcoming us into their home and their lives, and not once making us feel we were anything but treasured and respected.

To my team on this one -- Shane, Anna, Sam, Peter, Bettina -- for working with flair, dedication, a serious lack of sleep, and possibly too much pizza, too late at night, for way too long. I can never thank you enough for all you did, not only in the months, days and hours leading up to the wedding day, but for being back up at dawn on Sunday, smiles on your faces and ready to make the post wedding celebration brunch one to be remembered by everyone who attended. For the thousands of roses you helped me strip, the marquee walls and table linens you labouriously steamed by hand (have your backs recovered yet? ;-)), the lace bar you lovingly created, for the several truckloads of gear you prepared, packed, loaded, unloaded, set up, packed, unloaded, cleaned and stored. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

To Karin Johnson, who manages Your Event Solution at Bowral: you were a calm and professional joy to work with for the months leading up to the event, as well as on the days we toiled away together leading up to the wedding. I love that you don't want to give no as an answer. That your tiffany chairs are impeccably white. That you knocked yourself out to design a marquee construction site that required serious packing, so we could place it where the view was best, allowed Peter & Claire (and us)  the long banquet tables of our dreams, and saved the cherished weeping cherry in Mrs Mason's front garden.

Thank you all for helping us make it happen.

Love,

Alicia x

Event design, styling & management, flowers, stationery & mirror seating plans all

 by Form Over Function.

Crystal and etched glass vases and candleholders, chandeliers, latte damask table runners, white linen, lace bar, antique bench, ottomans, side tables, silver table lamps, glassware & cutlery, latte damask and latte self stripe marquee walls

 all available from Form Over Function's hire depot.

Site construction design & management, marquees, timber flooring, white tiffany chairs,

 banquet tables, catering & serviceware equipment hire & outdoor lighting

 by Your Event Solution.

,

Centennial Parklands Dining #5 - Table 4, please take your seats

As much as we try to be in denial at Form Over Function, it's winter (to state the obvious), in some ways we should be grateful, for winter is the season that brings kale into glorious bloom in delicious shades of mauve, purple, cream and pale sage green. Who would have thought a relative of the cabbage could look so, so beautiful in a floral arrangement? It's also the season for privet berries to turn deep purple-black, and together with fragrant lavender, roses in mauve hues and lovely, lovely velvety dusty miller, it's a season which gives us the scope to make up gorgeous textural arrangements like the one shown here.

From our hire range we combined delicate beaded votives before each guest, beautiful taupe dupion silk overlays with an aubergine silk organza edge, beaded aubergine napkin rings, menus from our fern stationery range, and we placed a large mirror centerpiece under the flowers and pale aubergine fabric lantern to reflect all that lovely warm glow.

It makes for a cosy and intimate feel, and who could ask for more when it's cold and grey outside, and you wish it wasn't?

Enjoy.

x

Photography by Luke Jarvis.

Flowers to go. Super size me. New York, New York #1

Ok, we've all heard about the super size meals, the bottomless cups of alleged coffee (sorry but we'll take espresso every time), but our visit to the Manhattan flower markets on 28th street between 6th and 7th Avenues had me doing a double take on more than one occasion.

You want your flowers big?

This was a case of blooms on steroids.

I have never seen roses, hyacinth, phallaenopsis orchids, hypericum berry, ranunculus, blossom or peony roses this large (and there was more, much more).

See for yourselves, this caramel coloured rose below - the combo rose - is an Israel import. Measure across the top of the open rose and it was more than 12cm across.
Most of the large headed roses in Australia are Colombian imports, and they would struggle to compete either size or beauty wise with this specimen.
















We came across the combo rose in Soho's Adore Me florist, and it took a lot of self control not to ask one of its lovely designers , Sarah, if we could jump across the counter and get to work pairing them with chocolate coloured succulents, aged lotus pods, some pale coffee coloured gingers (not that either of the last two were on the floor to be able to work with!).

We're looking forward to hassling our suppliers to see if they can start to bring this beauty to our shores too.

This is Adore Me on the left, and we spent a bit of time chatting with Sarah about bridal flower trends in Manhattan.

It's shifted from magenta and lime green with a touch of blue, to all reds and a move to the use of more interesting pieces to create more textured arrangements and bouquets, incorporating for example, pods and succulents.

Sounds like our kind of trend. Only we can report this has been at work in Australia for some time: Form Over Function, and other Sydney floral designers whose work we love, like Saskia from Grandiflora, were incorporating succulents, pods and husks into bouquets and arrangements at least a decade ago.

But wandering the flower district I can understand why New Yorkers and Martha Stewart Inc have been reluctant to let go of the softer, prettier arrangements that are a hallmark of this city's top floral designers.

There is an abundance of choice of blooms here that would spoil anyone. A direct result of a mass population that is there, ever eager to buy whatever is put out on the floor, and a case of the more is more.
















On the plus side for Sydneysiders, many of our best flowers are grown just kilometres from the markets. It does not get any fresher than David Austen roses picked off the bush late on Thursday afternoon and at the markets by midnight, ready for us to buy at 5am on Friday morning.

It also allows florists such as ourselves to have a very personal relationship with our growers - we've had some of Form Over Function's growers of choice hold back on harvesting blue hydrangeas just for us so we would have enough for a booked event, or plant a special stash of callas to ensure we would have what we needed for a particular date.

The New York flower markets have shrunk in the name of progress to a very large block, pushed back by the space hungry needs of this constantly evolving city taking over its warehouses to turn into apartments and office space.

Unlike the Sydney flower markets, which are done and dusted by 9am at the latest six days a week, and really only have the best suppliers there Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the markets here are open seven days a week, all day, and instead of one large warehouse, there are dozens of massive stores crammed with flowers, plants, trees (amazing what will grow on a rooftop here), as well as tools of the trade.

We're looking forward to sharing more images of the world's biggest cut flowers soon - but this city waits for no-one and we're outta here for now to go forth and seek inspiration.

Alicia x

Vision in green

Now here in the land of Form Over Function we've been known to encounter the odd wedding photographer out there with a bit of a jaded eye (fortunately not often!).

You know the type. They think they've seen it all before, they pretend to be interested in a client's wedding day and they're not, and for them it's just another job (note to people who approach their work in this way - find a new career!). And couples end up with the photos to prove it.

Well, we're a bit more than blown away by the work of Bailie from Bailie Photography who captured Aivee and Peter's wedding at Pavilion on the Park last night - and can't imagine you won't be too.

He was actually excited by what he had to capture and it shows in every frame.

We can't wait to see the whole day through his lens. What a talent.

And writing of talents, Aivee's beautiful and graceful mum made the classically chic wedding cake (and yes, we confess we know it tasted as good as it looked) and created the delicate and exquisite flowers to grace the corners, adding another personal touch to a very special day.

Alicia x