Come on over and see me sometime.

...on my new blog site, that is! Just this morning I launched a newly-revamped website at forgetmeknodt.com, and in addition to loads more eye candy in the new gallery...

sneak peak!

...it includes a blog of its own. So if you want to keep on hearing from me, just head on over to forgetmeknodt.com/blog and sign up for updates! I'll be blogging often.


Cheers!
Janessa

...and this is what it's all about.

Today has been a HUGE day for my budding lil' biz! More on that soon, but let's just say that certain opportunities have arisen that required me to go back through my archives of photos from weddings.

That's how I happened upon this gem, captured by David Turner Photography. It's Jina - one of my favorite brides of all time - wrapped up in a truly blissful moment just after she tied the kno(d)t.

This image sums up exactly why I do what I do. ¡Viva amore!

United we [stop and smell the flowers].

Sneak peeks are in from last week's corporate event - the 88 Brand Partners launch party. A million thanks to Cage + Aquarium for capturing some great shots of the flowers! 

I had so much fun with these. Basically, 88 is a creative agency in River North with a groovy new brand and something new to say to Chicago's advertising world: "United we brand". So they hired on Cage + Aquarium to spin and manage a super fun photobooth, Hearty Boys to serve up massive amounts of creative deliciousness, and yours truly to add even more color to an already vibrant office space.

I decided on seriously bright arrangements of orchids, dahlias, delphinium and craspedia. Maybe an anemone or two, and a coupla ranunculus. How could I not capitalize on their bold color palette, contrasted with black? Also of note - the cute "magic 88" balls!

Here are a few sneak peeks. More to come as the images keep rolling in!

Save the Date fun!

I am SO excited! Our Save the Dates just arrived!

You might remember me gushing in an earlier blog about Mike Hirshon, a professional illustrator whose wedding flowers I'll be doing this summer. Well, he just finished our Save the Dates, and is now working on our invites! (Can't WAIT to see those!)

The whole process was so painless. I just wrote him an email telling him about JP and me...the things we like, what we do, how obsessed we are with Maddie...and he drew up a couple sketches. I chose one route, and we took a few days making refinements. Then? VOILA! Check 'em out:

 Front and back. I'm in love!

 Look! He captured Maddie's likeness perfectly! He even gave her a Chicago Cubs bandana!

Brides, if you're on the lookout for cool alternative options for your save the dates, check this guy out. I'm just thrilled - he really personalized these for us. They're little original artworks! Now, I just have to address them all. Eeeesh. :)

Wait for it...

Today at 6:00 pm, rojo foto // design will announce the winning couple for the Love Never Fails Giveaway! I'm so excited to be a part of this. All of the couples who entered had fantastic love stories, and it was so much fun to read through them. Yay love!

To keep things extra-super-duper-fair, Robert and I recruited a few guest judges to help us choose.

Amanda Yu-Dieterich: Made with Love Paperie and Design Studio 

Amanda makes the most amazing personalized invitations and things...she's a brilliant designer and an expert with paper types and printing techniques. She really understands how to bring a couple's personality to life through design, so we knew she'd be able to provide excellent insight!

Tanya Luz: Domestic Arts - Custom Cakes & Sweets

Tanya's custom creations shop operates out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. And when we say custom, we mean it! Not only is she a genius at making classic cakes, she's not afraid to give a couple exactly what they want! Death Star cake? Sure! Starry Night cake? No problem! Check out her blog for some super sweet photos.

Meghann VanderBaan: Blush & Bashful Event Boutique

Getting to know couples and what makes them tick, is Meghann's specialty -- and how she makes her living! She works with brides and grooms to plan and customize every little detail of their wedding, and she does it so well. We knew she'd be a great addition to the Lover Never Fails team of judges!

The five of us together gave lots of time and attention to every submission we received. Can't wait to announce the winners, and get started planning their dream wedding flowers!

Brushing off the cobwebs.

So, the winter isn't a very popular time for weddings here in Chicago, but it is an extremely popular time for PLANNING weddings! I have, thusly, been up to my eyeballs in emails and estimates and other various forms of paperwork. It's all in the name of floral design, though, and boy oh boy is this wedding season going to be a doozy!

Actually, there have been a lot of changes and opportunities for Forget Me Knodt lately, but that will be a topic for another blog.

This weekend I was honored to work on centerpieces for tonight's Catering Executive Club's dinner, hosted by Pure Kitchen Catering at Room 1520. The color scheme is whites and neutrals, with antique farm tables, crystal chandeliers and crystal chivari chairs. What fun!

I made some nice antique-yet-fresh centerpieces in little bronze urns. With garden roses and spray roses, plus hyacinth, hypericum and privet berries, and scented geranium greens, they looked great and smelled even greater!

And then, just to keep me on my toes, my wonderful friend Mara went and had a brand new baby girl (Sadie!) on Saturday morning! So it was back to the flower market to pick up something in a pink. A sweet little something for sweet miss Sadie.

I went to the hospital on Sunday to meet her and smooch her mama, and I think it's safe to say she and I are going to be fast friends. For example, she had a serious case of hiccups, but didn't let that get her down in the least. An optimist - I like her already!

It was a busy weekend, but I can't say how nice it was to get my hands back in some flowers. It was good to brush off some of the cobwebs and get ready for the wild ride that's just around the corner. Hope you're all doing well, and staying warm!

Indie Wed! (Or: Baby's First Bridal Show)

January 28th marked my very first Bridal Show! It was fantastic. It was so much work, but so worth it!

In addition to playing with gorgeous flowers (and wild raspberries!) I got the chance to be inspired by hundreds of amazing local vendors, eat cupcakes and things, and meet SO MANY fantastic new brides (you know who you are!).

But there's more. I also got to spend the whole day with my wonderful friend and esteemed colleague, Becca Heuer of Becca Heuer Photography.

She helped me more than I can ever thank her for! Plus, she took tons of great photos that day - like the one pictured above! You can view more of them here, on her blog.

Thanks to the organizers of Indie Wed, to all the vendors who participated, and to the wonderful brides who came out to meet us. Can't wait for the next Indie Wed to come around!

Featured in Style Me Pretty!

Mark it on the calendar - it's a milestone day! My first feature in Style Me Pretty! A million thanks to Katie and Jeff Jones (the amazing couple) and Elizabeth Tulipana - the brilliant mastermind behind Anticipation Events - for this fantastic opportunity!

Here's the link for the full story and fabulous photos!

Work with the talented Mike Hirshon for customized wedding goodness!

You know what I love most about doing flowers for weddings? Meeting all kinds of fun new people, and getting to work with them to make their wedding picture-perfect. It's also especially fun when (as so often happens!) the couple has talents of their own which they're applying to the wedding. Now, I hate to generalize, but usually I've found that it's the bride doing the extra work. Chicks just tend to dig stuff like wedding design and decor!

However, there is always an exception to the rule. And in this case, the exception's name is Mike Hirshon: future husband of the amazingly brilliant and equally talented Robin Meyer!

Aren't they cute?

Mike and Robin are getting married in July, and I am the incredibly lucky little florist they've chosen to employ for their big day! It didn't take long for me to realize that I was working with a very special couple. They've really got it all together - that became clear when I first took a gander at their wedding website.

It's so clean and organized and custom-feeling. I especially love the traditions section, where they explain all the ins and outs of a traditional jewish wedding ceremony. I was so impressed by it that I asked Robin which template they used. You know, The Knot has templates for this type of thing. They're usually kind of clunky, though. So imagine my surprise when Robin told me: "Actually, I wrote it, and Mike designed and programmed it."

SO. COOL.

I wanted to know more!

Turns out, Mr. Hirshon is an illustrator and designer by trade! How awesome! It got even better when the couple came to town. We sat down for lunch and they presented me with this beauty of a save the date:

 front

 back

Isn't it adorable and fantastic? And how cool that they were hand-drawn by the groom himself! I love this idea, and when I talked to Robin and Mike more about it, I found out that he's for hire, and loves designing for weddings! Here's another example of an invitation he created:

I love it!

So brides-to-be, if you're in the market for custom save-the-dates, invitations, thank you cards and websites, check out Mike Hirshon. Now that I'm engaged, I know that I'm going to! :) 

You can get it touch with Mr. Hirshon through his site, here.

Good idea: A November wedding in Chicago!

Hello again, my reading public!

I am clearly behind in my bloggings by oh, about 12 weddings... bad florist! bad florist! I promise to catch up soon, I swear. When the wedding season closes down, the blogging season opens up! Right? RIGHT.

Anyway, I've been keeping extremely busy, but I just had to take 2 minutes to post some sneak preview shots from a wedding I did this weekend. It was just the perfect weather for a wedding here in the Windy City. And Molly and Steve are a fantastic couple!  Their joy & beauty really shine through in these magnificent photos by RoJo Foto Design. (An excellent photographer by the way, brides, and SO friendly, which is a must-have quality in a wedding photographer!)

A thousand congratulations to Molly & Steve!

Man oh man. That black and white shot of Molly makes my heart go pitter-patter! And it's just a preview! I can't wait for more! As to the rest of you? Want to see more photos? There are a few right here!

Oh, how I love fall flowers!

So. I have many blogs to catch up on. I hate when I get behind like this! I will catch up as soon as things slow down!

But in the meantime, I just have to share these little bits of cell-phone-camera loveliness with the world, from Bridget & John's wedding at Salvage One this past weekend.

I love fall flowers!

Sweet little wheat nest centerpieces.

Bridget's gorgeous bouquet.

The full lineup of bouquets and boutonnieres. I loved the colors!

Okay! More later...and hopefully they'll be professional shots, rather than my wimpy little cell phone camera!

Laura B, hungry moose and the incredible stinking flower.

I'd like to take a moment to sing the praises of the often-unsung-heroes of the floral design industry: the wholesale reps. These are the people-behind-the-people, the go-tos, the know-it-alls!

People often ask me where I get the flowers I use in my designs, since I need them in such mass quantities. Heading over to Whole Foods to stock up on, say, 200 stems of orchids and 600 stems of garden roses would get pricey! Fortunately I have a resale license, which allows me to shop at Kennicott Brothers Wholesale Mart.

It's a lovely place to be, and so far a simple visit to the refrigerator room there has a 100% track record at livening even my bluest of moods.

Kennicott also happens to be home to one of my favorite people in all the world - my wholesale mastermind, Laura B. She is a genius to end all geniuses! She gets to work at 6 am every day and is smiling, helpful and pleasant even when I show up unannounced at 6:30 am, demanding 5 bunches of hot pink mokaras! She is, in a word, lovely. See?

Without Laura, I'd never know that here in Chicago, peonies in late August aren't really doable, unless I order through the growers in Alaska who still have some because it's colder up there... oh but whoops, looks like even that won't work because there's been a tragic invasion by some hungry moose who devoured the whole supply!

Without Laura, I wouldn't know that a particularly healthy rainy season in South America has produced unusually lovely hydrangea, so we should order from there instead of California.

And without Laura, I wouldn't know about flora like euphorbia, lycopodium, mimosa (the shrub, not the cocktail) and countless others. Every time I visit the flower mart I'm seen running in and out of the refrigerator room holding some crazy new find and shouting at Laura "WHAT is THIS? I must have it!" She always knows immediately what it is, where it's from, how much it costs and whether or not I can use it in a boutonniere. She amazes me! She even packages all my orders up for me in easy-to-carry boxes with my name on them (which honestly never gets old):

Funny side-story. In April I did some fantastic (if I do say so myself) arrangements for a snazzy supper club event at the Nature Museum here in Chicago, put on by the food geniuses over at City Provisions. I wanted to create arrangements that were themed in accordance to their location in the museum. So I made some pretty goofy requests of Laura. "I need some flowers that look like bugs' eyes, or bugs' houses, or those muddy birds' nests" was one of them. And when I asked her to keep an eye out for anything "really marshy and wetlandsy and cool, like something you'd see on a hike in a misty forest preserve" she found these guys:

Groovy, right? When I arrived to pick up my order that day, Laura whipped these out and I could hardly contain my excitement. They were quite rare, from a shipment in from Holland, "where all the super cool stuff comes from", according to Laura. I had to have them!

Now, little did she or I know, but those pretty pearl-like droplets inside the cup of the flower contain enzymes of a rather pungent smell. In fact, once the flowers were out of the nearly-freezing temps of the refrigerator room and allowed to warm up to their normal temperature inside my car, they began to produce a stench of biblical proportions. I'd almost made it back home when finally, eyes watering, nose running and spirits crushed, I admitted to myself that these flowers next to a tray of food would not aid anyone's appetite. Even the lures of chef Cleetus Friedman's amazing bison meatballs in smoked tomato sauce couldn't defeat this terrible odor!

So I turned around and headed back to Kennicott, where Laura graciously took the stinkers back. (With super rare stuff like this, even my brilliant Laura can't know everything!) My car was stinky for hours after, even though I kept the windows down. That Mother Nature, she's something else!

Anyway, I just wanted to give credit where credit is due. Behind every fancy professional shot of my finished work (like this one of the marsh arrangement mentioned in the stinky flower story)...

...is the collective kindness and wisdom of one Laura B. at Kennicott Brothers. Thank you for everything over the years, Laura! I'm so lucky to have stumbled into your path!

Remember me?

Well well well. Look who decided to show up and update her blog! It's been a while, no? In fact, I haven't updated this blog for over 4 months. For shame!

Humblest apologies, but it's been a bit of a wild time. In addition to a 2 week pilgrimage through Spain and Portugal, I've also been up to my eyeballs in flowers virtually every weekend since the end of April! Weddings, baby showers, corporate and private dinner parties...I've been all over the place with my bloomin' creations. It's been beautiful and crazy and stressful and fun, all at once!

To all my lovely brides, please forgive me. I will go back in time and give proper attention to every one of your weddings. Each has been totally unique and gorgeous in its own way--a visual celebration of who you are as people and couples--and I've loved them all! (And for a few, I'm still waiting on the professional photos.)

For now, though, here's a quick image montage of Forget me Knodt's inaugural summer in flowers. More soon!