Featured | www.brides.com

San Francisco City Hall featured on Brides.com's front page! It's their feature on wedding dresses of the season shown in scenes from San Francisco's City Hall. The photos are all courtesy of Chung Li Photography, which are photos from the same City Hall weddings we did together. If you click through the pictures, you'll see our florals in the background!
Here are some screenshots:

Featured | Classic Party Rentals SF website

During Happy Hour last night at Genki Ramen with my gals, Gwen from Classic Party Rentals and Jamie, my infamous assistant, Gwen let me know our tablescape from the CPR Open House (3/10/09) was one of the chosen ones to be on their website's "Featured Projects" slideshow! Check it out at:
http://sanfrancisco.classicpartyrentals.com/special_projects/open_house
(Wait for the slideshow to load and we are picture 8 of 10!)

Vendors | New PREFERRED VENDOR LIST

Our new PREFERRED VENDOR LIST is up on our website!! You can view at http://www.anniesiu.com/, click on "CONTACT' then click on "VENDOR LIST".

OR, you can view the list below. Click on these preferred vendors' links to view more of their work on their website. Be sure to let them know Annie Siu Floral & Events sent you their way!

Cake .. www.cakemaker.net
Chair Covers .. www.eychaircovers.com
Coordinator .. www.mbweddingdesigns.com
Coordinator .. www.stacymccain.com (*new!)

DJ .. www.yabata.com
DJ .. www.thespinheads.com (*new!)
Gowns .. www.uniquebride.com (*new!)
Invitations .. www.amberchic.com
Lighting .. www.elle-music.com (*new!)
Makeup and Hair .. abbeauty.blogspot.com

Photographer .. www.kurtyphotography.com
Photographer .. www.photographybyjonathan.com
Photographer .. www.chungliphotography.com
Photographer .. www.diarao.com (*new!)

Venue .. Memorial Club and Hotel, San Francisco (*new!)
Venue .. San Francisco City Hall, San Francisco (*new!)
Venue .. San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose (*new!)
Venue .. Wente Vineyard, Livermore (*new!)
Venue .. The Westin and The Sheraton, Palo Alto (*new!)

Portfolio | Magazine submissions

Received an email from one of our favorite wedding magazines reminding us of their upcoming deadline to submit pictures for their next publication, so that's what I've been doing the past 2 days, gathering photos of our 2008 weddings to submit to this magazine and others. Here are our top four favorites of 2008 that I've decided to send in (shown here are spreads from our print portfolio, in no particular order):

#1 Charmaine & Paul / Palace Hotel, San Francisco / Pink Fog Studios

#2 Grace & Dennis / Silver Creek Valley Country Club, San Jose / Gene Higa

#3 Mike & Jeff / San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose / Emmy Jeanne Photography / Stacy McCain Event Planning

#4 Sue & Andrew / San Francisco City Hall, San Francisco / Chung Li Photography

Networking | Martini Madness

Martini Madness, held by the "who-doesn't-know" Duncan Reyes of events by design, is a chic, fun networking event for wedding industry professionals, usually at the newest lounge/venue in town. This time though, was held unusually at a DANCE CLUB, Infusion Lounge, one of San Francisco's hottest and newest, and also to celebrate Gene Higa's (Top 10 Wedding Photographers in the World) birthday.

My assistant and partner-in-crime, Jamie Reyes, and I went and painted the town red and met some new industry friends along the way. Lilia and Raymond of Lilia Photography and Eric Yee of Spintronix with his fiance, Geri. Remember, I have not been in this scene for 3+ years (since being pregnant with the bb and now him at 2.5 yrs old) that it was such an eye-opener for me! I can't believe what the girls are wearing these days! It's either low in the front, lower in the back or high from the bottom. WOAH! And it was funny joking about how since everyone there was not necessarily in the wedding industry, should we still go up to them and introduce ourselves as such? Then to find out they're not in the industry and that you've just picked up on them. HA!

Picture courtesy of Duncan Reyes, events by design.

Events | Bouquets to Art

Bouquets to Art (3/17/09 - 3/21/09) came and went at the De Young Museum, just like how it was for me when I attended this show because of so little time I had there. Getting in only 15 minutes before Paula Pryke's lecture at 1:30PM, the demonstration lasted a good 2 hours, and a total eye-opener for me because a lot of questions I had with some of her techniques were openly revealed to me...at last!

Lingering after to further analyze all the mechanics just presented, then realizing I had only one and a half hour to visit the rest of the museum - to see all the art-inspired floral designs of Bouquets to Art, Yves Saint Laurent, and Andy Warhol - I finally had to come to terms that I was not going to be able to make it to Andy Warhol. I had to stay on course to be able to go through at least all the flowers and YSL (since they are ending in April).

Even with that limitation, I still had to sadly breeze by all the floral arts quickly so that I made sure I caught full glimpses of all of YSL's amazing pieces, finally in person! The question I have is if floral designers get their inspiration from fashion, where do fashion designers get their inspiration?

Here are some of Paula's signature pieces and a picture with Paula herself. I couldn't resist getting a "hot-off-the-press" copy of her latest book, "Simply Pink" and of course a picture together and an autograph too! (I LOVE her autograph, literally, see top left picture)

Wente Vineyards, Livermore e-postcards!

A few weeks back, I blogged about my sales presentation at Wente Vineyards. Needless to say, the meeting went well, that quickly following, I had my graphics guy rush to put together a "venue postcard" for all the sales managers to send to their clients. It's in a similar format as the one we had designed for our San Francisco City Hall ad, (so that it's easily recognizable as one of our marketing campaigns), but the pictures were swapped out and wording added, so that this new postcard specifically featured the florals we had done at Wente Vineyards.

For now, this new postcard is in pdf format only. I am embracing the fact that Wente and myself don't feel the need to send out traditional packets of information/postcards. Packets mailed out just means wasted paper, wasted time and wasted postage, especially when the same information can be sent faster, with less waste and probably better received via email/internet anyway. GO GREEN!

Photographer Martina Konietzny Photography

Chung Li Photography Gallery Opening!

Chung Li, my awesomest photographer, now great friends. We've been through so much and it's great to see he's finally moved to a new place - a chic and quaint studio in Belmont. The aesthetic is so pleasing, sharp and clean, just like his work, a great new place for meeting his clients. I bet all brides walking in will be "love IT at first sight", because it was for me!

The Gallery Opening last Friday night was fun and casual, just like Chung himself. Everyone enjoyed themselves of great food (especially me! - fat-sized, bottomless Japanese rolls!), meeting new friends (especially a fellow Floral Designer who, the first thing she says is "I LOVE your work", as we're first meeting) and looking for the first time at the published albums of weddings that Chung and I did together. What pictures would be better to post than ones from Chung Li himself: