Real Wedding | lisa & keith

Ceremony Sts. Peter and Paul, San Francisco
Reception Marines' Memorial Club, San Francisco
Photographer Cohn Frankel Photography

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

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:

Recommended Vendor of Wente Vineyard!

With 125 years of history and still family-owned, Wente Vineyards has the ultimate wine country setting for weddings and events...AND it's only in Livermore!

In the last 2 years, we've done a few weddings in their beautiful outdoor terrace lawn. Because we've kept in touch with their ultra-nice sales manager during this time, I've recently been invited to meet their other 4 sales managers in the office to do a sales presentation. Bringing them (including the sales assistants and director) each a little squared shaped vase arrangement - inside leaf-wrapped, of green spider mums, midnight-blue thistle with just a touch of eucalyptus - each laid in a 3X3 squared formation. The whole could be used for a centerpiece but then taken individually as favors - serving double duty in this day and age of reduce, reuse and recyle - this idea was easily well-received by all the managers for going-green! LOVE IT!









(not pictured very good here, but you get the idea!)

Below are some weddings we've done at Wente, which are also clips from our new print portfolio (that we've slaved over to finish within a one-month deadline for THIS meeting and other marketing events in the last few weeks, well-worth it because we are now one of their recommended vendors!):





Photographers
Martina Konietzny Photography (top)
Todd Rafalovich (bottom)

SJMA Open House!

San Jose Museum of Art's Open House, "Art-inspired Events" was more than a networking event, it was FUN, inspiring and exhilarating! We were asked to sponsor the flowers for the martini room - be inspired from Andy Warhol's very famous martini glass - the glass itself was green, with a purple olive and yellow background. We studied and studied the picture and decided to do something abstract - tall, slender cylinder vases of sleek stems of green calla lilies, curved to shape like martini glasses, with purple flowers and olives around the lip of the vase. As for the registration and coat check area, we did six smaller cylinder vases of green/yellow spider mums in purple water with a curvy toothpick pierced through a rich purple aster flower on top, as to mimic an olive.

My photographer friend, Chung Li and new wedding coordinator friend, Amy Tam of Amy's Wedding & Events were having so much FUN (but maybe it was because of the three martinis for me =P) that we stayed till the end!

Here is me with my wonderful assistant, Jamie!

The night ended finally when the wonderful Louise of SJMA graciously gave me a brand-new copy of the museum's permanent collection. What a way to end the night!

San Francisco City Hall Preferred Florist!

We are officially on San Francisco City Hall's Preferred Professionals' List! I've just received an email from the publication announcing San Francisco City Hall wedding & special events brochure is off press and should be at the venue already, to be distributed to all engaged couples and event planners.

Here is an electronic link to the e-brochure: our ad is on page 24!

http://ebrochure.hawthornpublications.com/go/sanfrancityhall

But you can see MANY pictures in the pages prior to the ads - pictures specifically to feature City Hall were chosen from pictures I had submitted on behalf of Chung Li Photography. Page 3, Page 5, Page 12, Page 13 (that's our bride!), Page 14 (that's our flowers and cake from www.goldleafconfections.com), Page 15 (that's our centerpieces and our bride again!). There must be a reason why SO MANY of Chung Li's pictures were chosen - maybe because he IS that good! LOVE LOVE LOVE his stuff, at first sight!

All pictures on our ad (Page 24) were also courtesy of Chung Li Photography. Thanks Chung!

We are also listed on http://www.elegala.com/ as a preferred professional on the feature page for San Francisco City Hall: http://resources.elegala.com/venues/125-san-francisco-city-hall

And also listed on http://www.elegala.com/ within our industry in the venue's state: http://resources.elegala.com/local_search/search

Graphic Design

I am SO excited to be working on our new print portfolio! Graphic design (besides flowers) has always been another medium of art that I loved. But because I can't do everything (although I try so hard to all the time!), my outlet to continue to do some kind of graphic design work are these "small" projects for my business. Besides our earlier business cards, letterhead, and website, I've designed our past 2 years' Holiday cards as well. Even though it was a LOT of work, but like other graphic designers, once you see the final print outcome, it is all worth it!!

Here is our Holiday 2008 card, done in Illustrator, printed with Costco prints, then set ontop of a cute photo-corner Holiday card from Paperchase (not-shown):

Best of 2008 Holiday cards:

Photos Chung Li Photography..kim and niki, photographers..Jeanine Brown Photo Design..Akiko Photo..Pink Fog Studios

I woke up excited to be working on this project (with a ONE month deadline! -- so it can be used for all our upcoming marketing/sponsorship events) because last night while thinking of how to do the layout...should it be like past years' where it's all photojournalistic OR more of a clean collage of pictures (similiar to the Holiday cards) but with only one wedding per collage, set on their own individual pages, with the venue/vendors' names credited just below. Yah! I can't wait to get started! Will continuously update my progress!

Half Moon Bay Golf Links

Like everyone else in the wedding industry, I haven't had any time to blog, just working hard to finish up the wedding season and ending with a BANG! I've just had some time to get pictures from the photographers of recent weddings. Here is the first batch, KI Photography, who was so generous to send us ALL the pictures without hesitation.

Even though there were just a handful of pictures, (which I much rather look through than the hundreds of pictures that other photographers take) they were all individually purposeful and succinct. I’ve really enjoyed each and every one of them, and hope you do too. These are just a few of them here...a beautiful bride and the most easy-going groom, their wedding at Half Moon Bay Golf Links:






LOVE the negative space in this picture (above)

LOVE this picture (above) in black and white - looks like they are walking in snow

This is one of the better "bridesmaids-and-groomsmens-in-the-background" shot...most other ones I've seen are so cheese

LOVE the mild play of coloration of this shot and of course the angle of the shot too!

Paula Le Duc event at City Hall

Usually for a corporate event, there is no professional photographer hired. Although this event at City Hall was smaller, it was still elaborate enough that I asked my photographer friend, Chung Li, as a favor to come and photograph it. As if Chung needs more pictures for his portfolio of City Hall AND of my flowers in it (this will be the third time we've teamed up together at the same venue), but without hesitation, he ecstatically agreed to come along.

I am so spoiled once again with pictures from Chung Li Photography, who's turnaround time is just impeccable! By the very next morning, he's already emailed these pictures to me. How does he do it? Just ask him at chung@chungliphotography.com.