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2017 FLOWER REFLECTIONS: MARTHA STEWART WEDDINGS FEATURE - Molly Ryan Floral

-2017 FLOWER REFLECTIONS: MARTHA STEWART WEDDINGS FEATURE –

Hello friends, I am hopping on this blog that I have never attended to consistently, with New Year’s optimism that 2018 will be the year. If a end-of-year reflection uploaded five days into the new calendar is any indication of how that will go, let’s just focus on the ‘better late than never’ message embedded there.

2017 was a huge year for me personally. It was my first full year in Hood River, a town I have been visiting and dreaming of living in since the nineties. The year was divided perfectly in half, with the first half dominated by pregnancy, a big move, and house hunt, and the second half dominated by infant-hood and all the crazy that comes from a family of three turning into four, moving into another new home, and re-launching this wedding flower business in the Columbia River Gorge.

By far, my biggest professional accomplishment happened amidst all that chaos, when a wedding I worked on was featured in Martha Stewart Weddings Fall 2017 issue, IN PRINT (and a nine-page spread no less)! For those of you not in the industry or sitting at the top of it, that may not sound like a huge deal, but it felt like such a milestone in this little flower journey I’ve been on.

Being “featured” in the days of social media overload can mean a whole host of things. There are wedding blogs galore, and while it always feels good to get recognized, there are different levels of difficulty in landing those spots. Molly Ryan Floral has celebrated features before (see them here),  but seeing our work in print, in such an iconic and widely distributed magazine feels like a huge step for this little business.

When I got into flowers there was no Facebook or Instagram #oldlady. I scoured the Internet, studying any floral design I could find, and found that the best florists were often featured in Martha Stewart Weddings, in print quarterly. Although totally embarrassed to be a young, single, independent woman with a stack of Martha Stewart Weddings issues a mile high, I was not satisfied with the four issues I could get off stands a year; I wanted to learn faster so I ordered every issue I could from eBay and began studying the work of so many florists I still admire as the best in the business.

While I learned floral care and mechanics as well as wedding and event logistics by free-lancing for all sorts of wedding florists at the start of my career, studying Martha Stewart Weddings is really what gave me the foundation from which I was able to develop my own style, learn about more sophisticated color palettes and design, and learn about so many floral varieties I would have otherwise not come across for years to come. With dozens of moves since that eBay haul, I have downsized from the stack of magazines to scrap books of just the floral portions, but I wish I had kept the originals. After over a decade of not looking at those clippings, I actually just came across the box, and wow, how dated they look!

In addition to being featured in print, we were honored to have the wedding featured online, the flower-filled brunch that followed also featured online, and felt even more blessed to have had Carey’s bridal bouquet chosen as one of Martha’s favorites of 2017. Typing that still feels surreal. I’m excited to share more photos from all of that soon, and to highlight the work of people I admire so much that I never thought I’d have the chance to work alongside.

Now that I got that reflection off my chest, I’m excited to look to 2018, as I open this new flower chapter in Hood River, creating wedding and event flowers throughout the Gorge, as well as growing and foraging some of my own in this breathtaking place I get to call home. Are you in the wedding business here? Are you a local flower farmer? I would love to get in touch and collaborate. And if you are planning a wedding and have yet to work out the flowers, reach out soon, 2018 dates are going fast.

Happy New Year! May we all find more peace, happiness, fulfillment, and flowers in 2018!

By | 2018-01-07T04:14:54+00:00 January 5th, 2018|Uncategorized, V. BEHIND THE SCENES|Comments Off on 2017 FLOWER REFLECTIONS: MARTHA STEWART WEDDINGS FEATURE