Easing into 2020 has brought a lot of reflection on the work we did last year, and being a part of the design process with Britt Cole and Francie Dorman from 42 North for Catherine and Jed’s Fogo Island wedding was easily one of the most rewarding parts of our 2019 season. While traveling to Fogo presented many challenges - it is considered one of the ‘four corners of the earth’ - the couple’s design aesthetic spoke so directly to my heart, nothing was going to stop me from being a part of this collaboration.
echo park craft fair studio visit
We’re in prep mode for this spring’s Echo Park Craft Fair - our seventh year participating. It’s always exciting to see what our friends have been working on and to wander the rows and booths. We come away each time feeling inspired and reconnected with our fellow local creatives.
We had the EPCF team over to our studio for a tour and chat. You can read more about our thoughts on the fair’s progression and its influence on Moon Canyon over the years over here.
We’ll be making fresh spring bouquets at our booth. Come by, pick out your favorite flowers, and let us make a bouquet for you.
Tickets to the Echo Park Craft Fair can be purchased ahead of time here. We hope to see you there on May 11th and 12th!
an easter gathering
When we were invited to be part of Easter brunch at our friend Heidi Merrick’s Silver Lake home, we loved drawing inspiration from her beautiful linens and Spring 2019 collection to craft our floral pieces.
Spring’s florals lend themselves naturally to color combinations reminiscent of Easter celebrations - soft spring greens, prettiest peaches, buttery yellows. The rust tones of the tablecloth and napkins were echoed in the earthy tulips and lisianthus, bringing weight to the airier touches of daffodils and butterfly ranunculus.
The bone-handled flatware and aptly named Terra plates from The Ark provided perfect tonal layers to the tabletop.
Egg hunts have been an Easter tradition for Heidi’s family, as well as ours. We made our dyes from hibiscus tea, blueberries, and coffee and wrapped our eggs with delicate leaves and florals to create nature-inspired patterns on the shells.
Heather from Botanica brought the finishing touches to the table with a rainbow-hued Mediterranean meal.
To see the full story on our gathering, you can check out the April 2019 issue of Martha Stewart Living (or view it online here). Cheers to you and yours on this Easter weekend.
This gathering was designed in collaboration with:
Ingalls Photos | Photography
Moon Canyon Design | Florals & Dyed Eggs
Botanica | Food and Beverage
Heidi Merrick | Clothing & Linens
The Ark Rentals | Tabletop Elements
Yeah! Rentals | Chairs
Rico Terre | Ceramic Vessels
the creation of collected
We spend much of our time at Moon Canyon dreaming big for our clients - pulling endless inspiration imagery, discussing venues, arrangements, and installations, working with creators on custom vessels, platters, and linens. Our bespoke floral design for weddings brings us joy. There is a thrill to seeing an impactful floral moment that had been sketched or discussed in the design process come to life at an event. But at heart, we simply want to provide artful florals that elevate the senses and add beauty to a moment in time.
In creating Collected, we are able to satisfy this desire.
We are so pleased to present our three collections - Grove, Meadow, and Garden. They are the result of going back to the plants and flowers and letting them speak.
Our hope in creating Collected is to see our arrangements gracing the settings that we haven’t been able to touch with our bespoke floral design - the backyard weddings, the alfresco dinner gatherings, the smaller moments of joy and celebration.
We’ll be sharing more of the inspiration behind the collections in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we hope you’ll view our spring Collected offerings here.
valentine's day with moon canyon & heather taylor home
Valentine’s Day is the kick start to our love affair with spring flowers. The market is filled with the early arrivals of spring’s most beautiful blooms - dainty fritillaria, cheering daffodils, sweet peas in every hue.
Deep into the December staples of evergreen wreaths and paper whites, we began daydreaming about using our spring favorites again. Layers upon layers of color and texture, from the twiggy branches of spiraea and speckled breadseed poppy to the velvet petals of ranunculus and roses.
We loved the idea of taking our layering one step further for our Valentine’s Day offerings. Taking cues from antique wallpaper patterns, we pulled printed tissue papers in with our favorite gingham tea towels from Heather Taylor Home to create bouquets with a sweet warmth and vibrance.
Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your sweetheart, too. We hope you love these bouquets as much as we do.
professional photography by Christine Donée
Limelight with Sally Pinera
Working with flowers outside of events is essential for me. I have been dreaming of cascading bouquets all year but they aren't quite so practical for real bride. So I knew this collaboration with Sally and her husband, Robert would be the perfect opportunity to create one. And as everyone knows, color and texture has always been the driving force behind my designs - so this shoot was saturated with bright spring greens, flowering branches and delicate blooms!
All About Color
There is nothing better than collaborating with my studio mates, Duet Weddings. Every time we do, it feels like the perfect marriage of styles set on a table. It's the best when we add a little Ark to the mix, but it reached a real high during this shoot with photographer Ana Lui and her amazing hair and makeup team of Diva Borrelli and Vincenzo Della Volpe. Featured on Once Wed, this color story felt so authentic to all of us. Inspired by rust ranunculus, only available for a short window of time each spring, we wanted to create a pallet that felt fresh and slightly surprising, but still comfortable. This is a table we would all love to dine at.
Spring Floral Encyclopedia
In celebration of the seasonal transition we used a palette of white, yellow and coral for this month's encyclopedia post, plus a few florists’ tricks to add a bit of dimension to the arrangement. Flower frogs are used to hold stems in place and add a bit of weight to the base of your vessel. Adhering a few stems together with waterproof floral tape can give you some control over your arrangement too.
The natural color of Jenni's leather-wrapped vase, vegetable tanned for a rich, organic feel, was the perfect accompaniment to these bright blooms.
Easter on Domino.com
We had the best time on this Easter collaboration with Heather Taylor Home, Annie Campbell and Nicki Sebastian!
Checkout all the fun, instagram-ready brunch pictures as well as tips and advice on throwing the perfect backyard Easter celebration.
Winter Floral Encyclopedia
We are back with a January installment of our floral encyclopedia with Jenni Kayne. This lush arrangement is comprised of early spring blooms arranged in a ceramic vase by Mt. Washington Pottery. The wabi-sabi aesthetic of the handmade vessel adds to the arrangement’s playful proportions. Earthy yellows, rich greens, and a touch of blue tell a color story that’s unexpected, yet warm and welcoming. Perfectly undone early spring blooms (my favorite to design with) emphasize the meeting place of winter and spring.
Fall Floral Encyclopedia
A new season means a new opportunity to collaborate with Jenni Kayne. I am expecting a new baby and have a strong penchant for comfort right now, so it feels fitting that our fall display is done in warm shades of golden yellow. I’m in love with early autumnal meadow-style florals and this color story - pale nude, citrus, and chartreuse - is one I could live in forever! I loved using Caleb Siemon’s vase too. The top half of is translucent so you can see more of the materials, while the opaque bottom half hides the rest. Perfect for autumn arrangements!
MC + HTH
When Heather Taylor calls to say she wants to shoot a few of her new linens in a "fall fashion" we find ourselves immediately hopping in the car and heading to the Flower Market. This is the second time we have done a shoot with Heather and photographer, Jen Peffley, and both times have been such a great experiences. We love having a bunch of women in the studio, collaborating to create images that depict a fun and effortless vibe - which is exactly how each set up evolved. When you have Heather's linens as a base, finding inspired ways to to combine them with seasonal florals is easy!
Crate & Barrel
In our latest collaboration with Crate & Barrel we wanted to show readers what we love about an Early Fall Botanical Arrangement and how they could create the same look on their own with C&B's new textured vases.
We were inspired by late summer meadows. The grasses and dried flowers that fill up the stretches of pasture in late August. These vases have such beautiful texture and shape while also feeling light and airy like the floral ingredients. We used the vases to house our findings from what we gathered to make our wreath. All the ingredients fit so perfectly together here and will dry nicely in the vases, as well as in the wreath. We feel the wildness of the natural meadow is reflected here in the composition. Accented with hand dyed silk ribbon, our wreath and these vases work so well together.
Samantha & Patrick in C Magazine
We also just added this stunner to our portfolio because we can not get enough of Sam & Pat's Rancho Dos Pueblos wedding shot by one of our favorites, Jose Villa, last fall. Give us a bluff, a beach, a barn and a vintage car any day!
Summer Floral Encyclopedia
Using a beautiful hand-carved vase by Mt. Washington Pottery as a starting point, we put together our floral arrangement for us the the Summer Encyclopedia on Rip & Tan. My inspiration was simply “the summer garden”; most of the flowers were cut from my own backyard, while a few were purchased from her local nursery. I love the long, trailing shapes on display here in summery shades of green and white and deep chocolate hues for some added depth and moodiness.
Perri & Phil in Martha Stewart Weddings
Out in this month's Martha Stewart Weddings Magazine is the wedding of one of our most fun clients from 2016. When our studio mates, Duet Weddings, first brought Perri & Phil to our studio with their design plan of guest providing the color during their wedding day, we knew it was a match made in heaven! Not only were they getting married at Klentner Ranch, a location we had never worked at (which is always exciting!), we had the opportunity to take the theme of white on white on white to a whole new level. Using color only in the ceremony and cocktail hour, we focused on one flower and one flower only for the reception…white clematis. And it could not have been more refreshing or beautiful!
McKenzie & Sean on Green Wedding Shoes
We love a winter wedding here at Moon Canyon, so the second Bash Please asked what we would think about a four event weekend in Denver we started packing our bags. Early February marks the start of the blooming season for so many of our favorite flowers - white daffodils, quince and ranunculus. That combined with foraged dried grasses and brambly bits which we hung from the tent structure made for one of our favorite weddings to date. You can see more on Green Weddings Shoes.
Spring Floral Encyclopedia
I loved using this strong, sculptural leather Made Solid vase from Jenni Kayne for the Spring Encyclopedia on Rip & Tan. I really wanted to bring the bouquet back down to earth while allowing the materials to twist and turn freely, proving that the vessel you choose to display your stems can be just as impactful as the materials themselves! I also think this arrangement is a lesson in “less is more”; it’s comprised of just four florals and yet it has a very lush, statement-making presence. Classic spring flowers really are the best in that way.
Website Evolution
It's Live!
It's finally finished! Well...in that way that I will forever be adding and editing it...but its finished! Our site is live.
It's been a long road and I seriously cannot thank Brandy Curry, Nicole McDonald and Jared Richard enough for standing by me while I questioned everything. The site, websites in general, our wedding industry, flowers....
The hardest part of this whole thing is in reality I don't love websites. Maybe?
In the end we made one and I am proud of it. It's simple and showcases only a few of our weddings. None of our styled shoots since what I really want to showcase is our event work.
I feel as wedding florists we need to start setting a precedent that we do work that represents the couple, their venue, and their story. I think in this age of pinterest and instagram so often people think they need to come into a design meeting, ideas flushed out and with a pin board of hundreds of images. The industry will become (or maybe it is?) to stifled if we allow for that to occur.
Also, I like styled shoots...ish. But at this point what sets us apart from up and coming florists is our experience. It takes a special kind of florist to do events. It's hard work, stressful, and I adore it.
We are creatives. We love flowers. I want to come up with ideas with our couples, inside their particular wedding. I don't want to work against images of weddings that already occurred and have made it up on the blogs or pinterest. I feel we have the space to approach design in a more authentic way.
This was the main problem I faced when wanting to put images on our site. I went back and forth thinking...what will the bride's see, what will the couples love, etc etc. When in reality our couple find us and wants to work with us because of an overall vibe we bring to the table.
It's with that attitude of trust and excitement that we thrive.
Emily & Grant
AUTUMNAL PASADENA WEDDING featured in MARTHA STEWART WEDDINGS
Emily and Grant's wedding is one of those rare occasions where I got to be a part of a dear friend's special day. Emily and I have worked together on over 30 weddings when she was working with Bash, Please, so getting to flower her wedding was a true dream.
E + G's wedding took place in early fall at the groom's Pasadena family home. The Tudor home and garden was a beautiful backdrop for this classically designed wedding.
We used seasonal blooms such as peegee hydrangea, garden roses, and chocolate cosmos.
