Great Balls of Flowers Workshop

In West Palm Beach a Big Success

A special workshop featuring wedding and party work was presented at the South Florida Center for Floral Studies April 7^th, 8^th and 9^th. Eighteen students from as far as Michigan, Pennsylvania and the Caribbean Islands attended the hands-on workshop given by design school director John Klingel and former student, 2006 inductee into AIFD, Douglas Rezende.

The program opened up with tips on how to promote your business at a wedding expo with display and printed material. Handouts with information on how to reach future brides, discuss their budget, pricing for weddings which also included a bridal profile and pre consultation form were distributed to the students. Mr. Rezende who promotes his business in Silver Spring, MD through bridal shows shared his ideas and suggestions.

The first day of designing included arrangements for ceremony locations, featuring potted plants and designing within specific guidelines for ceremony and reception venues. After the lunch break demonstrations on decorating gazebos, chuppahs and arches incorporating the use of fabric draping were given. The students also designed European influenced table arrangements with hand-tied mechanics.

Saturday morning demonstrations with found material at the local hardware store were incorporated into ceremony and reception décor. The students created table arrangements with wet foam spheres and pave design techniques.

The afternoon session on Saturday included pomander and cone shaped hand held bouquets. Mr. Rezende demonstrated a wire armature hand tied bouquet of spring flowers. The afternoon session ended with the students created their own armature of curly willow and mixed spring flowers.

When the participants came into class early Sunday morning they had a special task put to them. Since we are in everyday competition with other shops for business a scenario was created where each had to design three arrangements: ceremony, table center design and a bridal bouquet for a potential client to see. In actuality this was a floral design competition.

The professionals had two hours to complete their tasks. The arrangements were then evaluated by Vince Petrovsky AAF, AIFD and Joseph Magill of Joseph Allen Design in Palm Beach.

In the Sunday afternoon session Cathy Peterson who represents Fleur de Wire presented the class with many of the colored wire products and creative wire techniques. The students spent the remaining time designing body flowers with colored wire and embellishments. Many of the new gluing techniques for quick and easy time saving mechanics were applied.

The three-day program was concluded with announcing the winner of the design competition. Each of the participants received a Certificate of Completion and a goodie bag compliments of FTD, Syndicate Sales, Flora life, Acolyte, Smithers-Oasis, Flora Craft, Design Master, Pete Garcia Company and The Carlstedt Company.

The next workshop, Great Balls of Flowers-Number Two-Event Work will be August 25^th, 26^th and 27^th. This workshop will also feature sympathy design trends. So mark your calendar and we will see you there.

To see pictures from Great Balls of Flowers, click here.