Location Location Location! : Finding the Perfect Floral Arrangement for Your Destination Venue

At Starbright Floral Design in New York City we're inspired by the stories clients share with us. Roughly one in every fifteen weddings we get to participate in crafting are for same-sex couples. Each one comes with a unique pair of individuals, with love in their eyes and a desire to give their family and friends an event to remember. We're excited to share their experiences, and how those experiences have inspired us through the seasons.

When You Plan Your Wedding Remotely ...

Starbright Floral Design recently had the pleasure of working with a couple planning their wedding from Florida. And boy, do those Floridians have style!

Brian, and his partner, planned an intimate destination wedding in New York City at the famous 54 Below -- Broadway's Supper Club. With its art-deco spin on the classic art nouveau style, 54 Below inspires a live design that's fun, fresh and just a little bit funky.

Brian spent some time window shopping for florists in New York City online. He "had called several florists in the area trying to find one who actually cared to hear what [he] was looking for and who would offer a bit of help with options." When he stumbled across the Starbright NYC gallery online, he fell in love with the use of color and texture. "When I found Barbara [at Starbright], she immediately asked the right questions, understood the direction I wanted to go and offered wonderful suggestions with photos so that I could fully realize what the end product would look like," said Brian. Together, Barbara and Brian worked together to come up with a fun, modern arrangements with a lot of texture and color.

How Barbara "Does It"

Working remotely is always a challenge -- it's tricky, pleasing a client when you can't show them samples in person. We've all seen photos of flowers, and we've all seen flowers out In The World -- we're all aware that these are two very, very different experiences!

Barbara has an interesting process for cracking this particular nut. A lot of the time, people who haven't been imagining their wedding day from an early age don't have an exact picture in mind when it comes to their flowers. If you can't tell your floral vendor -- or any vendor -- exactly what you want, you enter what we like to call "the Unknown Archipelago." Navigating these waters is difficult on a good day; to help her clients get the results they hope for and expect, Barbara uses a technique called "Adjective Association." By listing things You, The Client, want -- "texture," "fun," "modern," -- and by supplying photo inspiration if it's available, Barbara can extrapolate common elements and identify a signature style.

Imagine design choices as coordinates on a giant matrix. There's places where some things intersect, and then there's places where ideas definitely run in parallel. A good designer can help you highlight your intersections, thus stretching your budget, while also enabling a couple of exciting "parallel" or "independent" choices to spice up the overall package

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This story is part of our special report: "Gay Marriage". Want to read more? Here's the full list.