At Jacaranda, we like to exceed your expectations and that applies just as passionately to every part of our service. As such, we work hard to make sure that our canapés are so mouth-wateringly delicious that your guests won’t be able to resist plucking another one from a nearby waiter.

Not only that, but we believe that your canapés should be as visually stimulating as they are tasty. These decorative items of food ought to be equally as reflective of the style of your wedding and the inclinations of your personality as well as a precursor of the feast to come.

You may not know it, but canapés really can come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. Your choice of delicacy can be adapted really well to the seasons, allowing us to source fresh, local, seasonal produce to create a fantastic wow factor that will be reflected in the layout.

If you have a colour theme or design scheme for your wedding, do let us know and we can easily incorporate it in the presentation of your pre-dinner snacks. Everyone loves something out of the ordinary and the attention to detail we can create by continuing your styling details into your canapé trays will definitely wow your guests.

By adding different dimensions to your canapé trays, such as using sticks to create height or sunken tablets to create depth, your canapés will suddenly become not only visually exciting but more enticing as well, inviting your guests to take a sample.

Whether we incorporate details from your wedding design on Perspex trays or decorate your canapés with select blooms that mirror your bouquet, we can make the pre-dining experience just as unique and personal as the rest of your day. Don’t be afraid to use food to make a stylish statement.

Angel Like Flowers, established by Angel Skillman, is now in its fifth successful year and has become a regular feature of many Jacaranda weddings thanks to our mutual affiliation with such wonderful wedding venues as Farbridge, The Walled Garden and Bartholomew Barn.

What we particularly like about Angel Like Flowers is that they have their own cutting garden at Grittenham Barn in Tillington. What this means is that much of their produce is home-grown and raised from seed, instead of being imported, meaning that you will know exactly where your wedding flowers come from.

“We grow mainly annuals,” Angel explained. “For example sweet peas, cornflowers, cosmos and snapdragons, but also some foliage like honeysuckle and trailing jasmine. It’s so satisfying and rewarding to raise plants from seeds and to then be able to use the flowers in our weddings is a real bonus. Our flowers have not travelled and so we can decide to pick them when they are at their best.”

Following a lifetime’s passion for horticulture, Angel decided to take a professional floristry course in London, which involved not only flower arranging but also elements of business management including buying and selling techniques. After a few years of building up experience working with other florists, Angel broke out on her own and began her business by specialising in weddings.

We have experienced Angel’s passion for beautiful blooms firsthand and know not only how fastidious her attention to detail is thanks to her policy of only doing one wedding per day, but also how lovingly prepared every floral set up from the Angel Like workshop is.

If you’re still looking for a wedding florist and would like to know more about Angellike Flowers, do visit their website and get in touch.

Here at Jacaranda, we love it when our clients come to us with a different kind of celebration, particularly one with a theme. We’re renowned for providing excellent catering and event management to a whole host of events, but we get particularly excited by the opportunity to go to town, especially when a burlesque themed party calls for a tonne of glitz and glamour, a sprinkling of naughtiness and cheekiness and just a dash of extravagance.

When you’re planning a burlesque themed party, you need to look to the great vaudeville houses such as the Moulin Rouge and Crazy Horse for inspiration. These were lounges dripping in decadence, packed full of promise and decorated in suitably lavish style.

As such, you can really go all out on this theme: great plumes of feathers in tall black trumpet vases, some twisted willow creeping out of them and all set on a mirror plate glittering with candles. We’re thinking cream tablecloths, ruby glassware, gilded charger plates and either scarlet or ebony napkins will complete the look of each table.

We envisage this theme working equally well in a blank canvas setting like a marquee or a venue bursting with its own architectural details like Ramster or Chawton House; whichever venue you choose, be sure to enlist the sumptuous elements that give the space a boudoir-type feel.

Use swags of material to divide up the space with drapes of crushed velvet or suggestive satin to create a tactile environment. Go beyond simply having chair covers and chair sashes and instead create lavish thrones that your guests will want to sink into as they feast, eat and enjoy the entertainment.

Lighting plays an integral part to creating an atmosphere and will be most important to a burlesque themed party. In addition to the natural light of candles across your tables, play with light and shade to create areas of intrigue within the shadows of the room whilst highlighting your fabulous floral displays and centrepieces by positioning spotlights over each table.

Burlesque themed parties work particularly well during the late autumn months, when their suggestive, dark colours meld effortlessly with the long, dark nights. Burlesque makes a great birthday theme, especially for those going all out and enlisting the help of professional dancers and singers who will really capture the mood.

For more inspiration, check out Pinterest or chat to your local florist or event planner to see what wild ideas they can come up with to make your burlesque party memorable and magnificent for your guests!

Avington Park has received royal visits from King Charles II and George IV, but more recently you may have spotted it in a whole host of TV programmes and magazine features. Its exquisite state rooms and beautiful sprawling grounds are the perfect setting for a romantic day and will leave your guests undeniably spellbound.

If you do decide to put down the Easter eggs long enough to enjoy a spring walk around Avington Park, there are a few other local treats to keep all the family entertained. We’re sure that the kids will love nothing more than a visit to the Watercress Line in Alresford where a brilliant steam engine goes back and forth between Alresford and Alton.

For a nearby spot to indulge in a restorative lunch, we can recommend The Black Rat in Winchester or The Bush at Ovington, which has a lovely river running next to it that you can walk for miles along.

If you would like to find out more about the beautiful Avington Park, you can visit their website or follow them on Facebook, but there really is nothing to compare with visiting it in person and being hypnotised by how spectacular it is.

Whether you favour red, white or rosè, your wine will take on a whole new level of style with this unique product packaging. We love this playful, novel presentation but have yet to work out whether it makes the wine last longer (as we marvel at the sleek packaging) or if it makes us drink faster (as we try out each different style!).

You can find out more about the ‘Bag-in-Bag’ wine over at the Vernissage website.

Today, our event manager Minty has been mining her Pinterest boards to bring you some styling inspiration. It’s over to Minty to tell you just why candles are the most wonderful (and wonderfully cheap!) way to create a beautiful, romantic ambience at your event.

• Candles make really great table decorations, whether you chose to incorporate them with floral centrepieces or make a feature of the flickering light in its own rite. If you’re having a summer wedding or event then you’ll find that as the sun starts to go down in the evening, the candle light will provide a stunning and very romantic atmosphere.
• The more the merrier! However many candles you have it can never look too crowded. Whether they are big or small, plain or coloured, round or long – you can’t overdo it. Do make sure you mix things up a bit though as variety looks much better.
• Little vases with posies in them dotted between the candles is beautiful idea –  very shabby chic, but if you wanted a clean modern look, I would go for some dark coloured candles and then intersperse white and cream flowers between them.
• Wether you’re decorating a wedding or a private dinner party at home, you will need to use less unnatural lighting the more candles you have.
• I love the idea of using a variety of different height candles and varying levels of floral decorations as it’s then like the whole table is built up, rather than just having attention focused on a single vase in the middle of a table. Really go to town with the idea of creating a tablescape.
• Having a tree in the middle of the table creates a quintessentially Midsummer Night’s Dream theme. Hanging tealights from the branches will make your guests feel like they’re in an enchanted woodland!
  {A really easy way to do this is to collect all your old jam jars, tie some wire around them & perhaps some pretty ribbing & then just pop a tea light in the jars. Quick and easy and very cost effective!}
• Continuing with the magical forest, if your prefer a selection of branches to a whole enormous tree it’s a nice idea to cover the bottom of the branches in moss and flowers. Sticking the branches in an oasis covered in chicken wire will also keep them from tumbling over, and will keep the flowers watered.
• A really great way of keeping candles safe from falling over, but still being able to see them, is to create perforated votives. Whilst you can buy this decorative candle holders, you can achieve a similar effect simply by making making holes in tins or wrapping your vases in patterned material such as lace, or even bark with heart shapes cut out of them.
• Don’t forget that candle light is really rather flattering and also makes people look more attractive in photos!

This glamorous evening came complete with glittering entertainment in the form of a live five-piece band, burlesque and cabaret performances. Of course, we had to add our own luxurious flourish to the evening so we started off with canapes including:

Ham hock and Manchego cheese croquette,
Venison ballottine with truffled mushrooms and game crisp,
Crispy potato gallette with melting compte cheese and caramelised shallot,
Parmesan gnocchi with tomato fondue and parmesan crisp,
King prawns with chilli, garlic and fresh ginger.

In order to allow the party to keep on rolling, we provided a buffet of bowl food for Mike’s guests, rather than stifling the good times with a formal sit-down meal. Mike chose the following culinary delights:

‘Duck Pie’: Shredded duck confit with root vegetables and kale topped with mashed potato,
Seared black bream with white bean and chorizo, parsley and caper sauce,
Fillet of beef with parsnip mash, Cumberland sauce and Jerusalem artichoke crisp,
Warm roasted root vegetable and pear salad with walanuts, cider vinegar, rocket and crumbled,
Golden cross goats cheese salad

As if that wasn’t enough, we also provided sweet treats in the form of chocolate brownies and mini macaroons and a sprawling cheeseboard, prior to a helping of midnight kedegree. To accompany this feast, we served Champagne of course and winter mojitos.

It was a truly wonderful evening for a wonderful guy and we were so pleased to be part of it.

Credits:

Venue: John Mickerson at Farbridge

Furniture & decorative items: Place Settings

Band:Malfunction Music

Photography: Matt Sills

Interior Designer: Sally Settrington

Cabaret: Diamondesq Productions

Do you remember Annie & Jon’s wedding at The Walled Garden? Well, that’s just one example of the many wonderful occasions that we’ve had the pleasure of working alongside local bloomiere Spriggs Florist.

Based in the beautiful setting of Petworth, Matthew and Samantha have built a solid reputation for producing beautiful flowers for all occasions. Although our primary contact with Spriggs undoubtedly occurs through the nuptials of our mutual clients, we’ve also seen their exquisite work at other events and continue to be charmed by the styling of their stunning shops.

For the kind of flowers that will add that wow-factor to your wedding, visit the Spriggs Florist website, follow them on Twitter or say hello on Facebook.

Slowly but surely we’re beginning to get more and more things ticked off as time goes by and can’t believe that we’re now into the 6 month lead up to the big day!

Everyone always talks about how we brides have been dreaming about our wedding since we were little girls. As it happens, I remember fondly sitting on the floor of my parents’ bedroom, sifting through their chest of drawers and laying out all the keepsakes my mum had collected from her wedding day. I was fascinated with everything: her plastic silver horseshoe, the wedding cake topper, her veil, but most of all I loved looking through the photograph album. I thought my mum looked beautiful & my dad cut a rather handsome figure.

I guess every bride has an element of their day that they would say is the most important to them – for me it is definitely the photography. The photos are the one thing that will take me back to the day, the one thing that I will be able to look at over and over again and hopefully one day my children and grandchildren will be mesmerised with my album as I was with my mum and dad’s.

Knowing how important the photos are to me, my fiancé Simon introduced me to a photographer he has known and worked with for over six years, called Micaela Cianci. I knew of Micaela, but I must admit I didn’t really know her work, so Simon and I took a day off work to visit her at the studio in Thames Ditton. We instantly clicked and I couldn’t help but fall for her infectious personality and her love and passion for what she does.

Due to the unconventional nature of our wedding we needed to make sure that whichever photographer we chose would be able to capture the essence of our day. We needed someone that understands our personalities and is fun and full of character. I know we have found that in Michaela.

As such, I have to give you some really, really important advice:

Always go and meet the supplier you are considering hiring – whether it is the photographer, florist, caterer or band – so that you can be sure they are the right person for you. We all have extremely busy lifestyles, so book a day off work. Yes, you may need to take a precious holiday, but this will allow you to focus on the wedding plans for just one day and trust me you will begin to feel in control of the plans.

It is so vitally important that you feel some sort of connection with your wedding suppliers; they need to understand your characters, your ideas, dreams and concept. If you are anything like me, you’ve probably spent nearly every waking hour thinking about the wedding and there is no doubt that the event you are organising is possibly going to be the most important (and expensive!) party you will ever host. You don’t want to compromise that.