Holiday Wreath-Making Class with Francoise Weeks

This next post is slightly out of the realm of my usual blog posts. Normally, I write about and share images from recent weddings and portrait sessions that we’ve photographed. However, for 2010, I will occasionally be sharing blog posts about people, places and things in the wedding industry that I simply adore. As a wedding photographer, I have the opportunity to work with so many talented artists and vendors in Portland and I normally am witnessing and documenting the culmination of their talents on the wedding day. Many of these people have become friends of mine. As a freelancer, it’s wonderful to have colleagues who work in the same industry with whom I can talk to about business-related topics. It gives me a real since of community and is truly one of the highlights of my job!

To kick off this new category on my blog, I want to introduce you to Francoise Weeks. Francoise is an extremely talented florist and a really nice person, to boot. Not only does she create truly gorgeous floral pieces for weddings and events, she also offers classes where you can learn how to create these masterpieces yourself. How cool is that?! Her classes range from wedding design where you can learn to create hand-tied bouquets and table arrangements, to seasonal classes where you can make your very own holiday wreath.

This past Monday, I had the opportunity to photograph Francoise’s Holiday Wreath-Making class. Held in her very own studio, the class was made up of 8 students. We started off with a brief instructional lesson from Francoise, in which she encouraged us to be creative with our design and taught us how to adhere and attach various adornments to the wreath. Each of us had our very own fir bough wreath and access to a variety of gorgeous live plants, seeds, fruits, herbs, moss, mushrooms, orchids, etc. that we could use as decoration. The class was SO much fun! One of the best parts of the evening (other than walking away with a beautiful, hand-decorated wreath) was seeing how different everyone’s wreath looked at the end of the class using the same ingredients. It was wonderful way to spend a Monday evening and I think it’s safe to say that everyone who was there had a blast! To find out more about other classes that Francoise offers, please click here.

To view some of my favorite images from the class, please click on the photo or on the link below the photo.

Francoise instructing us to place the decorations on the wreath before attaching them.

This is the point in the evening where she said ‘Please choose your wreath and have fun!’:)

The goodies! The pomegranite was for decorating, not eating. Though it did look delicious!

The before photo of my wreath.

Francoise was there to offer help and suggestions.

Hard at work.

These two ladies are a daughter and mother duo that attended the class:) So sweet. I wish my mom lived in town. We’d totally take a class together!

Ahh, the finished wreaths. They are all so beautiful!

The lovely Francoise!

Here are some detail shots of my wreath. There are lady apples, cinnamon, dried oranges, figs…

Moss, lichen, ferns, tree bark…

Poppies, seed pods, pine cones, nuts, curly willow…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 11:37 pm. It is filed under blog, friends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.