I'm a photographer, event planner and floral designer in London. several years ago when I got a call to meet with a rep for a wedding couple who needed help on short notice. After the meeting I accepted the assignment, which was a spur of the moment wedding to be held at a plantation outside of Peterborough but the identities of the bride and groom were withheld.

If short notice (one week) isn't a big enough problem the couple would not meet with me until the day before the wedding in Peterborough. And to make it even more complicated the wedding was scheduled for New Years day. It doesn't stop there. They also chose sunflowers as a floral theme.

OK, if you know anything about the flower business you will appreciate that New Year's day follows Christmas and the wholesalers have leftover poinsettias and evergreen in stock but not much more. The demand for a wide variety of flowers that week is very limited so they don't stock anything they cannot sell.

I flew to the plantation outside of Peterborough on the client's private jet. The mansion was still decorated for Christmas with a total of 8 Christmas trees inside and outside the house and hundreds of feet of garland on the stairs and balconies. We had three days to break down the Christmas decor, deliver 1000 sunflowers from Mexico and decorate the plantation in an enchanted forest theme.

The brides mother arrived and followed us with a camera everywhere. She said she wanted to know how to make these amazing arrangements for future parties. We structured all the doorways in large tree branches from the nearby swamp, draped them in with Spanish moss and wired in sunflowers everywhere. Sunflowered garlands trailed the winding 100 year old plantation stair rails.

Meanwhile the bride and bridesmaids were flying in from NY where they were hastily preoccupied with the wedding dress in the fitting room. We managed to pull it off and finished the last flower when the bride arrived the day before the ceremony.