Ok, here it is – Blog number one.
So, over the past couple of days, I have been deciding what the blogs should be about. I don’t want to sugar coat anything, we live in very normal house, we don’t have acres upon acres of land. Just an average sized front and rear garden that is strewn about with kids and dog toys. So please don’t think that we live a beautiful home, and that I flounce among flower meadows like I’m in a Jane Austen novel, or better still – an episode of Bridgerton. As I’m writing this my eldest daughter, aged two is whaling like a Banshee while my incredibly patient husband tries to put her to bed. I drew the long straw and put the very sleepy, very little one year old to be this evening. (Here’s to small victories)
Anyway, I’m off subject, the blog…. Well, it’s going to be a bit about everything. Off course about the beautiful weddings that we create, the amazing people and suppliers we meet along the way. Along with the struggles of doing my first year of my very own proper cutting garden, not to mentions all the ups and downs of being a mum to two very strong-willed wildlings. I can’t promise that this won’t be full of spelling and grammar errors and I have a tendency to go off on tangents but let’s see if you, if there is anyone out there reading this, enjoy it.
Gosh, I’m not even sure how long these should be, so to give to length to this first edition and make me feel like I’ve done a good job and deserve a gold star, I’ll tell you a little bit about how the business started and my background. Basically, Blooming Brilliances’ origin story.
As we have gathered by now, I hope – I’m Jess, I’m a 30 something year old living in East Anglia. I’m originally from Lincolnshire and I moved to this part of the country about 9 years ago – shortly after getting my degree in Fine Art from The Arts University Bournemouth, where I excelled in making pasta for dinner and developing a nervous tick. Needless to say, Uni wasn’t really for me. But it is where I started my career in flowers, instead of attending dreaded lectures on something like ‘The origin of art’, I found myself lost in flowers - in a small family-owned florist, not too far from my house at the time. I started by working for free and just gaining experience – it was enough for me to just be lost within the scent, textures and colours of all the blooms.
When I grew up my mum kept a lovely garden but this was different, maybe for the first time I was really appreciating the flowers and I was allowed to play with form and texture with a material I had never experience before, a natural, organic material, it’s was freeing being able to create something beautiful for no other reason, than I because I wanted to. Uni had tarnished my love for art. For me there is no joy in explaining and justifying the reason why you create, it made something that felt very natural and full of emotion and soul feel like a calculous class or an English exam. It made me question everything I made. But here I was in a small shop – bringing people joy from something I had made; I mean at that time it wasn’t an installation or a show stopping wedding display – it might have been something as simple as a wrap of flowers. But it had me hooked.
Anyway, I think I might have blabbered on for too long and I don’t want to give too much away upfront because I’m worried, I might run out of things to say in a couple of months. I’ll pick up where I left off next time.
Cheers.
Jess x
