Flower of the Day: Tulips

I have always loved tulips.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, weary from shoveling snow and carrying water to the calves in the back barns, my brother and I anxiously looked for the crocuses first, then the daffodils, and then the tulips. I loved the tulips the best--those big boldly colored cups, the strong stamens inside. Besides, once the tulips unfolded their petals, it was pretty likely that our snow shoveling days were behind us. At least for another year.

Of course, as I got older, and had to buy my own flowers in my own yard, I began to like the daffodils more. They multiplied each year, while the tulips thinned out a little bit each Spring, eventually disappearing altogether.

But I still love tulips today--although Florida winters aren't really cold enough to plant them. But they're a great cut flower right now, available at all the florists in town, and I think they're a wonderfully versatile flower for weddings. They can be sweet, in pink and blushed hues, or they can be bold, in reds and purples. And the fact that they sound like "two lips"--well, that just makes them perfect for a springtime bride!!

This bouquet was done by our preferred floral vendor--Flowers by Krissy. She put them together for Kristin and Cordez, who tied the knot yesterday in the gazebo.

Secrets of the Locals: Best Ice Cream

You may remember that the hub is an ice cream snob.

Other men may talk about wine at dinner parties--going on about the nose of this wine or the head of that one or the blush of berries or whatever it is that they think they taste. It's like a foreign language to me.

In the same fashion, the hub can wax on and on about his favorite frozen treat--the mouth feel of the cream content, the ratio of ice cream to addition, the combination of additions at all.

Hey, I'm not complaining. You'll never find a $200 gallon of ice cream, so I'm a big supporter of his enjoying the icy treat over anything fermented.

But he can't make ice cream every day. True, he does make it for inn guests on Wednesdays in the summer. But that's a special treat.

If he wants great ice cream any other time, he drives all the way down Route 1 to beyond Wal-Mart (real St. Augustine residents *never* drive past Wal-Mart unless they're going to Orlando. The fear is that Route 1 is flat and you will fall off of it if you try to go too far). He drives to Cold Cow (http://www.coldcow.net/), a little ice cream shop owned by Jason Welty. Jason is an ice cream lover too--and he comes up with weird flavors like Mike does, too (like Trash Can, which is vanilla ice cream with 7 kinds of candy bars).

It's a great place, but going there really does feel like Columbus heading off for unknown and possibly dangerous horizons.

So imagine our surprise--our delight!--when we went to Lee & Cates, a glass cutter on Anastasia Island, right across the bridge, and saw a little ice cream truck parked in the corner of their oddly-shaped parking lot. The sign said "Cold Cow has had a Baby...Meet Cold Calf".

The sun shone down, angels sang, and the hub skipped towards it like a little girl. Yup, it was our old friend Cold Cow, in a cool moveable trailer. They had 29 flavors of ice cream yesterday; the hub and I shared a scoop of toasted coconut (which was exactly what it sounded like) and red velvet cake (which was an icing flavored batter with chunks of red velvet cake). Our friends (who are visiting from Atlanta) got a butterscotch bomb (vanilla ice cream with butterscotch and fudge) and peanut butter cookie.

We all left there very, very happy.

You will be happy if you go there too...unless you go on Monday, when they're closed. Otherwise, check them out Tuesday through Sunday, from 3 - 9 pm.

Looks *Do* Matter

Sometimes, the best recipe in the world won't impress people if it just doesn't look good (case in point: trifles are awesome for the first three of four people who dive in; anyone coming later than that is going to think twice before plopping that goop on their plate).


That's why I love a good table as much (well, maybe not quite as much) as a great meal.


Here's a great example from one of our recent weddings. Check out the pineapple in the middle--it's a great way to serve fruit salad. Just cut a variety of fruits (we use pineapples, berries, grapes, and melons) into bite sized pieces, then skewer them onto a pineapple (you can cut the bottom off to make it stable). Add some fern fronds at the top to make it a little more dramatic.

Other tips I love: the dip in the front, served in a hollow pepper. Pretty dishes served at different heights (if you don't have pedestals like ours, use a cake plate, or even just a plate puttied on top of a water goblet). Cilantro or parsley sprinkled on everything.


A good bridal buffet is a little like the bride herself: it should look like what it is, beautiful as always, but a little more special than usual.


Best wishes!

Let's Paws for a Moment on March 31

Do you feel guilty when you drop your dog off at the kennel? Don't you cringe when you see your pup wag his tail, even as you're sneaking out for a nice vacation? Don't you grimace when you hear her bark optimistically as you walk away, as if she expects you to turn around and just say "Kidding!"

You don't have to leave your four legged friend at home. The Bayfront Marin House is pet friendly. So pet friendly, we serve organic puppy biscuits for happy hour! (Separate from the people food, of course).

And Saint Augustine is pretty pet friendly, as well. In fact, we have a whole list of restaurants that are happy to serve Fido, beaches that love fur bikinis, and activities that welcome your little four-legged friend.

So, if your pup will be in town on Saturday, March 31, there's an event just for the two of you. The dog walk at Butler Beach Park East is a family friendly event that will include music, food, prizes, and a cool demo by the K-9 division of the sheriff department.

You can register online and read all the details at www.360fundraiser.com/124. Or call the Humane Society at 904.829.2737.

The event goes from 10:00 to 1:00 pm. Bring your dog; look how happy *this* little guy is:

Francis Dunnery in the House!!

We sent this email out to a bunch of press-type folks tonight. Just wanted to make sure that you all know first!!

English Musician to Play Intimate House Concert at Local Bed and Breakfast

Saint Augustine, FL—March 23, 2012—Francis Dunnery, an English musician, singer-songwriter, record producer and record label owner, will be performing a house concert on Sunday, April 22, at the Bayfront Marin House in Saint Augustine, Florida.

Dunnery is best  known as a solo performer, and for fronting the original lineup of the band It Bites between 1982 and 1990. His credits include co-writing and singing the #6 UK hit single, "Calling All the Heroes", in 1986.

“My wife and I have been fans of Francis Dunnery since we saw him perform in Philadelphia several years ago,” says Mike Wieber, owner of the Bayfront Marin House on Avenida Menendez. “When we heard that he was interested in performing in very small venues in the United States, we contacted him to see if he’d be interested in playing in America’s oldest city.”

Concert promoters contacted the Wiebers in early March to tell them that their inn had been chosen as a concert venue. The concert will be held in the bed and breakfast’s dining room at 7:30 pm until 9:00 pm. Dunnery will be playing from his “Tall Blonde Helicopter” tour.

Dunnery served as a sideman and musical contributor for artists as diverse as Robert Plant, Ian Brown, Lauryn Hill, Santana and Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe. He has worked as producer and/or collaborator with David Sancious, Chris Difford (of Squeeze), James Sonefeld (Hootie and the Blowfish), Erin Moran (better known as A Girl Called Eddy), and Steven Harris (ex-The Cult, Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction). In addition, Dunnery owns the Aquarian Nation record label.

For more information, or to order tickets, please contact the Bayfront Marin House at 904.824.4301 or info@bayfrontmarinhouse.com. Tickets are $30 for the general public, and $18 for bed and breakfast guests.

Flowers of the Day: Hydrangeas and Dyed Roses

Everybody knows that the hub convinced me to move to Florida with the lure of year-round gardening.


Yes, the ability to see color--rich, saturated and healthy color--throughout the year was a wonderful draw.


So it's not surprising that I check out the flowers before I look at the wedding dress during our weddings. We work with a local florist, who combines colors in fresh, inventive ways. She also will fit in any color a bride wants--like the Christmas bride who wanted black and red roses. Instead of getting black roses, Chrissy used black silk ribbon and twisted it into a tiny flower to go in the center of every rose. It was beautiful.


Today's flowers are brought to you by the cool color family--green, blue and purple. I promise I'll feature the embellished roses next, but in the meantime, enjoy this happy spring-time bouquet!

5 Tips to Make Your Night-time Wedding WOW

The hub and I have been married for a long time now--this year will be our 19th anniversary.

We got married at night, partly because I have always thought that night-time weddings are so romantic and intimate, and partly because my brother and my father have to milk 200 cows every day, so I was either going to get married at noon, in between the milkings, or at night, when all the cows were back in their stalls and eating hay quietly.

I suppose my other option was to get married *in* the barn, during milking. But since I had spent 10 years trying to get away from milking duties, I certainly didn't want to suggest that. Besides, I had never seen a pair of barn boots cute enough to wear with a dress.

Anyway.

We've had a couple of night time weddings at the inn recently, and I am always blown away by how beautiful they are. Don't get me wrong--daytime weddings, with the sparkling Matanzas Bay in the background, and some of the most beautiful skies you will ever see, are pretty breath-taking too. But we do a lot less night weddings, and I forget how pretty they are in the months between events.

We've figured out a couple of tricks to make night-time weddings really pop, too. Here are some of my favorite:

1. Lots of candles. Well, duh, right? But we do lots of different kinds of candles. We do candles in lanterns, candles on trays (assuming it's not so windy that it blows them out immediately), candles around the cake. Recently, one of our couples brought about a million luminaries and lined the sidewalks and stairs with them. They were simply stunning. Another cool trick is to put tea lights in wine glasses and cover them with inexpensive cellophane shades. Or give everyone a small thin candle, stuck through a circle of paper so the wax doesn't melt on their hands, and ask them to light them right before the vows.

2. Lots of lights. We make sure we use warm lights, not cool ones, so that everyone looks like a supermodel, and not like an alien smurf when we get the photos back. And we bundle up strings of lights and put them underneath the tablecloths so that they glow in the pictures (the tables have a cut-out design, and that looks beautiful lit up too). If we're using an arbor, we string it with lights and vines, so that the lights are softer looking in the photos and they don't blind anyone looking at them for the whole ceremony.

3.  And more lights. Don't forget a reading light for the minister--those ceremonial words can seem pretty tiny when you're trying to read in the dark. We use a small flashlight for this, and it works pretty well. Put lights next to any stairs, too, so no one falls and ruins their pedicure (and maybe more than that!) And you might want to give your guests sparklers--they're fun after the vows, and they make for some pretty awesome photos too. (Careful giving them to young guests--they will burn you if you hold them too high!)

3. Plan for photos in the room. Yes, the shots outside can be beautiful and moody, but the bride has usually spent about an hour on her hair and makeup and that deserves some gorgeous lighting. They don't have to be inside for long, but a couple of staged photos in one of our antique chairs, or sitting on a chaise lounge together, or next to one of our fireplaces can be one of the best shots of the day (uhhh...night).

4. Turn the music to half the level it's normally at. Sometimes, we put the music directly in the gazebo, so that it's very subtle as the bride makes her entrance. Part of the beauty of getting married at night is the stillness, and the music should be a nice accompaniment to that, not the center concert stage.

5. Consider the weather. If it's warm, you want to spray for mosquitoes before the event (we tie white ribbons around small cans of spray and put them at the end of each aisle). If it's cool, you might want gas heaters, or a small firepit, to warm things up. And don't feel like you have to have a champagne toast--mulled wine or cider is perfectly appropriate and festive feeling too!


Have fun!!