Tiger Lily was asked to provide the flowers at the annual Charleston Convention and Visitor's Bureau Awards Luncheon today. It's the big Charleston tourism industry's event, where the "Golden Pinapple" is award to that year's most effective tourism professional. A "Who's Who" of Charleston's tourism scene, it was held at the fabulous Francis Marion Hotel where we also provide the daily lobby and restaurant flowers.

This year's guest speaker was John Alex Floyd, Editor of Southern Living Magazine. Now Southern Living has a special place in the heart of Tiger Lily, as they wrote a four page, seven photo feature of Tiger Lily in their December 2005 issue. There was a small VIP reception prior to the event, and Mr. Floyd made my day with a nice compliment. I introduced myself as "Manny Gonzales of Tiger Lily...." He interupted me with "Oh, we know ALL about Tiger Lily! Y'all have really made a great name for yourself!" WOW! As a small business owner, that was quite a compliment.

Because of the speaker, we decided to go with a "Charleston Garden" theme for the lunch. Instead of cut flowers for the centerpieces, we created a living container garden for each standard table. The pieces varied, but all plants could be found in a traditional Charleston Garden. For the VIP tables, we provided a raised centerpiece of cut garden flowers with a spray of aliagnus from the center. Cindy Davenport of Event Dynamics provided a garden gate prop, and other accents. It's tough to create decor for a VIP non-profit awards luncheon. Too little and it's underwhelming, too much and the members might consider it a waste of resources. I was happy with the way it turned out, just right! This photo was taken from a Blackberry on the way out, it looked better in person!

Tomorrow we have a tough event. The City of Charleston asked us to provide the flowers for the memorial service of "The Charleston 9". They are the nine firefighters who gave their lives fighting a blaze last summer. June 18th marks the one year anniversary of the tragedy. Hard to believe. We have two Charleston Firefighters on our staff. Steve and Kim are great guys, they deliver and help with event set-ups and teardowns on their off days. Everyone in Charleston was affected by the tragedy. We consider it an honor and a privilege to have been asked to provide the flowers for the service.

We're going to create 9 wreaths, each with a plaque supplied by the City for each individual firefighter . The plaque will be nested inside the wreath, and will be given to each family after the service. The plaques are in my office right now, and are a sad reminder of our city's loss. Wednesday June 18th is going to be a tough, emotional day.