Beauty is Better When it Misbehaves a Little
Meet the Boulder florist behind artful floral and event design with an eye for the unexpected
Most Moments Deserve to Take Up More Space
A wedding is worth making a fuss over (obviously), but so is turning 40, graduating, retiring, having a baby, staying married for a long time, or finally getting divorced. There are plenty of reasons to gather the people you love in a room and make the whole thing excessive.
Every occasion does not need to become an Event with a capital E, but when something means enough to bring people together, it deserves more than booking a room, throwing flowers on a table, and calling it a day.
I’d always rather see a few ideas followed through exceptionally well than a long checklist of things nobody will remember anyway.
If you’re going to get everyone you care about in the same room, I believe it’s worth giving a damn about the whole experience.
I’m Ash, and I Care Probably More Than Is Reasonable
Boulder florist, maximalist, and professional noticer of tiny things
I spent a lot of my life taking care of everyone around me. I helped my husband build a business, raised two babies, and when they finally stopped needing my literal body to survive, I decided to reclaim something for myself.
I’ve always been artistic and creative, with a deep love of hospitality. After circling the event world and determining that planning was absolutely not for me, I landed on flowers: an artistic outlet that lets me shape the room itself and make it worthy of whatever brought everyone there.
I’m a Midwesterner turned mountain mama. Michigan will probably always have my heart, but the mountains are home now, where I live with my husband, Brian, and our two kids, Edie and Max. Every July, I take them back to our nearly 100-year-old family lake house, where generations of my family have gathered in the same rooms, around the same tables, year after year. It probably explains why I care so much about the places we gather and the tiny details that become part of how we remember them.
My philosophy
Patina Over Polish
I’ve never really been interested in beautiful things just because they’re beautiful. Give me something a little strange, old, wild, imperfect, or unexpected, and you’ve piqued my curiosity.
I love vintage brass, colored glass, candlelight, weird seed pods, moths, texture, and objects that carry evidence of where they’ve been. The wear, the scars, the things they picked up along the way are so interesting to me. It’s part of what makes them beautiful in the first place.
I’m a maximalist who doesn’t like clutter. I like femininity with teeth. That same tension often shows up in my work. My goal is to make everything feel considered without looking like we tried to tame every last rugged edge, because beauty is a lot more interesting when we stop asking it to behave.
word from the wild
word from the wild
“Ashley was EXCEPTIONAL to work with. She listened to my preferences and went ABOVE and BEYOND to make my florals unique, beautiful, and within budget.
I seriously cannot recommend her enough. We got so many compliments on all of our florals. Here is the bar top arrangement just to show how amazing they were!”
Breann G.
Since we’re getting personal
You Might As Well Know…
My particular brand of maximalism:
Nothing has to match, but everything has to belong
My most-used phrase:
For fuck’s sake
The fastest way to lose me:
A wedding so “timeless” it forgot to belong to anyone
My brain during a beautiful event:
This is sacred. Also, that napkin is three inches too far left…
I like when things look:
Collected, not purchased as a set
I have never seen too much ____ :
texture
What I’m Unwilling to Compromise On
Personal over prescribed
I care more about who you are than what your wedding is supposed to look like. The people, the place, the things you love, even the references that make no sense to anyone else give us far more to work with than a list of traditions or trends ever could.
Collected over perfect
Nothing has to match, but everything has to belong. Perfect is easy. Making a bunch of different things feel like they were always meant to be together is more interesting.
Color over everything
Color gives you somewhere to go. Somewhere specific, strange, romantic, loud, nostalgic, whatever actually feels like you. I’d rather risk something eventually looking off its time than strip out everything interesting in pursuit of “timeless.”
Craft over convenience
I care how things are made. I’ll build the mechanics, hunt down the right materials, fabricate something that doesn’t exist yet, or work with another maker when they can do it better. The execution matters as much as the idea.
Feeling over formula
I don’t design from floral recipes that dictate exactly how many stems go where. I plan the shape, color, movement, and mechanics, then make the final decisions with the actual flowers in my hands. That little bit of unpredictability is where a lot of the magic happens.
Enough about me
What Are You Celebrating That We’re About to Make a Very Big Deal About?
No matter what’s bringing your people into the same room, let’s make it worthy of the reason they’re there.