By Joe LaVela
For the last several years, Atlanta’s Cathedral of St. Philip has held an Antiques Show and Flower Festival, in which local garden clubs and churches decorate different parts of the cathedral as a charity fundraiser. This year, due to the pandemic, it will be a virtual event including churches from other parts of the country. Christ Church Cranbrook was one of those invited to participate. The invitation said that they had been watching our flower guild on Facebook for many years and “enjoyed the team work and spirit” of our group. We enthusiastically accepted the invitation.
Participating churches were asked to submit a short narrated video of the guild decorating a particular part of their church on the theme “A Gracious Home”. For our submission, we chose to decorate the Library as a welcoming place for a bride and her bridesmaids to await the wedding ceremony as the guests arrived. Christa Albrecht and Marcie Lloyd set a table for the bridal party to enjoy tea and petits fours (home-made by Marcie) while they wait. Margaret Bancroft prepared a stunning floral centerpiece, and Christa added an accent bouquet for the side window.
The submitted videos will be aired on “Flower Friday”, January 22, 2021. In addition to the submissions from participating parishes, the Cathedral is bringing in three different floral experts to give instructional talks that day followed by live Q&A sessions. This year’s speakers include Shane Connelly (florist to William and Kate) and renown florist Hitomi Gilliam from Vancouver.
Christa Albrecht, by the way, was able to provide further insight on how CCC came to be invited. One of the co-founders and past chair of our Flower Guild was Kimberly Peterson. Kimberly, an experienced floral designer (and owner of Peony), also volunteered in floral design at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), and attended flower shows and classes out of town and in the famous Judith Blacklock Flower School in Knightsbridge, London. Somewhere along the path, Kimberly became friends with another floral designer, Laura Dornbush Iarocci (owner of Faith Flowers),who is active with the Flower Group at St. Philips Cathedral in Atlanta. Laura has had access to our CCC Flower Guild Facebook page since January 2015. It was Laura who sent us the invitation on behalf of the cathedral.
Further information on how to view the Flower Friday festival on January 22 will be posted in the Communicant when it becomes available. Also, our video submission will be made available for viewing here after the festival.
