A huge thank you to the 80+ guests who braved torrential rain to support Flourish at our launch party at Loseley Park last night. After months of planning, designing, cutting, sticking, glueing and sourcing, I can’t believe that it’s all over!
We had a fantastic evening, including surprise entertainment from the Undercover Superstars (more on that later…), gorgeous Magenta cupcakes and plenty of blinis and bellinis to make the evening go with a swing!
Clients, my family and some of our biggest supporters were at the party which we held to celebrate the launch of our design and marketing company, Flourish, which we’re running alongside printing.com in Guildford. Flourish will build on the design, branding and marketing work that we’ve always done as a printing.com franchise; but the new name and brand identity allows us to communicate so much more powerfully the true message of what we do.
After just three weeks I can’t believe how many doors it’s opened for us (I feel a proper blog post on that subject coming very soon…).
Back to the party… Wow! Don’t you look lovely!
You may have noticed that we use a gilt frame illustration in our branding, and we thought it might be fun to invite guests to have their photos taken in the frame. They then hung them on a velvet “washing line” along with a message on one of our Flourish postcards. It was a fun icebreaker and has meant that we have a permanent installation for our meeting room now.
The flowers in my kitchen… and below, Rona turning them into something spectacular…
Rona, my multitalented PA created the most stunning flower arrangements. I had trekked up to Covent Garden Flower market on the Tuesday to buy flowers that were “on brand” and she put together the most perfectly vibrant, relaxed and generally gorgeous bouquets (including one for my mum and one for Caroline in my emotional speech!).
The entertainment
I never get nervous about public speaking, but there was something about a room full of my most inspirational clients, colleagues and family that meant that the pressure was on!
Suffice to say that there were plenty of tears and voice cracking moments as I talked about Chloe’s Count the Kicks Campaign (the Flourish Foundation charity of the month), and the support I’ve received from my mum and dad, Caroline and the team, and my lovely husband.
After that I was rudely upstaged by “Geoff Baintree”, success coach who insisted on singing me his rendition of Simply The Best and telling the audience about his business. Embarrassingly he’d been pushing his (free and badly designed) business cards on the guests all evening. A waitress had to ask him to leave, and the Chef got up to apologise… And to show us all how it was done. He burst into a rendition of “I feel good” – little did the guests know that all three were the Undercover Superstars! They gave a fantastic performance, and anyone who was under the mistaken impression that the night was a “networking event” soon got into the party spirit once the Undercover Superstars had performed!
Video courtesy of Karen Skidmore’s iPhone! Thanks Karen
The whole room was jigging, and Sarah from Open Door even managed to get up for a dance with Geoff!
The going home presents
Guests were handed goody bags packed with a signed copy of my book, rainbow chard seeds (because they’re beautiful and productive), Chocolate Alchemist organic chocolate and one of our fabulous Flourish folders.
I had also planned to make 80 cupcakes myself, as I like to think of myself as a bit of a domestic goddess, but thankfully I realised that this was one job too many. And thankfully the fabulous Tracy from Magenta Cakes stepped in to bake and ice the cupcakes which went down a storm. Keep an eye out for her newly branded website very soon…
Thank you so, so much for all your good wishes, encouraging words and general support. It really means a lot, and it was lovely to see so many of the inspirational people that have supported us on our journey there last night. There are far too many to mention, hopefully you know who you are.
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